New Turrets on Palatine Cruisers Make Life Easier for Crews

THIS WEEK on Pew-Pew Weekly:

Is that comet flying through space giving you problems?  Is collision imminent?  Everyone knows that striking a piece of rock at relativistic speeds can give your spaceship crew the shakes (and don't get me started on those exploding consoles).  Well, worry no more.  Here is the solution to rowdy interstellar fragments and debris (and any foolhardy pirate looking to avoid having to face that boring legal system):  The PY-280-Z heavy cannon turret!

 

A spectacle of destructive potential!

With a full 180 degree rotation on the z-axis and 90 degree cannon rotation, this reciprocating octo-barrel laser cannon turret provides the ultimate answer to the question: Do laser cannons really work well against rocks in space...or anything else, for that matter?  At these levels of power, the answer is an unequivocal YES!

Warning: It is inadvisable to take selfies in front of these turrets

Capable of being loaded with several types of charges, these cannons can fire both ionized plasma and particle beams capable of delivering over 25 petajoules of destructive power per barrel.  That's right, that's 200 petajoules per turret, per shot! 

To give you an idea of how much that would be in pure awesome might: 200 petajoules equals the same amount of energy as 47,801 tons of TNT.  To give you humans a chance to understand, your laughable nuclear Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear bomb ever tested in your history, released 210 petajoules.  That's right, just one volley from one of these turrets releases the equivalent amount of energy from your largest nuclear bomb ever! HA! Take that, puny earthlings!

Do ya feel lucky, punk?

These new turrets will be installed on all ships in the Thrassi Navy large enough to support them.  Since that's only the Palatine and Aventine classes, those are the ships that will receive these beauties!

Here is a mock-up of a typical Palatine class cruiser with the turrets mounted.  Seriously, you don't want to mess with this ship.

It was as if millions of pirates suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...

If there was ever a bad place to find yourself, this probably qualifies

Sal Marcus, the Scan Officer aboard the Adamant had this to say about the new turrets loaded onto his ship, "I'm just glad they're not pointed at me!"  That seems to be the general consensus of anyone who has to face these things.

I'm just glad they're not pointed at me! -- A very wise man

Here are the statistics for these lovely turrets for you tech-heads out there:

Kilim & Blastem PY-280-Z Heavy Laser Cannon Turret

• Type: Dual quad barrel reciprocating cannon turret

• Power Rating: 25 petajoules per barrel

• Rate of Fire: 10 shots per minute

• Deliverable Energy Rating: 2,000 petajoules per minute

Remember, if you're a space rock heading for an Aventine or Palatine class starship of the Thrassi Navy, it might behoove you to avoid it.  If you're a pirate, get your will in order!

On Laser Turrets... Part 2

Worked on getting the tutorial finished up.  Just have to review the manuscript and then record the action.

In the meantime, please enjoy this little preview of what can be accomplished with this system!

Hopefully everyone has a safe weekend.

Thanks,
Dan

On Laser Turrets

About a month ago, I received a request from CGCookie.com to make a Blender tutorial.  So, after a bit of deliberation with Jonathan at Blender Cookie, we decided to make a tutorial on how to do laser beam cannons in Blender, using the Cycles render engine.

Today, I started work on the tutorial by building the model which will be used with the tute.  A working turret, fully set-up and rigged with empties so that it always points towards its target.

From here, the tutorial will start with how to make the laser beam effect, as seen in this video:

Obviously, this is an older video, so the technique will be improved.

Perhaps in the future, I hope to have another tutorial which will show how to design and build a turret and how to rig it properly for use in this fashion, but for now, hopefully everyone will enjoy the model.

The tutorial is still about a month away, however.  Still working on it.  Never thought I'd be tapped by CGCookie to do a tutorial for them, though.  It's really a cool deal.

Have a great day, everyone.

Thanks,
Dan

Viminal Gunship

Working on a name for this class of gunship.  Keeping with the tradition I started with naming the Thrassi ships after the seven hills of Rome, I'm probably aiming for a name like the Viminal class gunship.

This ship is very Thrassi in its design mantra.  The Thrassi Republic (or, TR) has always been strapped for cash, so it decided to invest in a million little ships like this one over having a few large ones.  The Thrass also have the most planets to patrol, so having a multitude of small ships was smarter for them.  I imagine they built a lot of these Viminal gunships, probably numbering into the tens of thousands of them, to patrol backwater systems and provide escort for larger ships, such as the Aventine destroyer and Palatine cruiser.

These gunships were basically just lightly armored, yet extremely fast and deadly heavy sluggers, meant to carry as much fire power as possible right into the enemy's face.  While the TR never designed multi-person ships to be expendable, this ship probably had the highest casualty rate in any of the skirmishes the Navy had with pirate factions or with the Trisst Empire.

