Page created
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Revised March 6,
2010
S&M ENGINEERS
AND CONSTRUCTORS
VIRTUAL SHIPYARD
(Warning: Graphic Intensive Page!)
Introduction
In April of 2009 our local
role-playing gaming group was playing Trans Human Space. I expressed an
interest in modeling our ship, and someone in a forum suggested Blender. I
found it, installed it, but could not get it to do very much. Sometime later I
uninstalled it and forgot about it. In mid November, a new member of the Cajun
Clickers Computer Club came forward and offered to teach workshops in Blender.
I attended the first one, reinstalled the software and the rest, as they say,
is history!
Catalog of
Ships
Ekaterina
Click on any photo for a full-size image!
Arkenstone
I
created the fusion/hyper driven Arkenstone in the early 1980s.
Unfortunately I lost the original pencil and graph paper drawings when we moved
from Knoxville to Louisiana in 1988.
The basic parameters of the ship remained in my head, and in mid 1997
through early 1998 I created it to scale in Corel Draw. (Being lazy, I used conventional home
architectural symbols in the drawings!) Starting in late November 2009 and
finishing in mid February 2010, I have the exterior, control room, lounge,
shuttlecraft and hanger completed in Blender. (I created the computer and touch
surface displays for the control room in Corel Draw and imported them into
Blender as image textures. I found the textures for the bulkheads and decks as
well as the warehouse walls and floor at http://www.cgtextures.com/ )
Plan drawings and renders are shown
below.
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The ship is 250 feet long by 50 feet
by 50 feet. Maneuvering is provided by low thrust reaction-less thruster discs mounted
on the hull so that the ship can thrust along any axis. Interplanetary travel
and positioning for hyper travel is provided by four high thrust hydrogen
fusion reaction drives. Faster than light travel is provided by a hyper drive
which is controlled by a dedicated hyper spatial computer. All major ship's
systems and controls are triple redundant for reliability. The hull is a custom
grown single molecule which stops 50% neutrinos.
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Click a thumbnail for a full-size image
The ship’s control room is fifty feet across and fifteen feet deep,
large enough to also serve as a rack room; there are several equipment cabinets
and racks co-located with the ship’s controls and displays. There is a large
display screen mounted in the center of the forward bulkhead. Directly in front
of it is a semi circular main control console. This houses three wedge shaped
panels. The top surface of each wedge is a touch sensitive control area. Each
wedge also has a dedicated display screen mounted perpendicular to it. Controls
and displays for any ship’s system can be called up on any wedge and/or
display. They can be ‘mixed and matched’ as I desire.
The long panel to the left of the control console houses dedicated
controls for the four fusion reactor-drive sets. The smaller panel located to
the right of the control console is dedicated to navigation and optical star
sighting.
The
ship employs induced gravity. The lift/airlocks, shop deck, cargo hold and
other areas are designed
to be subjected to microgravity. There are
nets, tie downs, and hand holds placed strategically throughout these areas.
“A”
deck is designed to be continuously subjected to .75 g. Since the
induced gravity system is triple redundant there is little chance of “A” deck being
unexpectedly subjected to no-weight. The deck can be prepared for microgravity
by placing loose items in lockable drawers and fitting covers over desks and
tables. The pool room is watertight. The hot tub is normally covered. Seals can
be snapped into place over the flush toilets –I refused to even consider
installing zero g sanitation fixtures!
The shop deck is where I make my
living. It includes storage for raw materials, and a CAD-E/CAM (Computer Aided Design-Engineering/Computer Aided Manufacturing)
system. I also have a complete fabrication area, and equipment to do small
production runs. I can design, build, manufacture, ship, deliver, install and
startup product anywhere in this part of the galaxy.
There is a loading crane mounted in
the ceiling of the shop deck. The plates in the center of this deck can be
removed allowing access to the cargo hold. With the plates removed and the
cargo bay doors open, the entire area can be exposed to vacuum for
loading/unloading or construction of projects in space.
