Started work on the next ship for my comic book the Colonial frigate. It’s supposed to be a freighter converted into a warship.
I’m working on weapons now and I will post an update later.
c&c welcome.
Well I haven’t gotten much more done, my sister got a flat tire and I had to go rescue her, but I did get started on the engine section. Just the support structure and fuel tanks. When I add some more details I’ll do some close ups.
Attachments
The outline is looking very clean at the moment, which means it should be a good base to go from.
I’m not sure if you have any concept work to go from but it would be a good idea to perhaps render orthographical images (Front, Side, Top) in silhouette and play about with some concepts, this will allow you to really design a ship that stands out and since it’s for a comic you are going to want a design which is immediately conveyed to the viewer, so if it’s an upgraded ship perhaps in the silhouette you could have large armour plates/ gun placements etcetera round weak points.
Personally, I could see that long front section having some heavily armoured sections with protruding gun emplacements and perhaps some thick armour sheets to cover those tanks at the back.
The only thing i dont like about your ships are the weird colors you use, otherwise they are pretty nice
Thanks for the comments.
@daniel8488 - I do most of my concept work in my head, mainly because I cant draw worth a crap, but I’m one of those people who can visualise vividly. As for the armor and other things I will be doing all of that. I usually wait until I have the major work done first because my system isn’t very fast.
@DDD - I know the colors aren’t what people are used to but it is more realistic. I’m designing these ships based on what the experts say we will see in the next 100 years or so. You commented on the color in my other thread and again I know where you are coming from but if you look at military equipment you will see they are not big on looks mostly flat boring colors. Also the ship in the other thread is about 2500 feet long, if you were looking at a ship that size from the distance in those shots you would not see any details like plating lines. I know a lot of people use textures and or normal map to simulate plating lines and I do think it looks cool but not realistic. Having said that don’t let my ideas stop you from commenting, I listen to others even when there ideas are not like mine.
Thanks again!
PS if there are 2 posts like this I had to do it twice because when I hit Submit Reply
on the first one it disappeared and did not show up in the thread.
" I know the colors aren’t what people are used to but it is more realistic."-realistic, what? sorry i am surprised…
“experts say we will see in the next 100 years or so” - can you show me plz? (not trying to sound mean, i am actually interested 
)
“military equipment you will see they are not big on looks mostly flat boring colors.” - exactly! , boring colors, which are used for camouflage, your ship has a bright blue! your argument contradicts your work lol.
I did a quick search on google images for [military spaceships], and this is one of the first images i saw(actually in the web-page it said it was a freighter, but still). http://fc03.deviantart.com/fs14/f/2007/074/a/d/Space_Ship_by_eRe4s3r.jpg This has very plausible color.
But i think the most realistic battle cruisers(meaning huge ships) have minimum color at all(why waste tons of paint???), maybe just their number/name written and that is all, the “color” that they would be is the color of the metal they are made of. Like in this example: http://www.thescifiworld.net/img/wallpapers/stargate/gilles_nuytens/stargate_22_1600x1200.jpg
or this http://www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk/static/spreads/all/3/9/9781405318693L_074.jpg this acually shows that the plates you where talking about are acually not just for show, they are really the thousands of parts the cruiser is made of.
Another example, the space shuttle, take a look at the belly, it is made of a bunch of tiles, and even if you dont zoom in, you can see how it affects the texture, it really doesnt looks that smooth.(yes your ship is huge but the tiles are huge so the tile sise to space ship sise ratio remains the same when comparing the space shuttle with huge battle cruisers.)
Phew lol, tell me what you think 
@DDD - OK first the examples you gave with the exception of the space shuttle are exactly what I was talking about when I said what people are used to seeing. they are cool looking but they are not real or realistic. I guess I should clear up what I mean by realistic. I don’t mean convincing like when someone looks at a render and thinks wow
that looks like it could be real I mean realistic as in what the real thing would look like.
When I commented about military colors that was in reference to the ship in my first thread not this one, I should have been more clear about that. Also I was thinking more like a naval ship, the whole ship is nothing but that flat navy grey.
