Back to the Boulton...and now the Gordon-Class sloop

As I'm at a bit of a creative impasse for the Orbital Elements/Aliens survey station, I decided to blow the dust off the Terran Republic Cruise. I intended to tidy up the ordnance, tweak things here and there, and then build its sub-craft, the Gordon-class sloop. 

The tidy-up

Window glow is back

A bit more order to the top-mounted drones and stuff

On to the Gordon-class

First bash! 

It's a joyous thing when you start a model, work on it, and then suddenly finish it. What, no third restart, no crisis of faith on the third day? Maybe this is because it's a small boat, not a critical design. It's described plainly as an "arrowhead," "streamlined," and therefore, a pretty basic shape to work upon.

Finishing point

Starting last night, I worked for about an hour on the basic form. I started work again at about lunchtime, with this level of completion reached after a couple more hours.

Put it into place...

I need to fix some things to animate this scene. If you look closely at the Bouton with its spin habitats deployed, there are two turret hardpoints where there should only be one. It looks like one of the turret hardpoints was pegged to the spin habitat's hub as a mirror point because as the spin arms were rotated, the turret also moved. If I try to animate that spin habitat, then the turret will fly around the ship like a bee.

Viewport

Boulton holding station...

 I've reached a culmination point with the Boulton. I'll go back and fix and improve things at some point, but for now, it's kind of done.

I will build the two Gordon-class Sloops that will attach to the back of the Boulton. I may also make a quick video.

Folded away

Folded out

Flare!!!

Boulton's on patrol

Commonwealth Ship Moran

More Boulton-class

 

I thought that I might have had it finished today. It wasn't to be! Some of the finer details got messy, so I'd backtrack a few times. 

I wanted to break up the mission section so I made these big boolean insets. They look nice and structural but because of the way the hull tapers there's a slight inconsistency that makes the feature less convincing. I put point defense turrets onto the top edge of the insets, then inside the insets. It was getting way too cluttered. I decided to append the previous version of the hull for now. There was just a bit too much detail all over the place.

Insets

Clutter-bug

The cabin section has been rebuilt to be consistent with the command module. Previously, it was angular in profile, while the command module at the front is curved. I fitted frames on the front lug where the spin habitats rest when folded in. 

Clutter back

The current challenge is to fit the ship with a lot of ordnance, including sensor drones, decoy drones, combat drones, and missiles. The problem is that it quickly looks like a mess. I looked at aircraft pylons, but you don't get the right look on a big hull. It seems like better inspiration comes from military ships of the ocean, which manage to festoon their decks with clutter but make it look right.

Before downing tools, I quickly looked at the design with a space environment...

Boulton progress

 I had a few things to do today. My eldest son, Noah, had a day off school, and my youngest son was due back from his first residential school trip. 

I got up early to get some modelling time in. The Boulton is getting there. I'm mostly happy so far. I'm intrigued by how I'll get the thing festooned with ordnance without it looking like a mess. Not to mention the pair of Gordon-class Sloops (forward missile and comms control sub-ships) that dock somewhere near the back, one on top, the other on the bottom.

Easy and crips surface markings through Boolean black magic

The rectangular cabin section needs cleaning up.

There is a lot of nipping and tucking to do. This has been built at speed without all due care, and as a result, there are countless places where the symmetry isn't super. It's the cost of doing very high-speed business. If there is anything noticeable, I'll clean up at the end.

Next up: Tighten everything up, sort out the alignment of elements, and work on more tiny details. I may spend a session building missile drones and launch pods, then the Gordon-class mini-ships. I think I should return to the books and re-read a space battle or two for inspiration.

Blast from the past

Some sketches from the first time I took to the Terran Republic...

Boulton's back!

 So I've been trying to build a starship from Charles E. Gannon's Caine Riordan: Terran Republic novels. It's the Bolton/Boulton-class cruiser.

The previous attempt was back in January this year. See these previous posts. I was pretty happy with how it was going but not happy enough to push on. I decided it was time to return to the Terran Republic, and I'd still like to build a shift carrier, a giant space vehicle very similar to the Earth ships that appear in the Avatar movies.