BTW, the ‘Arkenstone’ is a mythical
‘large, white gem.’ The hull of the ship is a dazzling white.
The ship’s lounge is located immediately
aft of the control room on “A” deck. It is approximately twenty feet by twenty
feet.
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Click on any photo for a full-size image!
The left hand picture is looking down into the lounge from above. It is oriented to correspond with the “A” deck plan view. Note that the hot tub is normally covered. Yes, that is redwood planking! In the right hand picture, I am chilling in the hot tub, sipping coffee and catching up on True Blood while traveling through hyperspace.
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Click on any photo for a full-size image!
In the left hand picture, the
forward lift/airlock door as well as the door into the control room are
slightly open. (Note that the lift door is ten feet by ten feet.) You can also
see the security panel for the control room door, as well as some of the home
theater speakers and electronics. Panning counterclockwise, the right hand
picture reveals the security panel and door for stateroom #3 as well as one of
the floating armchairs, which has a keypad embedded in one arm.
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Click on any photo for a full-size image!
Continuing to pan counter clockwise,
in the left hand picture you can see a bit of the hallway, the wide couch and
the steps leading up to the hot tub, as well as the powered massage table. The
double doors in back of the hot tub open into the Master’s stateroom. The
middle picture shows the door to the ship’s dining room, and the door to
stateroom #2 as well as another floating armchair and a storage unit. The right
hand picture completes the pan around the lounge, showing the door to stateroom
#1 and a second, smaller storage unit.
The storage units, coffee table,
massage table, couch and armchairs are models I found at http://resources.blogscopia.com/index_en.html and modified. The water procedural texture is based on this Blender water tutorial As usual, image textures
were provided by http://www.cgtextures.com/
Arkenstone’s Shuttlecraft
The shuttlecraft is a ten foot
sphere. Half of this is a clear canopy which can be recessed into a slot in the
craft’s hull. There are no seats, the pilot and passenger lie flat on a padded
floor.
To enter the craft you raise the
canopy, climb in via handholds and stand on a platform. There is a shelf where
you can tie down your luggage. Strap yourself in, lower the pilot’s control
panel into place and seal the canopy. The canopy also provides a heads up
display for the pilot.
Thrust is provided by five
reaction-less thruster discs mounted on the hull so that the ship can thrust
along any axis. The craft does not employ induced gravity, you will feel the
acceleration. A wise pilot will always orient the craft so thrust is provided
by the rear mounted thrust disc. (Note, I grabbed the human model from a
Blender model repository and modified it.)
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Arkenstone’s Hanger
When I have to stay on Earth for any length of time, I land my ship in a large warehouse that I've converted into a hanger/refueling station. (Getting the roof doors installed was a bear!) I have a process skid and storage tanks installed for FARM (Fuel And Reaction Mass) which must be kept refrigerated and under high pressure. The skid also provides the ship with utilities: Power, Water, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Data. (PWOND). Click a thumbnail for a full-size image
Click on any photo for a full-size image!
The landing legs retract into the hull during flight. They hold the bottom of the ship ten feet above the warehouse floor. The forward lift/airlock outer hatch is 10 feet x 10 feet. The gangway for the aft lift/airlock is on the other side of the ship.
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Click on any photo for a full-size image!
The
gangways, railings and platforms fold up and retract into the hull during flight.
By the way, that’s an escalator, not stairs. Makes getting in and out of the
ship very convenient, especially when my SO is wearing heels. The outer ‘lock
hatch is slightly open. In the right hand picture you can see the security panel that controls access to the ‘lock.
The buttons are one inch square, to accommodate spacesuit gloves.
Here
you can see part of the refueling operation. In addition to two large built in FARM
tanks, I can load smaller auxiliary tanks into the cargo hold in lieu of cargo
for a longer trip. There is a forklift positioning an aux tank to be lifted
into the hold with the ship’s loading crane.
