Vessel Earthship ARK from "The Starlost"

[Luke Reichelt]

This is something that I proposed a few years back, but which never really got off the ground. Earthship ARK is the name of a generation ship from the 1970s Canadian sci-fi series The Starlost. It contains the last remnants of humanity after an unspecified disaster renders the solar system uninhabitable in the late 23rd century. As stated in my earlier post, the show's premise was solid but it suffered from a very messy production, resulting in a substandard end product.

Linked below is a 3D model of the spacecraft available for download at 3D Warehouse. For reference, the rectangular midsection is 320 kilometres long, according to the series bible.

https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/b7a45aa2e84fbb5cd12bb80a6393349c/Starlost-Ark

 

[gattispilot]

here it is it .obj. You got a lot of editing to do.
mat file:https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SGmqMMMk2Ur03ow30u2QoFSF0kbPM3vj
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1b3WyYiif05mcmkCcJ0aSkL1IAjzT6EC6

 

[llarian]

It first appeared in the movie "Silent Running". I don't have the site readily at hand but IIRC there may be an old addon on the FlightSim site.

Edit:

Even better. The Valley Forge is on OrbitHangar: [ame="https://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=6167"]Valley_Forge[/ame]

 

[gattispilot]

It is a different ship than silent running. It was similar though with the domes,....

 

[Luke Reichelt]

here it is it .obj. You got a lot of editing to do.
mat file:https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SGmqMMMk2Ur03ow30u2QoFSF0kbPM3vj
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1b3WyYiif05mcmkCcJ0aSkL1IAjzT6EC6

Well, I know very little about mesh-making, so that's a task best suited to someone else.

 

[gattispilot]

Well let me see what I can do. I can make a mesh for I will let you make a cfg,.....

 

[gattispilot]

Well I try to get it to work. There are issues though. There is a lot of details parts. And for some reason all did not get made into the mesh.
in orbiter you can see the detail on the main body but only the rear had it.

This is what I get in Anim8or

You can see the main body and bottom of domes have a lot of detail parts

I think the way to do it is make simple dome bottoms maybe texture the parts in. Do the same for the main body.

Since I can open in meshwizard I can't get a size to scale it. How big should this be?

 

[jedidia]

That mesh seems waaaay too high-poly for a vessel... How many triangles does this thing have? :blink:

 

[gattispilot]

That mesh seems waaaay too high-poly for a vessel... How many triangles does this thing have? :blink:

YES. But it was a convert and then I reduce some. Like I said I think I may just reduce to domes bases and main body and maybe texture the other parts

 

[llarian]

According to one model that was made (49 in. long at 1:650 scale) that would make it 2,654.167 feet in length.

 

[gattispilot]

So just the domes and bases are 5 groups 279081 vertices per group 349278 triangles per group

Redid the domes and scaled it and so we get:

Triangles:53108

 

[jedidia]

Triangles:53108

In total? Nice job, that's a totally acceptable polycount for something like Orbiter where you don't expect dozens of the things to show up in a scene. :thumbup:

 

[gattispilot]

In total? Nice job, that's a totally acceptable polycount for something like Orbiter where you don't expect dozens of the things to show up in a scene. :thumbup:

Thanks. Yes that is the total.

 

[Luke Reichelt]

According to one model that was made (49 in. long at 1:650 scale) that would make it 2,654.167 feet in length.

Actually, it was even bigger. As I stated above, the series bible (by noted sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison) indicated that the rectangular midsection is supposed to be nearly 200 miles, or 320 kilometres, long. I imagine therefore that this thing weighs about as much as a medium-sized moon such as Miranda or Proteus.

 

[gattispilot]

Well this one about 808 meters long
It has a simple cfg so who ever wants to add thrust have at it:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bKfOx3KkO5HZZZxt9M34yOJFHl7qKKXe

 

[Luke Reichelt]

Okay, I've added thrust parameters to the configuration file. I just wish I knew how to resize the mesh and make the vessel as big as Ellison intended.

 

[gattispilot]

Meshwizard. I can resize. How big do u want it

 

[Luke Reichelt]

Meshwizard. I can resize. How big do u want it

As I stated earlier, it's supposed to be 320,000 metres long.

 

[gattispilot]

Try this one:

for my cfg
MeshName = arkresized
Size = 1500

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TbBZbfWZ3XmNzY40czWtbakQXs_x0e3X

 

[Luke Reichelt]

That's very good, gattispilot! Now I just need help with one more thing. One of the scenarios I created for the vessel has it at the Earth-Moon L1 Lagrange point at 23:36 hours GMT on January 26, 2290. The question is, what are the correct orbital parameters for placing it in that place at that time in the scenario file?

Oh, and another thing - If you're interested, there's another thread that I created that includes the links to some 3D models for various spacecraft from the BBC series Blake's 7.