As for the space shuttle every time the shuttle enters the atmosphere those tiles burn from the friction so yes they stand out. The two ships I have posted could never enter an atmosphere. I don’t know if you saw the last post I made in the other thread but I pointed out the the outer hull on that ship is a carbon fiber shell, I thought that I said that they are very large single panels in each section but I checked the post and I see I left that last part out.
I should also point out that these are not final renders when I set the lighting up properly they should look better.
Last but not least the expert information I mentioned. I’ve been following space technology for over 30 years so there are to many sources to mention however most recently the discovery channel had a special that had people involved in the space program discussing the future of space travel. They had some very interesting things to say. Plasma shields for protection, plasma engines that could produce ten times or more of the thrust of current rocket engines. what’s really cool is that they are not talking about the distant future they are developing this technology now.
One more thing if I missed something or I wasn’t clear about something let me know.
I got absolutely no sleep last night and now I have that weird fuzzy feeling.
Thanks again for the comments.
Hmm, i still do not understand why you would say that the first 2 dont look realistic.(yes i know exactly what you mean by realistic) Panels? Ok yes maybe they when overboard to make it look cool, but since my original comment was about color, why do you believe that no paint, is not realistic? Does every military vehicle in your oppinion has to have that green/dark green camouflage? Or do you think everything has to be painted? As i said before, probably the most realistic vessel would have no colors at all, just the natural color of the material they are made of, so if yours are made from carbon fiber then they would be black (http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&q=carbon%20fiber&tbs=isch:1)
But still curious about you thinking that the ships are not realistic, do you mind giving reasons for example why the Stargate Deadalus (http://www.thescifiworld.net/img/wallpapers/stargate/gilles_nuytens/stargate_22_1600x1200.jpg) is not realistic to you?
Oh and what i meant about the space shuttle tiles, is not the black/white difference, but the groves, meaning where the plates are touching, are visible even from far away.
Looking forward to new renders…
On another note…
If you didnt guess already, I am a Sci-Fi fan so i am very interested in the discovery channel stuff you where talking about, do you have any link(s) that i can take a look at?
There you go DDD:
http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-6/iss-5/p16.pdf
http://www.gearlog.com/2007/05/shields_up_us_army_developing.php
As for the SG-1/Atlantis vessel, I think one of the reasons it does not look “real” is that the grebbeling may be too intense, as most sci-fi renderings are. That’s not to say it does not look cool, but I think sometimes it’s taken a bit overboard. You don’t see every bit of hardware on the shuttle exposed to the outside of space, most of it is inside shielded away from the harshness of the vacuum of space.
Here is an image of one of the newer navel vessels in service, and still you CAN see some panneling going on, but it’s not to the extreme that most sci-fi images make them.
Even in this stealth ship there isn’t much of it but you can kind of make out a few seams.
DDD: to be honest I think it’s all around to early to be focusing on colors and textures. He has hardly scratched the surface in terms of modeling
JHohlbein: This is looking fairly solid right now, and is a great starting point. Can’t wait to see how this evolves.
I must admit I agree that the Daedalus is over-greebled. That said I do think lots of smaller panels is a much better design from an engineering perspective because if one breaks, you can replace it a lot easier than replacing a single ginormous one.
@DDD - First I should have waited to post a reply because I was to tired to think straight so I hope I can explain a little better this time.
As far as panel lines go they are only unrealistic when they are on a large ship and they can be seen from a distance and it’s not the size of the panel that makes them visible it’s the quality of the weld as the picture of the stealth ship Khnum posted shows you can hardly see them, 100 years from now I would think they would be much cleaner.
Next the paint, all of the examples you gave were painted I don’t remember ever seeing a finished model of a space ship that did not have some kind of paint job although grey seems to be the most common choice. as far as my choice of colors like I said neither of these models are done the colors may change. I haven’t decided what branch of the military the ship belongs to, if it’s the marines then olive drab is appropriate if I go with the air force then it would be light grey. The US military has a thing about paint, they have entire departments that do nothing but decide what color things should be and how often they should be repainted so yes if the military has space ships they will be painted.
Another reason I should have waited to post I forgot to explain that when I said these ships aren’t realistic I did not just mean their appearance I meant the way they maneuver . These ships “fly” in space you cant fly in space, you use maneuvering thrusters to point the ship the direction you want to go fire your main engine until you get up to speed then you drift until you get to your destination if you need to change course you have to stop and go through the same procedure again.
