Project G42-200 StarLiner

[HarvesteR]

Oh, wow, I never realized how pointy the Skylon's nose actually is...

Won't that cause shock-cone trouble when hypersonic? Or does it have some sort of really tight, safe-spot flight envelope?

Anyways, not to derail the thread... VC and external model are shaping up good :thumbup:

Having been modelling for the last 3 days myself, I can surelly attest how extremely helpful the SpaceNavigator is.

It's a device of probe-like awesomeness

I know Moach's got one too, since I only bought mine once I used his a bit...
I should have bought the thing years ago!!

Anyways, I wish I had more spare time... I'd certainly help out with the modelling.

Cheers

 

[Urwumpe]

Oh, wow, I never realized how pointy the Skylon's nose actually is...

Won't that cause shock-cone trouble when hypersonic? Or does it have some sort of really tight, safe-spot flight envelope?

Pointy is generally better than blunt at hypersonic speeds, but it also means more heat - in theory speaking, you have more shock fronts concentrating on a smaller area. If drag is your primary concern, you select a pointy nose, if heating is a bigger problem, you go blunt. Most launchers are a compromise, of a ogive nose (= low drag) with a rather blunt tip (no special heat shield material needed)

 

[Moach]

progress report...

the yet-not-seen underside - with gears extended and ramcaster door closed

too bad we can't export animations directly from max to Orbiter... but that's ok, procedural works quite well too :thumbup:

the rarely seen back side.. see the OMS nozzles?

notice how you can actually see through the ramcaster when it's open :hmm:
i've made it into a single large assembly, instead of two smaller ones... less weight, less drag


she's shaping up alright :thumbup: - i'm not done detailing those gears, as it you can probably see... still lots of stuff to do, but it's coming along nicely, i think

 

[Urwumpe]

Yes, I see the OMS - but both nozzles are spaced a bit far away, you could only make burns with both engines. If you would have them at the aft, you could also make single engine burns with minimal attitude and TVC deflections. In the current version, you would need to make the engines tilt excessively outward after one engine failed or has to be disabled.

 

[edsupagood]

She's really a beauty. Every time you post pictures of it, I fall more and more in love with it. Amazing work!! :thumbup:

 

[Moach]

Yes, I see the OMS - but both nozzles are spaced a bit far away, you could only make burns with both engines. If you would have them at the aft, you could also make single engine burns with minimal attitude and TVC deflections. In the current version, you would need to make the engines tilt excessively outward after one engine failed or has to be disabled.

i hadn't thought of that - that's actually a pretty good point
i think i'll reposition them... shouldn't be too hard either :thumbup:

 

[Urwumpe]

She's really a beauty. Every time you post pictures of it, I fall more and more in love with it. Amazing work!! :thumbup:

Every time I see it, I expect bomb bay doors opening below it. Must be cold war damages.

 

[Hlynkacg]

Appologies if you've already answered this but, is there a specific reason you choose to mount the fuselage above the wings?

Looking at that final head-on view it seems a little tall and flat-sided.

 

[Moach]

Appologies if you've already answered this but, is there a specific reason you choose to mount the fuselage above the wings?

Looking at that final head-on view it seems a little tall and flat-sided.

yes, there is a reason for that - that "wedge" separates the front upper inlet from the fuselage in a way that allows it to properly direct the shockwaves into the lower lip flap...
this is crucial for the high-performance RAMCASTER engine mounted there - if the fuselage were to blend straight into that inlet, it would severely interfere with the intake airflow... not what you'd want, right?

anyway, i reckon it looks awkward in that shot... and i think that's mostly because for modellings sake, the G42 is at zero pitch, unlike it would be when grounded, which would have it nosed-down a bit, it wouldn't look so weirdly tall then...

the nose wheel is already modelled about one meter higher than the rear trucks, so that gives us a few degrees negative static pitch :hmm:


let me get back to it...