On with the Boulton, for now:

January's version:

More curvy but not as dagger-shaped.

Today's efforts:

Spin habitats folded in.

Spin habitat folded out.

Coastal Defender

 

I didn't have a suitable human to place in the scene, so my eldest son agreed to cameo. This was thrown together quickly. There are a bunch of elements that are broken if you look too long -- bird scale, for instance.

From earlier:

I'm still not sure If I'll finish the Boulton. However, this test of the spin arms gives me some enthusiasm.

Various threads

 The modelling of the Boulton continues. I had a problem that I'd encountered once before where the rendered viewport showed something different from an actual render. In this latest case, it was a set of Boolean windows that were okay in the viewport but not visible when rendered. I tried various things and got some improvement by fiddling with the verts. At first, I thought it was just a weird, normal issue, but it was something a bit stranger. Almost certainly where geometry was bad, but not visibly bad.

Still using Booleans like a loon.

A missing window pane in the right-most bank of windows.

Undergrowth Asset pack - TrueVFX

I'm a total fan of TrueVFX's Blender tools, so even though I'm not much into close-up nature renders, I immediately bagged their new Undergrowth asset pack. I bagged it so quickly I missed an available discount had I only read to the end of their announcement.

Mushrooms and the stone. Suzanne, you already know.

Every asset, a hero!

The quality of the assets is superb. I had to remove Bagapie grass because it looked faked next to these amazing fungi.

Trees

This morning, I had a blood test to check on my health. Because I was a very brave boy, I bought myself the Botaniq library -- it's great! There are better, more idiosyncratic tree assets, but these are nicely parametric. You can randomise branching, and you can alter leaf colour. it's also pretty large and can work through their new Engon Free blender browser.

The first rule of blocking out club is...

 Don't detail. You are blocking out!!

I broke the rule.


This is maybe the fifth attempt at the Andrew Boulton-class Light Cruiser from Charles E. Gannon's excellent Terran Federation novels. 

Andrew Boulton-class Light Cruiser

Oh oh! Too much fine detail on the command module

It's a hard habit to stop, it seems. I'll go back to the big elements. The colour shifts are not surface changes. They're lots of Boolean slices. It might be a silly way to divide a hull, but it does sidestep mesh difficulties. We'll see what happens when we try to attach decals.

Obligatory landscapes

Bolton hiatus

Changes are coming

The creator of the Bolton-class ship, Chuck Gannon, has provided some feedback on the design that will require extensive reworking. So, no more Bolton for the moment.

I've been tinkering with lots of things...

Space Test

Weird wheeled vehicle.

World Creator 2

Andrew Bolton Cruiser

The Andrew Bolton-class Cruiser progresses. I'll be able to get this mostly completed at the weekend, if I can steal away a couple of hours.

On to another project

UV Mapping is a pain in the backside if you don't get your mesh built properly and I nearly always end up introducing modelling touches that make for sub-optimal topology. So, while I definitely will be mapping the tanker model, it won't be today.

Today (Last week, actually)

The ANDREW BOLTON-Class Cruiser is a starship from Chuck Gannon's Tales of the Terran Republic books. I've been mucking around with designing and modelling this badboy for a couple of years but my designed always got derailed. This time I decided to force myself to push on. I even showed off the early work in progress, which makes it harder for me to walk away from the work as people are now waiting to see the completed ship.

A starting point. A little too simple in form. Though it's definitely more elegant than the final design.

This felt a bit more utilitarian and less over-streamlined, given the design only enters the edge-of-space part of a planetary atmosphere.

Right off the bat, I wanted to prove that the spin habitats were looking okay extended. I did a ship for the 2300AD universe that looked very different from my intentions when I folded the habitats away. This time I wanted to check it early.

We ended the weekend with the half blocked out ship. Looks close to completion but it's not. There's a lot of add-ons in terms of drones, ships and some compex elements for the aft sections.

World Creator 2

Blender is firing on all cylinders but World Creator 2 is still getting some use.