Paladin-class battlecruiser WIP

Started this a few days ago, here’s what I’ve got so far:
{Deleted the picture, it’s old and doesn’t look good anyways since it’s the model in a very early stage}
Most of the plating is missing, there is altmost(if not) no detail on it and I still haven’t decided what to do with some sections. Anyways, the thing at the left front section is supposed to be some huge cannon, I guess it will be a railgun of sorts. As for the other two cannons - dunno really, but I guess they will be lasers of some sorts… kinda want to make this ship independent from projectiles.
About the name - well, let’s just say that I’m obsessed with paladins :smiley:
Why battlecruiser? - It’s a mix between a carrier and a destroyer, therefore - battlecruiser.(from X3:Reunion - “The Odin is the primary battlecruiser-class vessel of the earth fleet forces…”. this is the only ship called “battlecruiser” in the game and it has both devastating weapons and a nicely-sized hangar bay, the only capital ship that has both.)
Inspirations - mainly Homeworld. The original design was ressembling the homeworld2 hiigaran carrier very closely(I love the looks of that ship), however I decided to twist it a bit… well, maybe not a bit :smiley:

Decided to work on this project instead on the siege tank for now… Actually I 'd almost forgotten about the paladin cruiser :smiley:
Anyways, I put a simple texture and did some modeling… here’s the result:
http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk275/Lwerewolf/PaladinCruiserBetaTexturesUnfinishe.jpg
Now, a few things I’d like to point out:
The black, mirror like walls(they are four in total) were intended to look like white force fields, being white, and semi-transparent, but for some reason, with ray transparency turned on it just won’t turn transparent. Played around with the alpha of the material, same thing (even turned off the ray transparency on several occasions). The white glow on the edges is there to show where the end of the field is. I gotta work on the red signal lights as they kinda blend with the force field now, but even without it they don’t look good at all (at least for me :)).

About the lack of any sort of windows - I will put them in place, but I guess it won’t be now as I still haven’t decided whether I’ve finished with the base geometry(most probably not - I actually showed the best of the ship with this camera angle, the underside is too plain and will get some work, and also I think I’m gonna modify those side turrets, as well as the engine section and some other things). Also, just to clarify -this ship has NO giant pipes as of yet :smiley: (you might’ve noticed the pipe-looking things on it, they are five in total).

Anyways, CnC is welcome and encouraged :slight_smile:

For the force fields, there probably just isn’t any light behind them to show the geometry, make sure the materiel on the ship (I’m assuming that is what the inside of those bays are textured with) can receive transparent shadows. Alternatively, you could just put more lights back inside them.

I’m not familiar with any of your mentioned inspirations, so I can’t say much about the resemblance in the shape/function of the ship, but from what design perspective I do have…

The profile of a ship is what gives it a lot of it’s personality, so what are the people and/or aliens that made this ship like? Given your ships profile as it is:
The profile is very square and stable, which would led me to believe that the people are; deliberate, stabile, defensive, and trading and diplomacy would be there preference, but would fight to the death if under attack. Going off of that perception of the people, the rail gun seems like overkill too me as this size it would be more of an offensive weapon.

Yes, all of that is what I got from only the profile… ok, go ahead and say it, I’m a nut. I know. My art teacher has been going over conceptual critiquing in class and well… you just got the brunt of it. :slight_smile: Let me know if you want me to continue, but it could be dangerous to give me permission.:evilgrin:

As always, remember, you are the artist and whatever I say, is ultimately just a suggestion in your decision making process.

