Delphi Ship Creations

You guys make me so proud... single wistful tear

Seriously though, I'm glad you're having so much fun. When I released my ship parts I didn't think that people would be having such a sudden creative explosion with them. It's a good thing to see.

Hey Meaker, any chance we can see those models without the silhouette? I'd love to see the detail in them, maybe even close-up views of the fighters, seeing as they're so tiny.

QUOTE (DarthKev @ Jul 22 2010, 02:49 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hey Meaker, any chance we can see those models without the silhouette? I'd love to see the detail in them, maybe even close-up views of the fighters, seeing as they're so tiny.

Heh heh, I'll work on that, but there were ~25 of them so I just kinda whipped something out that would show them all. I've got the images around here though...

Edit: didn't see that that was a quote of my origional post and that there were more posts. Yes, that is a BG-type Viper fighter. There's also a Babylon 5/Azardia (I think that's how it's spelled, I didn't play EVO as much as EVC or EVN) type ship that's also similar to the one Technomancer posted, and a Manta (EVC) fighter, and the Cruiser with arms and one of the destroyers are based on the Confed Cruiser and Frigate in EVC... I'm sure they're all based off of something I've seen before, so listing off all the inspirations would take way too long. Let's just say I played EVC/O/N, watched Star Trek, Star Wars, a little Babylon 5, Stargate, and Battle Star Galactica, and read books by Asimov, Clark, Heinlein, Crichton, and Herbert and took inspiration from everything I've ever seen or done.

Edit 2: Ah, here we go:
The ships facing left are frigates, the largest just being so because I think it's the coolest right now. The right-facing ships are destroyers. The matching-color ships are variants on the same frame (mostly anti-capital to anti-fighter variants)

And the ships facing left here are fighters, while the ships facing right are cruisers and capital ships. It looks like some of my white-areas got deleted on accident- oh well. The two on the top right are the shuttle and cargo-pod, and my current plan was to make all fighter-class ships NPC, though we'll see if I even end up making anything.

All comments, criticisms, and questions are welcome; most of the ships I whipped out together in a few hours, though some have a longer time investment in them. I'm planning on setting up a much better guide so I end up with some consistency, however.

This post has been edited by Meaker VI : 22 July 2010 - 11:33 AM

Do I spy a fighter based on the TIE Defender? I'm not quite sure because it lacks the solar panels of TIE ships, but it has the same basic structure, just below the cargo-pod. I have to say, though, my favorite fighter is the EVC Lightning remake, just left of the BG Viper.

My favorite ship of all of them, though, is definitely the flat/wide destroyer. The one without arms and not the IDA remake. Very well done, sir! I congratulate you!

So this is what I've thrown together as a first attempt. Too bad its an unfinished product. There's a lot I'd like to do with it that I can't either due to lack of parts or lack of ability. Those with a good eye might notice that the ship isn't level.

I'd love to throw a few Journeyman engines on it, 2 on the rear arms and a smaller set on the forward arms. Need to work out some kind of housing for the side cannons. I'm also thinking of changing the entire front section to something more streamlined.

Put this in the proper place.. ah well, off to figure out more of SketchUp.

@ DarthKev: Thank you, and indeed, the three-armed fighter-bomber is indeed similar to the TIE Defender. Though I didn't start out intending to make it that way, that's how it ended up. I think it's interesting that you see the one on the left of the BG Viper as a lightning, I had originally intended the one above and to the left of that one as a lightning, but I think it got too bulky. I kinda like that destoryer too, if only because it's one of the few ships that came out looking ok that I didn't take inspiration from somewhere else. I'm also fond of the more simple-looking 3 fighters on the lower right corner, and the frigate that I enlarged and textured.

@Dracheseele: Pfffttt... That looks fine. Ships don't have orientation in space, so if you've positioned the engines such that it flies "at a slant" then that's how it flies. I think if you added the engines onto the ends of those arms, it'd be pretty set; and maybe a couple supports or a wing holding on the weapons - though nothing at all works too (they look like they're mounted on swivels ala Slave I).

A sketchup pointer that might help you (or you might already know it) is this: If you use the move tool on components, you can rotate them around their own axies by positioning the move tool's curser over one of the component-box's faces, and over the red "+" signs that pop up. Another is that, if you have 2 identical sides of your model, make one of them a component and copy it to the other side then rotate/inverse-scale (scale with a scale factor or -1)/right click-flip the component so it's mirrored. Then, when you're working on one side, the other side automatically does the same work. Nearly all of my models use this tactic, and some use it in multiple ways (the huge carrier has up-down symmetry around the middle, left-right symmetry, and up-down symmetrical components in the left-right components, making it so I get 4 parts of the ship built at once).

