Well, I finally got around to redesigning the player's ship in Crusade. Nobody seemed to care for the old-style "tube" ship, so I decided to make a new sleeker version.

Click here to see a test render of the newly-redesigned Falcon class fighter.

I'll prolly have more in-game screenshots available soon. I've been kind of on a break lately. Lots of stuff interfering with my hobby time. But it's good stuff, at least.

Looks great!

Only thing is, in outer space you don't need lift, so you don't need wings, and there is no atmosphere, so you don't need aerodynamics.

Other than that, it's a high-qualiy model. Gut verk.

Ahh but maybe it's a reentry ship... one that takes off from the surface of planets and lands on them as well. The only things in space that don't need wings are satellites since they don't need to land.. but they make cool fireballs when they reenter Plus who want's to pilot a "tube" anyway.. I'm sure in the future most spacecraft will need wings, and not just for effect.

Looks nice, though maybe the cockpit is a little small. I'm used to these kinds of ships being one-man with bigger cockpits, like in R-Type, for example. Or an X-Wing. I'm also partial to straight edges Kinda looks like it's made out of Play-DoH

Not really bashing your work; it looks good. Just giving you another perspective What's your modeler?

EDIT: Dear Matthew: ..... BLOCKPIT?!?!?!?! Sincerely, Chris

But of course! Take a look at what the Delta Flyer would have looked like! those funky dorsal fins? I'm dumb!

[edit] Blockpit? stupid swear filter. [/edit]

Hmm, I hate those blockpits, too. Hee, reminds me of Phantasy Star Online, which marked the word "shoe" as a dirty word. (Took me a moment to figure out. Then I realized, take off the 's' and the 'e' and...) They eventually fixed it, but for a while me and my friend's favorite cussword was "SHOE!"

As for wings, I know that space has no air, but I like to think of it as creative license. Anyway, the ship does fly in an atmosphere (during level 4 and 5), though it probably "flies" less on the principle of airfoils than two big honking plasma-jet engines. Given enough thrust, I bet even a lawnchair could fly...

23yrold, I used Lightwave for both the modeling and rendering. I like LW because it's better than 3dsmax (IMHO) and it's a lot cheaper.

And stop making fun of my giant fighter! sobs Hey, it's either that, or the tube ship!

Hey, tube ship was cool!
I like it better than Play-DoH fighter myself. Looks tough.

I'll make it a secret ship you can unlock, then, just for you! I'll ever make it fairly easy to do, unlike say, the Selene in Einhander.

EDIT: Doh, not the police car.

23: the .cockypitthing doesn't need to be bigger.. you just can't see the rest of it.. all that you can see is the 'windshield' .. the rest is in the body..

JaTeR

[edit] Check that! .cockypitthing! never heard of one..... (heh, he needs to fix that..)

Quite right, JaTeR, in fact the surface name for that set of polys is indeed labeled "windshield". Behind it there's nothing but a gaping hole. I'll install a modeled c0ckpit (Heehee) plus pilot once I've finished it.

Very cool indeed... that kinda reminded me that I was meaning to go and learn how to make 3D models as well. I've even got a copy of 3DS Max 4 sitting around somewhere, /me is just too lazy!
I don't think the ship looks like a fighter all that much though, more like a bomber or something along those lines. Either way, it looks awesome!

Yeah, it looks totally awesome. opens 3dsmax Hmm... sight my own ship I made some time ago one is nothing compared to that one. But anyways, nice colouring and stylish look. It's not a such kind of attack fighter that you could send with a thousand copies right from the assembly line to attack a planet, but better a medium sized ship with some platting and improved weapons.

Thanks for the position comments, folks.

And Eskimo, you're right. The ship is a "single-ship," which in Crusade terms means a self-contained fighter that doesn't need to dock and refuel between every mission, and is multi-role in its capacity. (Bomber, interceptor, etc.) They're usually called "fighters" though, even if that isn't the right word... Garga also has it right -- single-ships are fairly rare, as they tend to be more trouble than they are worth as far as maintenance goes. Plus, finding a skilled pilot who can use the single-ship effectively without smashing it on their first mission is a very rare find.

The Jvaran Empire prefers single-ship combat over waves of cheap fighters. The Gn'rthan are the opposite, as their main fleet outnumbers the Jvaran Navy by at least 5 to 1. However, the Gn'rthan weapons are fairly dumb -- AI controlled from a "Central" that so far the Jvarans have been unable to discover. The Jvaran suspect that Central doesn't exist within our own universe; Perhaps it sits at the periphery of normal space-time, in so-called "hyperspace."

Anyway, here's a picture of Arrlson in action, destroying some G'rthan scouts!

Someday all of this background and history stuff will be on the website.

Woah that looks cool... you got the skillz alright. Can I just ask, how did you learn to use Lightwave? I only have 3D Studio Max at the moment, so I might take a look at Lightwave as well... the results look well worth the time spent learning it.

Eskimo: dude, you can get good results from ANY program.. but it will take some effort.. if you have 3D Studio Max.. check out [url www.3dbuzz.com] and get the cd's.. good stuff!

or, if you give me your address, I can send you the first 3dsmax training cd..

[edit]

HECK YEAH! The Lawn Chair Pilot. Itz teh c00l3st!!!!111

JaTeR

Been taking a maya class on campus, pretty fun...

Here's a pic I modeled for one of the projects:
http://www.unm.edu/~cello/maya/ship2.jpg

I didn't do the texturing though (part of the tutorial thingy). But still looks cool. Ok I know, I suck I'm dumb!.

The only comment I have on your ship is it kinda looks primitive-y. Looks great from above though. Will you be using any other angles of the ship?

Marcello

Man, I must've been on crack last night. I shouldn't model when I'm tired...that picture was crap!

Here's the REAL version of the Action Shot.

And Marcello, what do you mean by "primitive-y?" Made of too many primitives? And that is a good start for a ship.

I don't own Maya, only Lightwave...never used it, either. I have used 3ds, and it's good but too expensive for my tastes.

Eskimo: I've been using Lightwave for a while...Mostly learned it by plowing through the manual, reading tutorials online, and messing with all the demo objects that they include... That taught me a lot.

JaTeR: I'm dumb!, great link... See, proof!

He probably means something like that, and I agree with him. Marcello's model looks like a ship; yours looks more like some primitive objects in very close proximity Maybe you can add some more complex surfaces or something?

EDIT: What Ultio said. Worded better

The reason Ulfr's ship looks "primitive-y" is because it looks like there's the main part of the ship, and then the other parts are simply there, kind of connected, but not really.

Marcello's ship has kind of a melding between all the parts of the ship: the wings, the fins, etc. Obviously, I'm guessing maya has the ability to automeld stuff.

Well, that's what I thought he meant: the fact that everything is kind of melded together, like a real ship would be

Actually I made it by starting with a poly cube and extruding, resizing, etc, faces. Then at the end I smoothed the whole model to give it a clean look. After that I put a lattice deformer (kinda like a 3d version of stretching and bending a 'flag') to bend it into a slightly better shape.

It's actually amazingly simple to do hehe, and I'll probably make some more ships in that way when I have time.

Also made a nurbs ship for the same project, but haven't got a render atm. IMO it looks worse cause nurbs are weird for mechanical stuff, all the seams and whatnot make it a bitch to work with.

Anyway...

Marcello

Yah mean something like this?

"Offset" Gn'rthan Mark I interceptor

There's a reason why the Jvaran ships look all "patchy" like that.