As the years wore on, however, these ships were probably retired from naval service and sold off to the private sector for either scrap or to be used as patrol boats for major corporations or personal ships for private citizens.  Really, the only ships that remained in use for any length of time in the TR were the Palatine cruisers, and even then, only five of the original twenty built were in active service after thirty years.

They probably kept building new Viminal gunships over time, however, to replace the older ones.

The upside to building ships for the same fleet is that you can reuse certain greebles and detail geometry in the new chassis.  This is a huge time-saver, as evidenced by the fact that this ship's exterior is nearly done already, despite me just starting a couple of days ago.  As the greeble library expands, and my familiarity with the hull plating technique gets better, I'm glad to see that the time to build these ships is decreasing precipitously. 

Dan

Gunship WIP

Started work on a gunship.

The round spots on the top and bottom are where the gun turrets will go. Probably will have the warp drive winglets fold up and down like on the Palatine class. This ship was designed to be just a fast, powerful slugger with minimal armor. Its speed and atmospheric capabilities are its best defences. Its main armament is six heavy blast ionized particle cannons, the much smaller version of what the Adamant is armed with. It was designed to fly into enemy lines and pick off turrets and exposed hardware.

They were designed and built around the beginning of the 20th century of my universe, however, and as such, their age is now very evident. As such, they were sold off to private contractors and owners beginning around the 80's. Now they're mostly just owned by private merchantmen and mercenaries. To fly this ship in Thrassi space, however, you have to have a license for all those guns. Unfortunately, some of these have found their way into the hands of pirates in the outer systems. They're usually easily destroyed, though, if the Navy sends in a Palatine class cruiser to deal with those pirate scum.

Dan

Adamant 8/21/13

8/21/13

Dan

Adamant Redesign

Well, not being pleased with the old Adamant, nor with Adamant II, or Adamant III, we're onto Adamant IV.  She's almost a kilometer long, now, but her lines are more pleasing and she's quite unique in her design, now, hopefully.  I like the flow of the lines, now.  She's less bulbous and more sleek.  Concave curves galore!

SSD, Day 14

Inspiration coming from Ansel Hsiao's incredible "murder wedges".  He's an expert in Star Destroyer design and detailing.

Adamant Dimensions

Someone wondered how big the Adamant was.  Here's a run-down on her stats:

Length from bow to end of armor hull: 403 meters (1,322 feet)

Height from lowest point to highest point of armor hull: 318 meters (1,043 feet)

Width from tips of wings: 541 meters (1,774 feet)

Width of body: 192 meters (629 feet)

The speck next to the gunship is an average height man.

She's a big, beautiful ship. =D

Dan

Adamant Turntable in Cycles

Well, another boring turntable. =D  This time it's of Adamant.  Rendered in Cycles, now, she's looking a fair bit prettier than she did in Blender Internal! =)

Hopefully you all like it.

Turret Beam Test

So I made a blast beam turret for the Adamant. This is a test to show off the aiming and firing. It's very quickly put together, so it's not supposed to be professional, and there are currently no real details on the turret, but this gives you an idea, hopefully. =)

The laser beam itself is a simple 8 quads arrayed in radial fashion and given a stretch-to constraint, which is tied to a target empty which the turret also is constrained to.

The beam is given an emission material in Cycles and a beam texture with an alpha map to give it fall-off and then it's rendered. Voila, a laser beam cannon! =D

Hope you're all doing awesome!

Dan

SSC Adamant Details

SSC Adamant is still in production.  I just took a hiatus from her for a bit.  Now she's getting the love and attention she deserves once more! So I've started working on the interior, and adding working turrets!

The turret's parts are parented to empties, which all track via pivot points to a target empty.

The two empties on the barrels are used to control the barrels' recoil when the cannons fire. Two empties for four barrels. The cannons fire in pairs, so there's only a need for two empties instead of four.

All of these empties have constraints added to them which either prevent the empties from rotating on a certain axis or restrict them from rotating too much. The turret currently turns 360 degrees on its main axis, with the gun placement able to pivot 40 degrees on the x axis. All of this uses local transforms, and all the empties are ultimately parented to the base of the turret, which, in turn, is dropped anywhere on the ship I please. Quite a useful set-up, if I may say so, myself. =D

An AO render from Cycles.

I've also been working a little on modifying an old interior I made for another ship and making it for the Adamant instead. I figure since she's a naval vessel, she would be maintained to a very high standard. I assume Captain Lostra is also very meticulous about the upkeep of his ship as well, which would explain why the interior is quite immaculate. =)

All rendered in Cycles, obviously not with perfect results, but I prefer a bit of grain to my images as it gives a sense of organic film instead of perfect digital artificiality. =D

Hope you're all doing great!

Dan