Revised version.

Main idea is that then engines tilt, swivel, etc. I want open them up, more V shaped but they're accidentally fused, so I need to remake them at some point.

Too bad EV doesn't support thrust directions aside from forwards.

This post has been edited by Dracheseele : 23 July 2010 - 06:25 PM

Impressive! The guns also look like they can be rotated, aimed, etc. As for multiple thrust directions, you could simply give a ship using this graphic blazing fast rotation speed, explained by the engines changing position to rotate the ship faster.

Alright, I think I can call this done for the time being haha.

The Cambiare Frigate (Not to be confused with the Cambrian)

Cambiare is a musical term, meaning "To Change."
A swift little ship, somewhere in the Starbridge/Dragon size range. Features excellent turning and acceleration, but limited armor and energy reserves.

2 Side mounted cannons (With mounts for more!)
1 nose mounted point-defense beam turret. (Electromag PD weapon?)
2 Deck Mounted Concealed Missile launchers.

I'm not sure what sort of Delphi Universe weapons would be applied.

Putting the Engines together also gave me inspiration for this little Dingy.

And something abit more intimidating...

I must admit I'm having tons of fun with this, even if I don't really have anything to use these for.

This post has been edited by Dracheseele : 24 July 2010 - 03:42 PM

Woah, someone's been busy.

Those are pretty slick, though I've got some friendly presentation-pointers for you if you're up for them.

1. You should turn off the background (the blue-green stuff) by either making it straight white or black, or by changing the ground/sky colors to black/grey/whatever. You can get some pretty cool looks just by adjusting the background, and it presents your models better. You can find those controls under Window/styles>edit>background styles (button with gray cube in front of colored background)

2. You should hide/turn off guidelines. View/guides.

3. Turning on shadows might give your model more depth. Window/shadows - Though be sure to turn them off again to work. They also don't always make it look better, so play carefully.

Thank you for the suggestions. Still figuring SketchUp out but I'll try to clean things up more for future.

I'm trying to make figure out how to make a cylinder, as I want to make a Radome to use for an idea I have. I could get by hacking up an existing cylinder, but I'd still like to know. I'd love to redo the Cambiare if Delphi releases sleeker, more organic parts or I feel comfortable enough making my own.

Perhaps I should set myself a challenge, making something out of only one part.

Cylinders are easy! Make a circle and use the push-pull tool on it. Viola! Cylinder.

Spheres are harder, however. I have posted a tutorial up above somewhere, but here is a link to Google's video tutorials for just about everything. I didn't see the sphere tutorial, but it's similar to the "beginner/follow-me" tutorial, just use the same circle instead of a shape as your lathe-path. Organic geometry is very difficult in Sketchup, but you'd use the follow me & group scale tools to make it happen easiest.

Someone got some Gradius in my Thunder Force... Someone got some Thunder Force in my Gradius...

I should probably do some processing for these screenshots. /procrastinate

Gradius? Thunder Force? I don't know what those are, but the ship sure is pretty.

Gradius and Thunder Force are both old side scrolling shoot-em-up series, The ship designs from them influenced this thing greatly.

QUOTE (Dracheseele @ Jul 29 2010, 03:57 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I should probably do some processing for these screenshots. /procrastinate

Post-Processing not required; you seem to have gotten much more advanced since, what, a week ago?!?

The economy has given me far too much free time I suppose. Or I'm really good at playing with Legos, one or the other!

Now I know these ships aren't meant to represent Nova's own, but why does everything look like it was cobbled together out of spare multi-sized metal boxes that nobody had a use for? Why don't you try creating something more smooth and sleek, something more like a few of Meaker's fighters?

And, these ships are going towards Delphi's total conversion right?

This post has been edited by Spartan Jai : 05 August 2010 - 09:07 AM

QUOTE (Spartan Jai @ Aug 5 2010, 05:42 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Now I know these ships aren't meant to represent Nova's own, but why does everything look like it was cobbled together out of spare multi-sized metal boxes that nobody had a use for? Why don't you try creating something more smooth and sleek, something more like a few of Meaker's fighters?

And, these ships are going towards Delphi's total conversion right?

Ha ha! If you've been reading from the beginning, the ships are all using Delphi's parts, which are boxy and random shaped and not really conducive to "smooth" ships.... Sketchup isn't actually that conducive to smooth ships either...

...unless you know what you're doing.

These ships we're drawing are mostly for our own amusement, and probably won't be used for anything unless we use them. At least, I haven't gotten any requests...

I'm actually very keen on reading... fiction novels. So yeah, I did skip a lot of it. I'm actually looking at these pictures for some inspiration.