United3dArtists Archive

A concept for a battleship.

That's my kind of scene!

Glad you like it

Peter wrote:That's my kind of scene!

And mine! VERY COOL!

Thanks all.
I did some playing around with the lighting and made the planet and moon more or less according to the Mygimptutorial.com Ultimate Planet Tutorial.
It is a very useful tutorial.

My first try:

Nice work Mikom

(Preferred refinement of the 1st one, but that's just me)

Thanks Dragneye.

And yes me too

Here is the remake of the Aloadae II.







ESAD Sirius Class Spacecraft: Aloadae II

Built Year 3094

Class: Sirius Class

Length: 275.0 m

Crew: 120 - 300

Named after the historic first intergalactic spacecraft.

Sweet!

The solar flare render is bloody awesome. Like it very much.

Thanks guys! =)

If you are not working as a designer then you should! Logos, spaceships, ...

I'm afraid I'm not working with 3D. I do some simple webdesign and other computer stuff for small company who needs IT assistance. It doesn't really pay... so yes, I'd love to work with Design but unfortunately work like that is pretty hard to find in the forests of Sweden, and how many companies would be willing to accept someone who can only work over the internet? not many I bet...

So yeah, for now, my work can only be viewed in small corners of the internet.

2D, 3D, whatever. You have abilities (creativity) and can gain from them but you have to make it happen. Try approaching local companies with your ideas (signs, business cards, logos, more creative things). Tell how design would help them and offer to do it. Build a resume/portfolio and start your own business. Don't look for companies who will hire you over the internet. Look for customers who will hire you over the internet.

You could probably make a little money on Cafe Press or Zazzle putting designs on T-shirts and stuff. I'll bet Star Trek fans would love stuff with your Trek like ships on it. Creativity is a powerful tool. Use it to invent ways to profit from your abilities.

Marcel is a professional freelance designer. Maybe he can give you advice about getting started.

Well like I said, there aren't really any local companies who work with 2D/3D art here. It's a small town. However, tourism is pretty big here so perhaps some camping or some such need some designing done, I could probably advertise myself better, you're right there.

As for Cafe Press and Zazzle, I can honestly say I've never heard of those sites but I'm getting a feeling I should have. What is it they do?

I mean companies that need designs done not ones that do design work. They need style. They might not know that they need it. A restaurant has uninteresting menus and a boring sign. They need a designer. Your appetizingly designed menus and eye catching sign bring more customers and you offer to design a pattern for their tablecloths, style their "wait to be seated" signs, business cards, logo, ... you create a consistent style that identifies their restaurant.

Zazzle and Cafe Press work like this: You sign up as a seller, create designs to go on their merchandise, and upload them. The merchandise is clothing, coffee mugs, post cards, art prints (bet Trekkers would by HD prints of your ships!), etc. When someone buys an item the company handles the money, manufactures the item with your design, ships it to the buyer, and you get a little money. I made a design for T-shirts and coffee mugs on Zazzle. It was not difficult. I'll get about $2 per sale. Watch the other sellers though. They will copy your ideas.

Here's Zazzle and my store there with one design.
Zazzle
My Zazzle store

Indeed. I'll see if I can post an ad in the local paper. It gets distributed to a lot of people in and outside of the town. That should catch an eye or two.

As for Zazzle. I'll create an account and see what happens.

So I was thinking today about ships and flying and energies and stuff. I came to start thinking about how large ships would land. The standard scifi magic hovering was obviously something I wouldn't do since that wouldn't be the kind of realism I'm looking for.

My original reason for starting to think about how ships would stay in the air came from me watching Battlestar Galactica. I was looking at the Raptors and I was wondering how the hell those un-aerodynamic things could stay in the air. It would obviously take a lot of thrust and energy to keep it in the air.

To cut a long story short, me thinking of one thing lead to me thinking of another and before long I was thinking about my Space 3000 universe which is where these scifi-ish thoughts usually take me. So how would a ship land? Well the smaller ships are usually VTOL with thrusters on the bottom of the ship similar to the BSG Raptors (only with a more aerodynamic design). However the larger ships, and I'm talking the ships that are over half a kilometer long (like the Aloadae II I poster earlier), they would simply use up way to much energy trying to land in the VTOL kind of way. Landing gears are out as well since a ship of this size would produce to much friction, both in the wheel mechanics and between the tires/ground so that would simply be to risky. Besides, maintenance would be a bitch. Think of all the poor engineers.

Then I got the idea. An idea that would shift the energy consumption from ship to ground allowing the ship to land without using a huge amount of energy. But where would the stopping force come from then? Well the ground. So I got the idea that what if the airstrip itself provided the entire force of keeping the spacecraft on(off) the ground.

Large ships would land on airstrips with a built-in combination of air pressure and magnets holding the ship of the ground during approach. The ship would then use its own forward thrusters to slow down until finally coming to a halt at the end of the airstrip. There it would deploy its landing gear on either the ground or a movable platform.

