Gathering Storm - from The Expanse

[SGarnier (Sébastien Garnier)]

If you haven’t read the Expanse novels from volume 7 onwards, Persepolis Rising, the following may contain spoilers. Anyway, the TV series has already largely hinted at future developments around Laconia since season 5.

Hello Blenders

I’m a long time sci-fi fan, and The Expanse is one of my favorite series along with the Culture novels.

So I decided to design ships in both universes, this being easier for the Expanse since the TV series has an excellent design which is very accurate down to the details. The result is really faithful to the spirit of the books and has a certain realistic, at least plausible, way of looking at life in space and representing it.

It is clearly this aspect that I like and that sets the series apart from a large number of science fiction works. I was of course inspired by it and wanted to extend it. You can see some early versions of my Belter skiff, the Shikata ga nai here and here.

I will continue to work on it in parallel with this new project: the Gathering Storm:

It is a Laconian navy , fast attack destroyer of the Pulsar Class. (Expanse wiki link)

It represents the transition phase between the Martian engineering tradition of the Laconians and the new proto-molecule technologies discovered on Laconia. Its main innovation is that it is covered with a self-healing plate system. This kind of synthetic skin makes it very resistant to the most powerful weapons of the time such as torpedoes and rail-guns.

Concept

while reading the book I had the image of a kind of elegant deep-sea fish, narrow, pale and formidable. Its very particular skin gives it an organic side.

I started with the idea that this ship is made to roll with the punches and still win, including against the latest cruisers of Earth and Mars.

With this new revolutionnary ​​armor, the shape returns to a logic of optimization of the shielding, like that of the main battle tanks: in effect the blows taken from low angles are more easily deflected and can rebound.

There are two sides which are more particularly protected, the top (hot side) and the front. These are the ones the Storm exposes during combat. The rail gun is mounted under the bow, while the torpedo launchers are sheltered on the protected side.

The position of the PDCs is such that there are never less than six of them at any angle. Finally the marine shuttle dock is located in the center of the “cold” side.

I find that it is still too fat and that it will be more hollow at the end. For the moment I’m working on finishing the modeling of the template in a continuous surface, in order to project the “skin” on it (which will be done with the geometry nodes) and see what happens.

[RobWu (Rob)]

Die inners coming to mess with the Belt again… Dusters never change… sa sa ke?

Curious to see where this is going.

[SGarnier (Sébastien Garnier)]

Oye kopeng!

Kewe to pensa ere mi laconia warship?

ha I cant do this for long, no practice sasa.

So the next step is making the general shape accordingly to the key elements (PDCs, ray gun…) and then to “skin” it. At the moment I’m trying to find the right way to do it!

Basically it will be a triangulated sphere that will be projected by a shrinkwrap. The first tests work well, the only tricky thing is to have a homogeneous enough mesh.

Then it will be cut to make the openings (airlocks, sensors, weapons). And fiinish it with a mix of shading and geometry nodes.

I made these roughs to find the proportions and the right layout for 12 PDC to cover all angles. The 6 layout of the Tachi\Rossinante always seemed a bit weird to me, at least not optimal.

So the next step is making the general shape accordingly to the key elements (PDCs, ray gun…) and then to “skin” it. At the moment I’m trying to find the right way to do it!

Basically it will be a triangulated sphere that will be projected by a shrinkwrap. The first tests work well, the only tricky thing is to have a homogeneous enough mesh.

Then it will be cut to make the openings (airlocks, sensors, weapons). And fiinish it with a mix of shading and geometry nodes, a bit like this:

It may be too big for a fast destroyer ( understand it as light) and passed for a cruiser. But as everybody should know, Laconians don’t need cruisers!

I would like it to be bony, sharp, pale and scary. I’m going to sketch it in photoshop instead now that I have a more accurate image in head.

[Masochistic_Cooking]

do you have a download link for the model?

[SGarnier (Sébastien Garnier)]

Hello, a little update on this project.

I have a working prototype of a prodecural skin made with geometry nodes. The thing is running well, it is not as heavy as it seems. The procedural approach has my preference on this project. I really like how the skin is following the topology underneath, small or big polygons giving a credible effect.

A big part of it is the Dual Mesh node that gives this organic pattern feeling, like cells. Many thanks to his Italian author (I forgot his name)

The final design is not done yet.

No real shading for now, because I am working on a 3D print version first rather than a 3D render. These weird colors are just here to make boolean selections easier.

It makes it looks like a Zentradi spaceship from Macross!

[SGarnier (Sébastien Garnier)]

Not yet, but I will make a 3D print version of it.

[SGarnier (Sébastien Garnier)]

Hello Blenders,

I’ve found some time to make progress on this project. The skin system is working well now. Skin mesh is sculpted or simulated in cloth depending on the area (for the vacuum effect).

Then a geometry node gives it its organic look. The final design is almost set, I’ve still got to finish the structure under the skin, and the details. It’s coming along!

[SGarnier (Sébastien Garnier)]

This version was more a technical test to validate the method to build the cage and generate the skin on it. The final is likely to be less skinny, more sharp.