Akira Class WIP

[Ethoir]

I've been tinkering on and off with bringing the Akira Class to StarMade.

As seen in Star Trek: First Contact, a few Deep Space Nine episodes, and at least one Voyager episode.

The finished product will be made available as an empty hull. No shields, no power, no engines. Just a plex door to get in and out and lights so one may see where one is going. The project is not a 1:1 scale reproduction.

This screenshot displays my version of the ship which has "slices" in the back to represent where deck placement would otherwise be. Shields and power are in case pirate raids spawn and I'm busy picking at the corners of the ship outside of the shop's range.

 

[GaeasSon]

...as soon as it finishe spawning in? I like how you are incorporating shields and power into the core structure, not as an afterthought.

 

[Ethoir]

Oh its not a finished hull. This is about 20 \"slices\" of the model that have been completed so far.

The shields and power are just to keep pirates from picking at it while I work. It won\'t have anything of the kind when its released to the public so the player will have the freedom to outfit it to their liking.

Fun fact. The voxel converted model I am working with is very asymetrical. I\'m adjusting where I can. ^^

 

[therimmer96]

Any updates?

 

[Ethoir]

Not many. I\'m distracted by guild activities in another game. I\'m crawling along trying to make sure it stays fairly symmetrical. And I am trying out a tool tentatively called \"SMEdit\". Its a nice toy, though the imported binvox gets kind of castrated if I move the core to a more proper and more front-ish location (a chunk of the rear of the ship goes missing and won\'t load in).



I\'m working on it though. Bit by bit. This isn\'t just a project I could take a few hours on. I have to go over it layer by layer after its done too and smooth it out with some wedges.

 

[Ethoir]

I\'ve managed to get the base hull done. Its not pretty (smoothed with hull wedges) but its there. Screenshots will follow tomorrow.

 

[Ethoir]

As promised, here are the screenshots.



I still have a lot of work to do in correcting assymetrical parts of the ship by hand and painting the exterior with new hull colors (being based on a mesh that didn\'t have textures, the tools I used couldn\'t color it). This will be the most time-intensive part of the project.



Length: 285

Height: 61

Width: 237

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Good job so far! I\'m a hardcore Trekkie but I have yet to meet a build of manageable size fitting my taste (and the fact I can furnish the insides thus even make it PvP-capable helps with that a lot!)

May I suggest using lava for the red(ish) and ice crystals for the blue parts of the warp pods? (you know, plasma and stuff) Also, red plexlights look kinda OK as impulse drives.

 

[Ethoir]

First thing first. The interior needs more hallowing out. The ship is an imported binvox that in turn was a somewhat inaccurately converded 3ds max model whose textures weren\'t included (so my tools couldn\'t import those colors). Once I hollow it out more properly I can begin coloring the exterior. Then comes building the interior.



I already have a head start on the interior. The bridge floor has been laid and the hangar deck was just laid out. Thing is according to the MSD I have, the warp core is near the middle of the ship thus the engine room goes right through the middle of the hangar deck. I need to work out how to put that in and have it make sense.

 

[therimmer96]

The information for this ship i have seen before indicates that the akira class has two warp cores, powering one of the massive nacceles. They are located near the end of the \"arms\" that extrude from the saucer section

 

[Ethoir]

Except that is a non-cannon source. Beyond what was listed in the most official looking MSDs, there isn\'t a lot of data about the interior. The Starmade replica will have the bare minimum of interiors: bridge, hangar deck, engineering and storage. And since \"turbolifts\" aren\'t possible I will use stairwells and ramps to get around.



Current progress: Some more fine-cleaning of excess hull done. Added glass dome, lava, and blue-white grille to left nacelle. Navigational lights added to saucer and forward hangar door area. Impulse lights (red) added to left rear catamaran thingie.

 

[GaeasSon]

I\'ve been building mine like physical ships, lay the keel, lay the ribs, fill the gaps. I\'m not sure I\'d hollow out my ships exactly, but something like this would make it a LOT easier to get the proportions right on the initial spars.

 

[GaeasSon]

how do you set the ship-block?

 

[Ethoir]

That was the hard part for a while. The tools I use convert a voxelized model into plain grey hull blocks and plops the ship core in what it considers the middle of the model based on its dimension size. For this it kept popping the core in open space behind the aft shuttlebay. Now obviously that isn\'t a good thing for a ship to have its core in the open like that.



I had to do a lot of poking around before I was told how involving lighting up the axis and that its \"move core\" feature did not operate on the xyz coordinates of the ship but more on a \"move this many blocks in this direction\" principle. Once that was worked out I had to put a lot of work on hold because the released version of the tool at that time had a very hard time saving the ship as a blueprint properly. In fact if I left the core in its default position, it worked fine though it was very much nor in the right place. if I moved it to where I wanted it, the tool saved the blueprint with the rear-most hundred blocks chopped off like they didn\'t exist. Found out it was because the programmer\'s code couldn\'t handle \"superchunks\" properly for which the missing part of the ship was stored. When that was fixed, well.. Here we are.



It also doesn\'t exactly hollow out the ship properly, leaving blocks in the ship\'s interior up against the hull which is why I keep referencing hollowing it out further. I\'m removing the extraneous blocks so it is more truely hollow prior to putting in anything that would be considered an interior (besides the skeletal bridge where the core is which itself isn\'t centered properly in this version nor can I force it without shortening the ship by 1 whole slice somehow).



If you\'ve got time and skype I will show you what I did to move the core. Just PM me or something.

 

[Ethoir]

Status update. Video format! Enjoy.



http://youtu.be/i-GydvPWFNA

 

[Incap]

So, I asked in the video, but what are the chances of a Prometheus being built?

 

[Ethoir]

Not great. Docking being broken as it is at the moment, it would not have a functional shuttlebay if it was going to actually have a split-hull design which itself poses problems because it would need a lot of space divoted to docking enhancers which might need more room than it can afford.



If its a single hull design, I\'m still not sure. It would take a long time I guess, anf those engines being what they are I\'d go nuts getting the OCD part of me to calm down about details. And I\'d need a 3ds model to work off of, or an obj. So yeah that\'s a bit of work and odds aren\'t great I\'d get very far before slacking off. I procrastinate enough with this Akira project as it is.

 

[Incap]

That\'s a shame, but I\'m not too disappointed. When I have free time, I might try it myself.

 

[Tomino_sama]

latest screens look awesome!!



can\'t wait to see the completed ship!

 

[Katrina]

I\'m very interested in this project and can\'t wait for a download. Will there be a hull-only version for the DIY-shipwrenchs? :-D