[BFG] - Designing new ship types - 3d printing madness

[Malika]

Small update!

Tweaked the fighters a bit, ditched a lot of the variants, meaning that instead of 14 I (only!) have 7 now. The three basic craft are in the pic:


Also continued working on the transport barge, including a container variant:

[Rowlybot]

I do like those transports.

[awesomeshotdude]

There are some fantastic looking ships and fighter/bomber craft in here, well done!!!

[Malika]

I'm really digging this version of the transport since it maintains a sense of balance. I could if I wanted to also use the hull as a basis for military ships by simply replacing the containers with weapon systems. Might be a bit odd as full on military cruisers, perhaps more as civilian ships converted for a defensive purpose (Q-ships in BFG). A military ship would have a slightly different hull: prow more like the escorts and light cruiser, and lots more weapons!





In the meantime I've been tweaking the transportship some more, it feels like a really solid and sturdy craft, which kinda fits with the more industrial/worker feel I'm going for. The ship still needs some comm array/radars, which I'm planning on building underneath the prow and/or bridge. The back hull needs further detailing, and then a few container variants.

[Malika]

Just wanted to give you a bit of an update. I've been contacted by a fellow who's testing out his new 3d printer. The guy wants me to design some terrain for him, no probs! However, I also asked him if he could do a test print of one of my escorts. I've got a feeling the machine is slightly inferior than what Shapeways and other can offer, but it does provide me with an opportunity to get a free test print to see whether the model will work.

In the meantime I've continued working on the escorts:



Modified the hulls a bit, and removed some of the guns. Problem was that the guns were blocking out some of the other details.

The transportship has also received a lot of work:





As you can see the container variants have some more detailing added to them. The ship itself is also receiving more and more detailing. There's still a lot to be done before it's ready though.

[Malika]

Mangozac's latest work has really got me motivated to do some ships again!

This time another escort, but a little bit bigger (5.55mm long). And oh yeah, it's from another faction!



As you may notice, I've been playing with more rounded shapes and returned to introducing the round Distortion Drive from my earlier designs. Another thing I've been playing with are the turrets, in my early designs I really wanted to include some small globe like turrets, kinda like as if the blobs on a Dalek were guns. Back then I wasn't really able yet to do them, now I've sort of got them. I'm happy the way they've turned out, considering the scale.




The ship still needs a lot of detailing, and also some sort of components to put on top/bottom of the Distortion Drive component, kind of what I did with my previous ship.

[Zorcon]

Really nice work! Especially the transports.

[Malika]

Kinda felt that the ship was a bit too much like a rectangle block. You can see that the 'vertical components' are kinda similar to the tail thing of my original escort, which is kinda funny since that original escort formed the basis of these warships. I'm toying with the idea that from a background perspective all these ships have the same 'origins' if you will, an empire or something that originally produced some specific designs (compare it to the STC in 40k I guess). This empire eventually collapsed, and new, and smaller, ones raised from its ashes. Now these smaller empires don't all maintain contact with one another, meaning that their technology might also develop in different directions. But despite of this there would still be some markers here and there that would make them seem somewhat similar.



In order to give the ship some more shape, I've also thinned out the front part (everything in front of the Distortion Drive) a bit. Some more detailing will have to be added, but that has to be done anyways!

[fracas]

really good works here

[Malika]

Changed the front part of the ship a bit by thinning it out vertically:


(the top picture is the new version, for comparison I've added the previous version on the bottom)

[Malika]

Hmm, I've put the new design on hold for now, I need to ponder a bit more about it. The axe prow will come back at some other ship, most likely something Destroyer sized.

In the meantime, I've been working a bit on the Corvettes, and upgraded a design variant into a Frigate:

[Malika]

I've been experimenting a bit with some panel lines, they're 0.25mm wide and 0.5mm deep. The big gap on the port side of the ship is going to be where the sensor array will be placed. I'm a bit in doubt at the moment on how to design it, at the moment I'm pondering about a flipped sideways version of the Land Raider Prometheus' sensor array, or maybe something more akin to the one of the Land Speeder...

[Malika]

I tweaked the escorts slightly to improve their castability. The big change is that I've rotated the back thrusters. This will enable me to cast the ship as a single piece, rather than separating the back from the front. However, I've also had to remove the vent like elements on the side wings. I will have to see if I can come up with another cool detailing there, or perhaps keep it relatively simple.





I've also added some detailing to the prow, I guess it's some sort of scanner or something. It might make the casting process a bit trickier, so I might try to shrink it a bit. I don't want to be forced to have to cut up this small craft into multiple bits.

[Geep]

Looking good as always.

Any plans on when you'll put this into production?

[Malika]

The ships are almost there I think...