MDS Ship Ideas

[Dannage]

At the moment, with the relatively simple geometries, this is reminding me of the good old classic Elite.

[cavebear]

Hi Dannage,

You'll have to tell me what the Elite is as I haven't heard of it before.

[cavebear]

Been working on getting another ship done up on SketchUp. It's from a game I started putting together about 18 years ago. But this version (on paper) is only 4 or 5 years old. It's called The MDS Iron Sun. It's a carrier and the head of the Iron Sun Carrier Task Group.

[cavebear]

Two more pictures but this time with the other two ships I have so far. Kind of like a family photo. What I really like about doing this is being able to get all the ships together and in the same scale

It's a pretty cool feeling to be able to do this.

[Aresius]

Wow!

Are they intended to be that boxy? If so, they currently give it a feel of Tron....

[cavebear]

Originally Posted by Aresius

Wow!

Are they intended to be that boxy? If so, they currently give it a feel of Tron....

Not as boxy as they are right now. Remember that I'm just trying to get these down quickly right now. My drawings are much better. If I could figure out how to bevel in SketchUp I'd do that too . I want to put more rounded features on the cruiser (especially the main passenger area) while the hospital ship's basic shape will stay the same I need to put in more organic features too. The carrier really needs work. What you see of it really is only the basic geometric shapes. Much to do before it looks like what I want.

But even getting what I have done on the computer and seeing that there are things that looked right in a 2d drawing that might not work as well in the 3d world is a huge step for me. I am really learning a few things with this exercise

[Aresius]

Well, as soon as my PC is stable again, I want to start working with SketchUp as well.

[Dannage]

Ahh, but are you going to burn yourself out diong all the ships before finishing one? Ideally I found as I was learning my app (Use of the past tense there is intended to portray irony) I found each model I worked on, I put more and more detail into.

So, you might want to focus on one model while you cut your teeth so to say. Make mistakes on one model, rebuild, restart, redesign and then you can have a family of models of the same ship, each one better and more detailed than it's pappy's...

To whet our appetites more, why not scan some of your drawings and put em up so we can see what these are intended to look like.

For someone learning their first app though you are doing very well, keep it up!

[cavebear]

Aresius: It isn't a bad little program to work with though I will admit that there is one thing I have not been able to do even though as soon as you open up the program a little tips window opens and shows how to make a sphere...I have never been able to do it! Even though it shows step by step how, it never works for me.

Dannage: I sure hope I don't get burned out! Maybe the excitement of actually getting my stuff in a 3d form has taken over. But you are right, I should now spend a little time working on the models that I have instead of doing even more. But it sure is fun to see them all together like in the "Family Photo's"

I will see about doing some scans. Just not sure when I will be able to do that.

Thanks to both of you for all the encouragement and advice!

[Aresius]

Hm. Well, I shall see. By now, my Pc works barely correct.