---------- Post added at 12:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:24 AM ----------

ooh, i would have been scared back in the day... but i've grown smarter now...

we had a minor power surge back here, and my PC went down while Max had the G42's working file open...
the file was corrupted... would not open... i have no backup of the last several hours of work :blink:

but i have dropbox! - and it backs up every time i "ctrl+s"

without even breaking a sweat over the impounding doom that would have destroyed several hours of hard work, i went on to my dropbox page, pulled out the last saved version which was marked "18 minutes ago" and, whoohoo! - there it is!, file saved and working in all it's glory :thumbup:


so i'm taking this time to show my gratitude to this truly amazing piece of software that is dropbox! - if you don't have it yet, go get it!

back to work!

 

[Nistenf]

That was close! Nice to hear that you didn't lost it

 

[Moach]

That was close! Nice to hear that you didn't lost it

yeah, ever since the last year of college, i don't leave stuff like that to chance anymore... that was something i had to learn the "hard way" :lol:

---------- Post added at 06:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:22 PM ----------

ok, on with the fun stuff!

yep, you guessed it! - we're in :thumbup:

look at that...

as urwumpe suggested, OMS jets are now in the center fuselage... makes a lot more sense, indeed!


well, for now it does little more than stay in orbit and look cool...
but this means tomorrow i can already start adapting the code from the '100 into the new '200 craft :tiphat:
this is when the really fun part begins! we're not just modelling anymore - gents, we have ourselves a ship :thumbup:

 

[jangofett287]

cue celebrations, cheering and rum!:thumbup:

 

[Ark]

yeah, ever since the last year of college, i don't leave stuff like that to chance anymore... that was something i had to learn the "hard way" :lol:

You're not the only one, I've seen a lot of promising mod projects get torpedoed by lack of backups.

 

[HarvesteR]

Indeed. I well remember that sinking feeling of seeing the files containing weeks of hard work not wanting to open anymore!

Dropbox saves lives!! although it's not completely idiot-proof...

Last week someone yanked the main project folder out of dropbox, on another computer that was linked to the project, and on I went through the files structure 'undeleting' everything...

We have 5 months of 11-hours-a-day work in that project... Dropbox does indeed save lives.

Good to see it in Orbiter! don't get too carried away with the coding and forget the textures though... it's way easy to do that, and leave the less interesting parts behind...

Do check out that Flatiron plugin for 3Ds Max... no UV mapping, required... just setup materials for rendering, and bake it all onto a master texture

It's payware, but there is a 30-day trial, which should be well long enough to get a DVC baked into a texture

Cheers

 

[Izack]

Do check out that Flatiron plugin for 3Ds Max... no UV mapping, required... just setup materials for rendering, and bake it all onto a master texture

That would be a godsend for all the skinners around here. It would be great to see this ship in the colours of all sorts of airlines.

Although this 'prototype green' thing you've got now is nice, too.

 

[Moach]

That would be a godsend for all the skinners around here. It would be great to see this ship in the colours of all sorts of airlines.

Although this 'prototype green' thing you've got now is nice, too.

"prototype green" is exactly what i was going for... untill we have textures, that is :thumbup:

then i guess i'll have to do a multi-skin support setup, so you could make repaints, like for the XR series and stuff :hmm:


but worry not, this time i got a lot more going on for textures - that cockpit map is proving to be quite a treat now - it's a LOT easier to model a panel like that around a texture than it is to texture that panel later and make things line up by trial-and-error


let me get to it then...

 

[HarvesteR]

Flatiron is very good for baking multiple objects onto a single texture... the only problem is that you trade off control over your UV mesh for automation.