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Click on any photo for a full-size image!
Product
from the FARM/PWOND skid is transferred to a motorized scaffold via flexible
hoses. The scaffold can maneuver to the FARM/PWOND access panel in the ship’s hull,
or to the auxiliary tanks. Delivering product to its final destination is done
via more hoses.
Here
is a close-up of the ship’s FARM/PWOND access panel, and the scaffold. You can
see the scaffold steering and feed controls, as well as some of the connecting
hoses.
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Click on any photo for a full-size image!
These
two pictures show the FARM/PWOND skid and storage tanks. In the left-hand
picture you can see a six foot high blue control cabinet mounted next to a pipe
support.
Looking straight down from the warehouse ceiling
HSTV Ekaterina
The Heavy Space Transport Vessel Ekaterina
was originally designed by game designer and GM Michael Scott around 2003. We
used the ship when playing Trans Human Space off and on for the last several
years. In late 2009 and early 2010 Scotty, inspired by the ill fated Defying
Gravity television series, decided to redesign the ship. He provided me
with his drawings done in Corel and I created the ship in Blender. The ship is
built in accordance to GURPS THS ship building rules. E-Kat is 350 feet long.
The command module is 30 feet in diameter, and the rotating spin pods create a
circle with a 110 foot diameter. (By far the most difficult aspect of this
model was the truss, see close-up below. Next was the command module, I had to
make liberal use of Booleans. To date I have not textured the model, but I hope
to revisit this sometime in the future.)
Here are the GURPS THS design
specs created by Scotty (PDF format)
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Freemen 2
The Federator/Freemen 2 was designed by my wife Karen Morton for use in her science fiction novel The Phoenix Revolution, Book 1. She originally sketched the ship in mid 1997. In January 2010 she created the ship in Corel Draw to scale using her sketches as a guideline. The Freemen 2 is approximately 130 feet long. It is 66 feet high and 113 feet wide at the stern. I completed the Blender models in mid February 2010. I found the image texture for the hull at http://www.cgtextures.com/
The Federator was designed and constructed underground on Sedona Minor by the Prentiss 7 division of Haverford Industries in conjunction with the Human Confederacy. The three deck prototype craft uses VTOL chemical thrusters for takeoff, jet engines for atmospheric flight and fusion drives for interplanetary flight. It employs a Straczynski drive (named after J. Michael Straczynski) for hyper travel. The ship mounts plasma guns for offense, and uses force wall generators for defense. When the ship enters an atmosphere, wings are unfurled for atmospheric braking. The hull of the ship has a special finish that is radar/sensor transparent. In between the hull plates are hundreds of tiny nozzles that are used as thrusters for low speed maneuvers in space.
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V-Box
Ok,
this isn’t a spaceship! But it came out so good I decided to include it. I'm
currently play testing a new Vampyre RPG titled Society
Of Night, written by my friend Randolph. I play a young engineer who has become
the Blood Servitor of the very lovely Vampyre Casserina Del Caerleon, known as
the Princess Of Nightshade. On occasion Cassy manages to get herself stranded
away from home when the sun rises. At first she would hide out in the trunk of
my Lexus, but I told her no way is she spending the day in a dusty trunk. So I
built the V-Box, a high tech portable accommodation for the active
Vampyre on the go.
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Click on any photo for a full-size image!
The picture on the left identifies each piece of equipment. Cassy is petite, the box is small enough to fit in the back seat of my ES-350. There is a safety interlock so if Cass is inside, the lid cannot be opened if the sensor detects sunlight. The cooling system can operate for up to twelve hours before the batteries must be recharged. The box includes a cell phone as well as a mini home theater system, so my darling can text me and catch up on episodes of True Blood while she’s waiting for sundown.
If you’ve read this far, thank you! Here is everything you need to install Blender on a Windows box, including instructions, screenshots and a test model.
Here are some useful links:
The Clickers resident Blender guru