Think of it like airhockey only with half a kilometer long ships.

This way a lot of the energy would be used more efficiently and the ship itself would only have to provide the forward stopping force (by burning their forward thrusters at full). The downside might be that the landing strips would have to be pretty damn long, many kilometers long. Just like for modern space shuttles.
Even so, I think it's a great idea considering the alternatives. I'm just wondering if it has been thought of before.

So here is my concept of how it would look:


Full View

Cool. It also could be the way they take off. This landing method, and the implication that the big ships aren't always in space, gives a reason for the wings, aerodynamic shape, and design with a top and bottom. It is designed like an aircraft because sometimes it is.

Maglev has been around a long time but the air thing, the air/mag combination, and using these for a landing strip are new to me. I see landing/take off on water, in an ocean or a big lake, as the way to do this but this landing strip and method provides for spectacular images and tense moments for your story.

Finis wrote:Cool. It also could be the way they take off. This landing method, and the implication that the big ships aren't always in space, gives a reason for the wings, aerodynamic shape, and design with a top and bottom. It is designed like an aircraft because sometimes it is.

Maglev has been around a long time but the air thing, the air/mag combination, and using these for a landing strip are new to me. I see landing/take off on water, in an ocean or a big lake, as the way to do this but this landing strip and method provides for spectacular images and tense moments for your story.

Yes this would also be how they take of, though I'm still working on that.

As for the landing on a lake, I considered them landing on water but it would be very stressful on the craft not to mention that landing it in a lake probably wouldn't be very good for the environment since these kind of ships would landing and taking of all the time.

The ESAD M60 Asteroid Class Explorer

• -Built Year 3072
  
  -Length: 10.1m
  
  -Type: VTOL, Deep Space Exploration
  
  -Crew: Pilot, Co-Pilot
  
  -Armament: 4 Rockets, Forward Cannons

The ESAD M60 A.C.E is a deep space exploration craft designed for staying in space for weeks or even months.
It got its name from the M40 X A.C.E, the first Asteroid Class Explorer.

Though a little outdated, these spacecraft still are in use by the ESAD scientific research department.

Those are some very nice looking ships. Please tell me that one of the Iphigenia class ships is named "Doubtfire".

Before maglev was the popular kid in train research, (IIRC) some German company experimented with ram air levitated trains, first driven by a propeller then by jet engines. They had rubber tired wheels to land and take off on a guideway. Once up to speed the wheels lifted and the train floated on a thin cushion of air between it and the guideway. While the system worked and had the potential for very high speeds and a fairly low cost infrastructure (track or guideway is a gigantic expense with maglev) the "airlev" never went beyond a test track due to excessive noise.

For smaller ships you could use an "air barrel". The ship flies into a short docking tube through which a large volume of air is being blown at a speed high enough to bring the ship to a stop relative to the ground. The ship is still flying even tough it's not moving. Landing clamps rise up to grab the ship, or it sets down on rests as thrust is reduced and the airflow is cut. From the barrel the ship on its carriage is moved to a terminal, servicing bay or a launch catapult.

Air barrels in the game = tons of ways for the player to screw up on harder difficulty levels. At lower difficulty (and in a real world version) the landings would be done automatically. If the ALS is out a pilot would need to be spot on, a bit too much up pitch and the ship would be banging around like a rock in a clothes dryer, then spat out to tumble across the spaceport. Game Over, Player One.

Hi Galane, thank you for your complement but what flatters me more is your interest

Yes, "airlev" is another possibility for keeping my giant ships in the air. Thing is though, most of these ships are being kept afloat by many different technologies. The maglev landing strips for example are indeed only for the larger ships, the ones that cannot produce enough power and downward thrust through ram jets or ion thrusters that they need extra support to land.
Smaller aircraft on the other hand, like the ship below (which is a W.I.P still) do have the ability to land without the use of maglev landing strips.



As for the game itself, it's not in active development. It would be interesting to see a Space 3000 game but as it is now, I think that's better left to the imagination.

You have plenty of nifty art if someone wanted to write some stories set in your Space 3000 universe.

I've started on plenty myself, just never finished any. There is plenty of room for spin-offs though, anything from Alexandrian space pirates to Earths major corporations and their scientific advances.

The Konay Industries Phalanx Strike Fighter





Tag: RE-X 5

Class: Phalanx

Length: 40 m

Crew: 2 - 3

Standard Armament: 2 Class 500 Warheads + Arming System, 6 Hull Piercing Missiles, 40 Anti-Ship Missiles, 2000 Self Guiding Rockets

It's basically this gun in ship-form:

+1 for you if you instantly knew where it was from.

Best. Gun. Ever. Just don't press the red button on the bottom!

Another re-work of an old render:



The Aloadae II, built Year 3094 and named after the historic first intergalactic spacecraft with its sister ship the Sirius I.

Class: Type-1 Sirius Class

Length: 275.0 m

Crew: 120 - 300