Gliese

[kborak]

Ty berbut, I looked at more than 30 different old soviet Embloms and then tried my hardest to modernize it. I dont know if the entire image is going to be used as the main emblom, but I think the image came out well myself. The Soviets have been branded!
Off to texture the gear then...

[kborak]

I present to you my first Morphean! This sketch is about 80% done and I thought it was close enough done to get some feed back. This is the alien species of the story.

[Meph]

That landing skid is looking a lot more solid mate, good job I'm no big fan of landing skids in any case, but it's a good skid nontheless

Nice emblem too mate

[kborak]

ty meph ty, Im currently texturing it now. Im playing a bit more with weathering for this since there would be pits and scrapes on the bottom. I should have the texture for the skid part this evening. maybe one of the arm peices as well. Im going to have to post a render without the lens flare on the emblom it hides a little of the thinest parts.

[kborak]

Ok little more texturing, i like my paint chip thats been painted over.

[kborak]

ok i think the fronts are now 70 percent done, this will be my last for the night.

[kborak]

ok i put the gear under the nose to get a shot of what it looks like on the bird. I must say i think its coming along nicely.

[Othermusketeer]

(Pardon my grammar spelling: I've been feeling bad for over a year, and especially so this month)

I've read pages 18-21 (the beginning pages no longer had images). You've come a long way since the pencil drawings on paper from back in 1997!

A few pages back, I saw something that left me perplexed though. (maybe you answered this further back) If you have wings on this vessel, they would apparently be designed for atmospheric flight, and that then brings to sight a serious part of the design missing.
Vertical stabilizer and ideally a rudder. If it were a "flying wing" design it might get away without a vertical stabilizer. Since it has a side fuselage that will be affected by side drafts in atmospheric flight, it would need vertical stabilization. A rudder is not _needed_ for flight or dogfights, but... rudder allows you to move your sights left and right without altering you direction of travel or roll. Rudder is useful for countering sideslip (though I image a slight bank could do the same) to keep you heading in the right direction during normal flight. During landing it keeps you aligned with the runway when there are strong side winds.

Looking at the wing surfaces of a B2 Spirit, it seems like the ailerons are positioned to be able to provide a slight rudder effect. I didn't read that anywhere, that is an inference by looking at detail photos. *** I just googled it, and saw in the 4th paragraph on this page, that the those outer control surfaces are indeed for yaw control/stability. On that same page they show older "flying wings" that have tiny vertical stabilizers.

Now, I realize you probably want to avoid the "old Terran look" of a vertical stabilizer, and keep in futuristic looking. The F-22 and F-35 vertical stabalizers are not perpendicular to the ground, but angled to the side. Canards are usually used for lift and increased increased pitch/roll rates, but... maybe you could fudge some yaw control by moving the canards higher up on the fuselage so the canards control surfaces (or the entire canard if you move to the design of the entire canard moving like the Eurofighter) provide a tiny bit of yaw control and therefor stability. I imagine in real life this tweak would probably introduce new problems though.

I suppose you could add "hook like extensions" (should I scribble the outlines of the extension on one of your renders?) to the wing tips so you can have off axis control surfaces like the B2. Of course, its your choice to keep it as it is, I'm just pointing out suggestions to make it a more realistic design.

Given that we both had a similar way of thinking, do you think you can point me to where you started your modeling learning. (by PM, email, or Yahoo) I tried a few beginners tutorials, but I never could "wrap my head around" modeling, to quote your trouble with coding. My interests in modeling would lie more in adding models for realism mods in military FPSs (Project Reality, ArmA, etc) though. I still have a concept of a realistic space story though (technologically somewhere between BSG and Star Wars) and I never modeled some of my old Star Trek ship designs. Well, I once modeled the batwing-like fighter that was for the USS Hawking support group, but it came out pretty crappy.

I'm not sure if you want to get that an*l about it, but if you bought the flight sim X-Plane, you could actually test the flight dynamics of you design: atmospheric and non-atmospheric. However, you said you weren't interested in games and sims, so it might be best if you avoid those "drugs".

Edit: If you design the main thrusters to be vectored thrust, you could get a form of yaw control. However, that would be more moving parts than needed to solve a problem. If you served while the F-14 was still in operation, you probably saw what lots of complicated moving parts does to a design's maintenance schedule.

[Othermusketeer]

When I told my sister (she's 18yrs old now and into art/drawing) you weren't into games but creating things with your computer, she immediately wondered if you draw. After
showing your drawing of the alien, she said it looks like Shaq if he was punched in the nose. She said if you cover the nose, it looks like Shaq.

Hrmm... while my sister is... strange with what she says at times, there is a slight resemblance to him when he played in Shazaam.

Will your aliens try to slam dunk the Terrans?

If you want to tease her on her artwork, she is infamousbutterfly on the deviantart website.

[Meph]

Originally Posted by Othermusketeer

wing surfaces of a B2 Spirit, it seems like the ailerons are positioned to be able to provide a slight rudder effect. I didn't read that anywhere, that is an inference by looking at detail photos. *** I just googled it, and saw in the 4th paragraph on this page, that the those outer control surfaces are indeed for yaw control/stability. On that same page they show older "flying wings" that have tiny vertical stabilizers.

Well, since aircraft design and aerodynamics are somewhat of a passion of mine (minus the actual mathematics), i can safely tell you that with a B2, it is indeed the case that those function as a rudder. Since any surface angled to the body axis increases the Radar Cross Section and deflection angle to radar dramatically, they had to leave any actual rudder out to maximize stealth.
The ailerons/rudder function like this: they actually open up like a 'clamp' or airbrake, one half of the aileron opens upwards, the other down. this creates drag and if they open only one wing, you slow that wing down and the plane swivels around that point. The reason that they put on small vertical rudders on older flying wing design is because they had no flight computers that could hanle the constant and very fast adjustments with those ailerons to keep the thing in the air. A flying wing design is inherently a very unstable design along the yaw or Y-axis (boomerang anyone?). It's only with the coming of digital fly-by-wire that they can keep any tailless design in the air.

About the vecror thrust, very good idea mate! Obvious but sadly overlooked. If you don't want to use boxy designs à la F22, go for the russian way of engineering

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