Here’s a link to a concept art of the carrier:
http://shipyards.relicnews.com/hw2/images/display.htm?homeworld211.jpg

It’s a hella lot different than that now :slight_smile:

A quick description of the paladin (in the fantasy games, otherwise it’s a medieval fiction involving mostly romance and knights… Oh, how romantic that rail gun is, for example :smiley: ). Well, it’s just a holy knight with extreme defensive capabilities, capable of bringing justice (in short, doing some *** kicking) to the evil guys in general (undead, demons, stuff). Also very religious and often a fanatic. Why do I like them? Well, my 1st character in Diablo was a paladin, my main WoW char was a paladin… and I like the endurance-based playstyle :smiley:

About the ship’s personality - I wanted it to be able to operate for a long time without maintenance/refueling/resupplying (in short - endurance). Trading? Well, I suppose battlecruisers ain’t designed with trading in mind :slight_smile: About the diplomacy - you’re right here. I’m just wondering how to illustrate its defensive capabilities :slight_smile:

About your criticism - you can continue, if you want to :slight_smile: It’s not a bad thing :slight_smile:

Ok, cool, well it’s almost time I need to go to bed, so I’ll keep this short.(er) <—Edit:

Looking at this again, I’m confronted by the fact that the direction it travels in is really quite confusing to figure out. I know that in reality the shape doesn’t matter in space, but this isn’t a real ship, so I think making a more obvious front/back would help this out a lot.

To give it more defensive personality, hmm, something that sticks out like in the concept art, maybe its some kind of extra powerful shield generator.

Last thing for tonight, can you provide some kind of detail or ship that will communicate the size of this thing, as is the size could be anything from the death star to a computer motherboard. Preferably this would be something contained in the image instead of just verbally stated.

The real last thing. What are your plans for this? How far are you thinking about taking this? I really should have asked this at the beginning but I got ahead of myself.

When I wrote my 1st reply, it was ~04:30 AM here :slight_smile:

I didn’t show the back of the ship as the engines aren’t even halfway finished. Otherwise I suppose it’s pretty noticeable due to it being fatter than the rest of the ship :slight_smile:

About my plans - first I gotta finish the general geometry (there are still some things that I gotta add, including some skeletal structures), then I’m going to greeble the ship as needed (antennas and some random shapes that come outta my mind mostly) and add a lot of windows (aqua-blue I suppose) to some locations, mostly on the decks.

Did some small changes, mainly revamping the front bridge(going to add an antenna to it), changing the turret design, set the texture to 3x3 repeat mirror, force field adjustments and changing the light direction. Here we go:
http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk275/Lwerewolf/PaladinCruiserUnfinished3.jpg

Well the force fields look better, how did you end up fixing them?

Sounds like you know what you want to do with this ship then. I’ll be interested to see how it turns out.

Well yeah, I didn’t go to bed immediately after that, I had a few hours of homework to do.:eek:

Scaled the halo that marks the edges of the force field to 0.95 because it was literally within the wall(actually exactly at the border but whatever), set the ship’s material to receive transparent shadows, played around with the settings of the field… and I guess the light setup makes it look cooler now :slight_smile: (more notice-able)
About the ship - I constantly change my mind about how it should look and stuff like that, so even I don’t know exactly how it’s gonna look in the end :slight_smile: I’m planning to greeble it a LOT (not with the plugin), but first I’ll make those windows… and the texture definitely needs to be replaced.

Thanks for the interest :slight_smile:

All right, a small update:

http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk275/Lwerewolf/PaladinCruiserUnfinished4.jpg

Changed the lightning a little (it’s simple as hell - one sun lamp and approx. AO set at 0.2, just like the previous, with changed angle and light intensity set at 2 from 1, believe it or not), added some lights (about 1/3 of the total that I’ve planned, might be less in the end), and changed the texture which I guess will be the final one with some adjustments(note how at some places it looks better - I’ve got a single material for all the meshes except for the lights and forcefields and stuff. That’s why the tex on the pipel-like structure looks odd). Wondering when to start greebling… it’ll probably take a day or two, yet it’s extremely annoying :slight_smile:

C&C welcome as always :slight_smile:

Here’s another update of sorts:http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk275/Lwerewolf/PaladinCruiserUnfinished6.jpg

Added some more windows to the ship, also added some “support” columns and stuff to the upper deck(the one with the extreme amount of windows), as well as changing its geometry a little. added a simple antenna with, at the moment, screwed up green signal light, tuned the materials a little and added some lights behind the support columns and stuff to make them more obvious, but I guess I’ll need to change them, as well as the windows on the upper decks and some other things. C&C welcome.