Mitchell-Hyundine SA-23 Aurora class 'StarFury'

[Scarecrovv]

Mitchell-Hyundine SA-23 Aurora class 'StarFury'

Strewth! When did we stop just calling them Starfuries?

Anyway, after having done an (admittedly brief) trawl of the Orbiter addon download site, I only found the later (and frankly nowhere near as cool) Thunderbolt so I decided to have a go myself.

This mesh is largely finished - aside from some smoothing issues - and currently stands at 11,500 triangles. This is about three times as many polys as I'd normally allow for a realtime model but I've wanted to model one of these buggers for absolutely years so I'm being naughty and indulging myself. If I release it publicly, I'm hoping that Orbiter handles LOD models one way or another so that I can make some severly chopped down versions for when it's not filling the screen.
It'll also allow me to give people the option of having a smaller download that doesn't make their PC choke

Anyways, texturing next... oh boy!

 

[xeoncat]

OMG! that is really cool looking

 

[Coolhand]

Fantastic! It looks awesome for the triangle count, in fact that count still sounds real low considering you're only going to be using it in space, and there's not that many other triangles floating around with you in space in orbiter. Don't see how this is going to choke up anyones PC, unless you're planning on adding hundreds of them into a scene...? perhaps with 'other' things? Can't wait to see the texture job.

 

[Scarecrovv]

Okay, here's a WiP of the texturing job. The pilot and cockpit are largely done bar some fannying about once I've spent a few hours staring at it.
The fuselage and engine have their ambient occlusion maps applied and some quick and dirty panneling. I need to try and balance it all nicely in Photoshop now.

Crow

 

[Scarecrovv]

Mini Update.

Engine base texture done. I've slapped some placeholder markings on the wings too just to see what they look like.



Crow

 

[CigDriver]

One of my favorite Sci-fi craft. I always thought the starfury was one of the most realistic designs on tv/movies. She looks fantastic! Keep up the excellent work!

A quick question, are you doing a custom dll or using spacecraft3?

 

[Scarecrovv]

I haven't even thought about that yet. (I don't even know what Spacecraft3 is )
Whilst this won't be a full scale addon to the magnitude of the Delta Glider or the Ravenstar, I'm hoping to at least have it's thrusters working properly. I really need to know if Orbiter uses LOD models and Mip maps (that are built into the texture files) too and if so, how?

Of course I'd LOVE to do a virtual cockpit too but I fear that that would require coding which I simply cannot do

 

[jedidia]

Denn z.B. das macht überhaupt "keinen Sinn" (die „kann“ man nicht mal essen/oder zumindest tötet man sie meistens nicht zum Essen)

No, doesn't. Indeed, Orbiter doesn't support ANY Maps at all apart from standard textures. I use to do a bit of bump on the texture in photoshop, since not even grayscale bump-maps are suported...

There might be a possibility that DirectX handels embeded Mip-maps all by itself, I don't know about that. The Orbiter Graphics engine as is is very rudimentary and doesn't do anything of the sort.

 

[CigDriver]

Spacecraft3 is what you'll want to use if you do not want to do custom code. It is created by Vinka and allows you to create more advanced spaceships via a config file. youcan find it here:
http://users.swing.be/vinka/

It will allow you to set up your ship with any animation you might want, a basic VC (with up to two MFDs and a HUD), and of course thrusters, main and hover engines. The documentation is pretty good, but make sure you get the full package and the patch, the latest version is not included in the main download. It took me a bit to figure that one out!

 

[Scarecrovv]

Wow! That's fantastic! I'll easily be able to do a virtual cockpit with this. That's all I need really. There's no animation on the StarFuries and they can't land and don't dock in the traditional sense - so they're pretty simple.

Thanks a lot.

 

[Scarecrovv]

Another quick update on the Starfury. Here's the finished model with a base texture in Orbiter. I've figured out the ini file and gotten the thruster glows in place and working. She flies about. Now I need to finish up the base texture and do some specific variations (Ivanova, Sinclair, Sheridan, Black Omega, Presidential Escort etc...) and more importantly, the virtual cockpit.

It's ages since I modelled a spaceship. I'm really enjoying it!

Crow

 

[cljohnston]

This is the add-on I've been dreaming of since I first found Orbiter (in 2001)!
Too bad I don't have a PC anymore!

The thruster placement is gonna be tricky, but here's a cool clip from the episode "All Alone in the Night" that shows off ALL the Starfury's thrusters at once!
My favorite maneuver in the whole show!

Hope this helps.

 

[Scarecrovv]

Thanks for the clip, man. That's excellent. The thrusters are all in place and look remarkably like the ones in the clip - they aren't however as powerful. It doesn't turn anywhere near as fast as that yet!