Vessel Finishing what stevecast Started

[Luke Reichelt]

At some point, I feel it would be nice to see someone finish what stevecast started with regards to the various Babylon 5 vessels, as he disappeared from the Orbiter scene before completing his project, leaving numerous vessels like the Hyperion-class heavy cruiser and Nova-class dreadnought as well as most Minbari vessels and pretty much all Shadow vessels without a functional version for Orbiter. Most of the meshes he used are by bcelestia and can easily be found on the Celestia Motherlode: http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/fic_babylon5.html

Since I know virtually nothing about mesh-making, this is a task best suited to someone else. Also, stevecast used spacecraft3 for all of his add-ons, just in case any of you were wondering. By the way, here are the specific vessels that I would most like to see made available for Orbiter:

Nova-class Earth Alliance dreadnought
Hyperion-class Earth Alliance heavy cruiser (stevecast indicated at the time of his disappearance that he seemed to be having a few problems with the mesh)
EAS Narcissus
EAS Tempest
Monsoon-class Earth Alliance assault gunboat
Olympus-class Earth Alliance corvette
Earth Alliance Shadow hybrid
Shadow battle crab
Shadow scout
Shadow fighter
Shadow carrier
Shadow helix
Shadow looter
Tinashi-class Minbari frigate
Sharlin-class Minbari war cruiser
Troligan-class Minbari assault cruiser
Morshin-class Minbari carrier
Scarab-class Centauri transport
Balvarian-class Centauri carrier
Kutai-class Centauri gunship
Corvan-class Centauri scout
Corvan-class gunboat variant
Bin'Tak-class Narn dreadnought
Narn outpost
Narn military base
Narn transport
Drakh advanced cruiser
Vorlon freighter
Vorlon corvette
Psi Corps mothership
Technomage ship
Thirdspace capital ship
Thirdspace fighter
Soul Hunter scout
Triad vessel
Walkers of Sigma 957 vessel
Torvalus vessel
Krishiac Lord vessel
Mindrider vessel

 

[Urwumpe]

I would also include the jump gates to the list. Not sure if we have any. Also those jump gates could be used as anchor for more dynamic scenarios, its its able to spawn vessels on an event.

And do we already have a White Star?

In terms of telling how those vessels should behave: I still have the minimal set of rulebooks of the Babylon 5 Wars tabletop around, including the Ships of the Fleet supplement with all canonized table-top data, which could be used as base there for Orbiter.

Sadly I started getting into it only months before Warner revoked the licence and during a time when my bank account was made of quantum foam, otherwise I would have ordered some more stuff during the final sale...

 

[Luke Reichelt]

And do we already have a White Star?

Yes, there already is a White Star available, plus the advanced version and the smaller Blue Star.

 

[jedidia]

Hmmmm... do we have any automated 3ds to msh conversion tools? If yes, the meshes from celestia could be converted without any modeling experince (with the authors permissions, at least).
Orbiter implementation is probably best done with VesselBuilder these days. That's even easier to use than Spacecraft3.

 

[Urwumpe]

Hmmmm... do we have any automated 3ds to msh conversion tools? If yes, the meshes from celestia could be converted without any modeling experince (with the authors permissions, at least).
Orbiter implementation is probably best done with VesselBuilder these days. That's even easier to use than Spacecraft3.

I am not sure if automated would be the best option, but: It sure works well with Blender and Blender can be scripted, so it would be likely no big issue for somebody with the needed Python and Blender skills to provide a script to automatically process the files.

I wanted to build a B5WarsVessel once, but right now, anything like that is shoved back. My Nucleon framework has now priority zero, because I could build all other such generic sci-fi vessels on it. Not sure though, if it will be easier to use than Vesselbuilder, its a completely different approach and might require some change in thinking about add-ons.

 

[gattispilot]

Converting from 3ds can be challenging. Maybe cause I use Anim8or? But you get double sided materials,.... issues.

 

[Luke Reichelt]

Converting from 3ds can be challenging. Maybe cause I use Anim8or? But you get double sided materials,.... issues.

Yeah, stevecast indicated that he had problems getting the Hyperion-class mesh to display properly in Anim8or. Again, I know very little about mesh-making, so I have no idea what to do about that.

By the way, if you want to create scenarios featuring these vessels in their natural habitat, you can download my Epsilon Eridani, Centauri Prime, Narn Homeworld, Minbar, Z'ha'dum, and Vorlon Homeworld add-ons.

 

[Urwumpe]

Would be good to get the Hyperion class working, its pretty much the true workhorse of the Earth Alliance fleet.

 

[gattispilot]

I may regret it. But do we have a 3ds version on the Hyperion? I will give it a shot

 

[Luke Reichelt]

I may regret it. But do we have a 3ds version on the Hyperion? I will give it a shot

Yes, there is a 3DS file for the Hyperion-class, part of the package for that vessel at the Celestia Motherlode.

 

[gattispilot]

I was able to load into Anim8or. But get out of memory bounds and error writing file when I export to .Msh.

 

[Luke Reichelt]

I was able to load into Anim8or. But get out of memory bounds and error writing file when I export to .Msh.

That's what stevecast said he was having issues with.

 

[gattispilot]

I guess it is too large for Anim8or? I wonder what if it was made of a couple of meshes.

 

[jedidia]

It's probably the vertex indexing limit per group of 65535. Meaning you probably don't have to cut it into multiple meshes, but you might have to cut up the largest groups into multiple groups.

 

[Buck Rogers]

I'm trying to save some old projects with .3ds files without much luck, so this made me curious.
I've managed to import the Hyperion into Blender, and the mesh is clean (far better than any of my salvage attempts!), normals look good too. BUT, all smoothing is gone, replaced with multiple vertices, materials and even UV maps are there but texture links are broken, also the mesh is broken up into hundreds of objects, and of course orientation, origin, and scaling problems.
Doable, and the mesh detail is very good, and with extra bump/ light maps, animations, etc... could look very nice, but a lot of work!
@gattispilot: What do you get by import? Or is it even worse?
After initial tinkering ( deleted dupl. vert. and some texture linking) direct export to orbiter:

(of course it doesn't look like this in Blender, wrong origin problems)
@gattispilot: If it looks even worse your end I might take this on ( I know you've got alot of other projects going)
@Luke Reichelt: sent you a PM.

 

[jedidia]

Yeah, that looks exactly like what happens when you have too many vertices in a group...

 

[Buck Rogers]

That causes the strange warping, things in the wrong place is the origins. It'l need a rework from front to back ( bow to stern!).

 

[Buck Rogers]

getting there...

 

[gattispilot]

I got it to work. I imported into anim8or. Just split the mesh into 6 meshes. Loaded Vesselbuilder and add the 6 meshes in. Might need to reorient

 

[Luke Reichelt]

I got it to work. I imported into anim8or. Just split the mesh into 6 meshes. Loaded Vesselbuilder and add the 6 meshes in. Might need to reorient

Remember, I use Orbiter 2010, with which Vessel Builder does not function. Plus, I think it's best to wait until Buck Rogers is finished refining the mesh on his own.