If you want to really learn blender, I highly recommend the official guide to 2.3 I find it well written and useful. I'd also recommend watching the video tutorials, and actually pay attention to them, following along with them would also be useful to drill it into your head. http://blender3d.org/cms/Getting_started.400.0.html

UIT Scarab

http://www.myklittle.co.uk/stuff/elite/UIT_Scarab.jpg

My attempt at a more 'scrapyard' ship...

Nice ship design, myko! I like it. That is definitely something I could see in game as a mid-size UIT ship.

There's obviously a lot of modeling talent on these boards, neat to see the community getting together like this. I'd post a few of my own from an EV:1 plug in I made, as soon as I figure out how to transfer files from my old, old computer.

If I can offer some constructive criticism to the ship designs in general from my limited knowledge of art. They are all very good so please take this in the best way possible:

With a few exceptions, most of these ship designs have "been done" before. There's obviously a lot of talent at work in the modeling, but the design itself is nothing people haven't seen before (and the same goes for most of the ships we currently have in game). I know it's easier to criticize than to create, and these models really are impressive, but let me encourage people to think outside the box in designing ships.

Let me use (sorry Harry) this ship as an example:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v178/Dimpfinator/Astaroth.jpg

Very cool model, one of my favorites... but what's the first thing that pops into your head when you see it? For me it was "Concorde." Here are four simple suggestions you might want to try (and this goes for all models).

1) Distention:

These ships all have roughly the same overall shape and dimensions. They are compact, sometimes a little boxy. For small fighters this is more of a necessity since you have less mass to work with, but for medium and large ships, they could be so much more than a larger version of the basic fighter shape.

Play around with the model's proportions. What happens to the Astaroth if you made the neck 50% longer? twice as long? 10x as long? What if the wings continued to curl around into a half-circle, or even a full circle? These ships aren't constrained by gravity, so play around with space and proportions. You might stumble across something good.

2) Inversion

Here is a great way to play against convention... do ships always have to be large in the back and small in the front? Try flipping the design so the nose is the tail and the tail is the nose. The Asteroth would go from a "Concorde" design to more of a stingray looking thing. Again, I'm not necessarily saying this would be better, just that it's something to think about.

3) Multiplicity

Take portions of your model and repeat them. Imagine the Asteroth with a mirror image connected to the bottom, flipped upside-down. You would get a funnel shaped ship with two necks, and two bridges.

4) Asymmetry

On the other hand, ships shouldn't always have a mirror-image symmetry to them, that can get boring after a while. An asymmetrical design tends to jolt the eye a little and make you look twice. Myko's "scarab" is a good example of a slightly asymmetrical ship... can you think of any designs that are even more asymmetrical? What would they look like? What if the Astaroth had just one wing?

Finally, I know there is a *lot* more to implementing a ship design than to coming up with a poly model, so I think our best effort would be to give the devs ideas for ship designs as opposed to submitting something and saying "implement this."

My point is that our designs could be all the more ludicrous brainstorms to get the devs' creative juices going as opposed to designing ships with the expectation that our exact model will find its way into the game.

I know you're prolly thinking "yeah right he can't talk he hasn't even submitted a ship yet" but please just think about these ideas for a little. There's a lot of talent here, so put it to use by thinking outside the box!

*Points to Phaserlight hyper-ly*

This is what I was trying to say in this thread:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10433

Phaserlight+50!

And as for Phaser's actual suggestions, here's something I think he's trying to edge towards:

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/contest/scratch_24.htm

-assymetrical
-multiplicity

it's still half-aircraft like, but if you're going to do aircraft style ships, look at this thing for a second.

[edit]
for the "smooth skin" alternative, here's a ship I found that's in a new Star Wars fan film. Ironic that it's called the "Corvus", don't you think ;)

http://www.kromekat.nildram.co.uk/stuff/Corvus_New2.jpg
http://www.kromekat.nildram.co.uk/stuff/CorvusComp.jpg

That is *exactly* what I'm talking about.

edit: damn, that corvus ship looks cool. I could see that as a medium Serco gunship, or a Corvus special ;)

Also from the first three star wars films the N-1 Naboo fighter, even with its simple design, is another good example of inversion. Like the Maud, engines don't always have to be behind the cockpit.

couple more than 2000 tri's though...:)

Heh, point taken Myko. Despite that model specifically wouldn't work, I'm aiming more for design example.

two more, inspired by phaserlight's post...

http://www.myklittle.co.uk/stuff/elite/Itani_Hammer.jpg

http://www.myklittle.co.uk/stuff/elite/Serco_Scorpion.jpg

gotta get working on texturing them now...its the bit I hate most.

/me Kicks himself in the ass for not making a model and getting ALL this attention.

P.S. Anyone up for making an "Arwing" from Star Fox? Ill post a pic
http://www.vgmuseum.com/images/snes01/01/starfox.html

Pic 1: the Arwing is behind EVERYONe Pic 2: Up top is Arwing.

Very inspiring designs so far, people. I especially like the Scarab and The Hammer.

Inspiring enough to get me to go get my old copy of 3ds max and try my hand at these.

I'll have some submissions soon.

Just uploading a design that I came up with in class today... I probably could have spent a bit more time on it than I did, but for 20 minutes of spare time that I have today... not too bad.

http://www.evula.org/virtualgoo/vendetta/short_range_fighter.jpg

Anyone up for making an "Arwing" from Star Fox? Ill post a pic
http://www.vgmuseum.com/images/snes01/01/starfox.html

Pic 1: the Arwing is behind EVERYONe Pic 2: Up top is Arwing.

P.S. Im sorry harry, But i like Crippled's Shortrange fighter design.

I would think Myko's Hammer ship would be a UIT ship, not an Itani one. Additionaly, Itani ships would be unlikely to be asymetric for they use circular parts, not boxlike ones while UIT ships would mostly be asymetric, especially as they got larger, for they are thrown together with what is available. Adding to Phaserlights comments, once you finish your model you may want to try imagining it as part of other nations, or you may want to try to make it more clearly part of your chosen nation.

pirate_n00b: heh, that's fine. I do too. As long as these designs help the effort in some way, I'm fine with that.

On another note: w00t! FINALS ARE DONE! I'll have a few edits to existing models and maybe a new one or two up tonight. woohoo!

yay! tonight is almost over! oh no! where are the designs! work faster!

It's only 6:09 PM. Shush.

erm no

its 9:18 pm

Then I've still got 2 hours, 42 minutes.

In any case, I've made a version of the Hermes with a larger cockpit, as per suggestions in the Short Range Fighter thread.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v178/Dimpfinator/Hermes2.jpg

The cockpit can't get much bigger than that, IMO. I'll try making the rest of the ship smaller.

/me screames for textures

textures! textures! textures!

I'll get around to textures once I've made a satisfactory ship. ¬_¬

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v178/Dimpfinator/Hermes3.jpg

It's much more of a snub fighter now.

All of my Sintle.net images have been temporarily taken down due to a change in web hosts. Please bear with me while this happens.