Lastly don’t get me wrong I’m a huge scifi fan I watched the original star trek when it aired, yea I’m that old. I could not even guess how many times I’ve seen star wars and the first ship was heavily influenced by the human ships in babylon 5 which were based on real concepts. Aerospace engineers have said the human ships in b5 were the most realistic ships in scifi.
Almost forgot I can’t find any video of the show on the discovery channel I can’t remember the title, I had it on my comcast dvr but it died on me and I had to replace it, I was pissed I had all of the clone wars episodes on it.
@Khnum - Thanks for the pdf I have not finished reading it but they are the engines I was referring to. As for the Daedalus and scifi ships in general agree.
@QS Dragon - Thanks I can’t either.
@Skyler - Thanks for your post it reminded me of something else I forgot to mention. The ship has a metal hull the carbon fiber shell is just added protection, carbon fiber is stronger than steel.
Thanks again for the comments I should be posting an update of the model tomorrow.
If you want to take a look im atm doing an extensive project of a “probable” space warship over here: http://www.sgusucks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=155&sid=0517aac564d122bfaa7f34eee0ddb6df
Its not fully realistic, but as close as i can get without invoking “quantum”. Inspiration taken from 2001:A Space Odyssey (imo atm its too short, im going to probably add another segment on the back and front)
About the carbon fiber, its not necessarily stronger than steel, its more resilient to impact but structurally it might be less viable than steel.
Haha, now i see what you mean! The welding thing was a good point. Ill have to give that one to ya, however, not all the panels are "on the same level"meaning some stick out for whatever purposes…but that is the part i guess that is for show…so ok lol i guess you win on the panels argument 
I think skyler made a good point though, about the size of them…
Sigh, back to the paint…I dont think the ships(Deadalus, and the other, well the other one might be) are painted, the “gray” you see i believe is the true color of whatever material it is made of, and i think they make the Deadalus out of Naquadah/Trinium alloy (fictional ofcorce but nevertheless my point is that i think that is just the “true” color of the metal and not paint)
So again, while there are special people who think up the best camouflage paint for military vehicles, I do not believe that giant space cruisers would be painted for at least two reasons, 1) they are enormous, and 2) they are in space they cant exactly be camouflaged. That said, they could bear some symbols or the name of the ship.
Too bad you cant remember the title 
Yay, update!
AdamTm, that look pretty cool, do you have a wip thread in blender artists?
Nope, only had it on sgusucks, then our forum went down and i was sort of waiting for it to come back, but it went fubar and i kind of forgot about it.
Its just something i work on while at work and bored. still got a way to go on it.
For a time i got stuck on trying to animate missile-swarms with boids (got that down now).
In general the ship is reaching poly-counts that are slightly ridiculous now with the missile tubes and missiles firing (200k), and theres still the com array and the mid section to finish.
Maybe i should render bake the hull.
Anyways ill stop hijacking the thread now 
@DDD - I wasn’t sure what the daedalus class ships were made of so I did a search and I found this http://www.stargate-sg1-solutions.com/wiki/Daedalus-Class_Ship they are made of trinium. I did not read all of its but I did not see anything about paint but like you said it’s fictional.
As for the paint I think I see the problem, it’s not about camouflage. Look at most war ships they are painted flat grey including aircraft carriers which are quite large. They tried camouflage during WW 2 on ships but it was unsuccessful.
I’m not giving up on that discovery channel show I would like to watch it again so if I find it I’ll post a link. The update might have to wait till saturday I had some other things to take care of.
@AdamTM - Looks good so far, my system would probably take all day to render that. And thanks for the link I haven’t seen that site before.
As for the carbon fiber it really depends on how it’s used they can laminate it like plywood which makes it much stronger. They are developing new techniques for making carbon fiber that could increase the strength even more.
On a side note, what’s up with the spell checker here, it flags color saturday and a few other words. I thought I was going senile and kept checking dictionary.com to make sure. Very strange.
Black paint makes a pretty good camouflage in space, actually. It just doesn’t make a very good picture. =)
That and or a completely reflective surface
Well reflective surface will not work cuz you will still ber able to see the ship through the reflections it gives(it will basically reflect your ship, of a planet or moon, or whatever) But invisibility cloak will work