The auto-generated UV map isn't as easy to understand and paint over as a hand-made one... It's very handy for texturing DVCs and other finnicky areas, where no one would actually consider repainting, like wheel wells or the struts that hold the pilot's seat in place... :lol:

For the main UV map, I recommend doing the UV map manually first. Flatiron can then be used to just bake the material textures in, to provide a nice rendered base for the map, then do the livery colors and decals in photoshop or something. Then release the photoshop master file with the UV template and the 'bare' base so people can repaint it :thumbup:

Cheers

 

[Moach]

Flatiron is very good for baking multiple objects onto a single texture... the only problem is that you trade off control over your UV mesh for automation.

The auto-generated UV map isn't as easy to understand and paint over as a hand-made one... It's very handy for texturing DVCs and other finnicky areas, where no one would actually consider repainting, like wheel wells or the struts that hold the pilot's seat in place... :lol:

For the main UV map, I recommend doing the UV map manually first. Flatiron can then be used to just bake the material textures in, to provide a nice rendered base for the map, then do the livery colors and decals in photoshop or something. Then release the photoshop master file with the UV template and the 'bare' base so people can repaint it :thumbup:

Cheers

hmm, ok, but what about this - if you can't see it, why model it? - thus, no need to texture it :lol:

look:

you see how there are a lot of areas that are usually too dark, too far out of sight or just too un-interesting to model? (like roof, floor, back wall, etc...)

so for poly-count's sake, lets just consider that modern GPU's have about 10X as much pixel-power than they have vertex-power, and orbiter runs DX7, so poly count is a biggie.... texturing is also heavy, so why would we texture, or even model stuff that can't (shouldn't) be seen?

what you see above -looks- like a proper VC with all the shapes and contours that build up those panels, right? - wrong - it's actually just a couple of large black polygons filling up the space behind them - they're black, so you your mind fills up the gaps and then you "see" what you "think" is there :lol:

i do have some other strategically-placed panes that should get some texturing, making the illusion of a solid cabin even more so... but even now, at this unpolished, crude state, it already works to some extent...

the UCGO Arrow freighter relies heavily on this technique - have you noticed it has no floor, ceiling or back-wall in that little flight deck? - quite clever, saves textures, saves FPS, looks just as good as a "full" model (sometimes even better) - it's a win-win

---------- Post added at 12:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:07 AM ----------

ok, DVC is in as well... haven't done textures yet, but so far so good...

and here's it standing on the runway

it looks like it wants to take off... but hmm wait, we need engines for that first... more programng needs doing :lol:

---------- Post added at 01:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:26 PM ----------

just thought it looked cool, so i felt like sharing

 

[Hlynkacg]

You're right she looks a lot more proportional with her wheels on solid ground

That cockpit looks amazing.

 

[Moach]

You're right she looks a lot more proportional with her wheels on solid ground

That cockpit looks amazing.

thanks!

right now i'm working on a little pilot figure - i'm not gonna go for a DG-style full-model pilot... but i'm not going with the FSX-like ghost-naut either...

so on the "DVC pilot / no-pilot" discussion, here's what i find to be a pretty interesting solution - as in Lock On : Modern air Combat, i have modelled the upper thighs and torso of the pilot, no arms or hands... feet are too dark to be visible...

i find that this middle-ground solution makes for a nice "chair-not-empty" effect while still not imposing a static arms/hands mesh that doesn't correspont to, or even blocks your mouse inputs :thumbup:

by careful trimming of the FoV pan range, you never see the parts that would look odd, so immersion is not broken... i've got that working now - looks just right

---------- Post added at 06:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:17 PM ----------

as you can see, i'm now in the process of turning the cockpit map into an actual texture...


i still need to redo some things on the front panel... i got a rather low-res snapshot of it first time around... now i'm gonna have to correct that, but no biggie....


i do plan on keeping this somewhat "cartoony" line-drawing style... it's easy to make and looks quite pleasing - photoreal can wait a bit until we have more ship to deal with :lol:

look:

notice the pilots knees on the bottom - the other seat will have a fully modelled engineer sitting on it, and when you hit "tab" you'll switch seats and you should see a full model pilot on the right :thumbup: