3D Spaceships for Stars & Lasers

Well I have been playing with the 3D program again and have been testing out what it can do ( or should I say what I can do! )

Well after a few hours of fiddling about trying to understand what everything does and how to manipulate the 3D blocks I have put together a few simple spaceships…

I still need to get these printed out to see what they look like once printed but on the screen they don’t look too bad, ok they are a little blocky but for me that’s not too much of a problem.

I kind of like the idea of huge lumps of ship powering through space, and they do look like they would be able to survive a battle.

I started off with a basic slim design and started added small blocks to build up a basic ship and found that I actually liked what I had.

And after a couple more hours of adding small amounts of detail I ended up with what could be a Light Cruiser in Stars & Lasers.

Then once I had the basic shape I started to alter this to make other ships, first off I took away a few sections and made a Frigate, I think that I may add a few extra bits to this basic model and increasing its size a little to make a Destroyer, I could even make it slightly smaller and make a Corvette.

Then I went back to the first basic ship and made it bigger, adding extra details along both sides to make the ship look different and bulkier, this will be a Heavy Cruiser.

Once the Heavy Cruiser was done I wanted to make a big ship, this was going to be a Battleship so I made it a lot wider and again added more details along both sides to really bulk the ship out and what I finished up with looked good as a big solid looking battleship.

The last ship I wanted to try and make was going to be a Carrier, this ship had to be big and have some sort of launch bay for its fighters, what I decided on doing was to start with the basic design again and just add a launch bay onto its side, I quite liked the idea of the launch bay slung onto the side of a big ship so this was fairly easy to do… although I am not 100% happy with the launch bay itself, I am not sure about the shape of the opening, so this may change.

I might try a couple more designs for the launch bay and see which looks best.

So here is a group shot to try and show the sizes of these ships, and just to give you an idea, the biggest ship is 100mm long and 50mm wide approximately.

I will try printing a few of them out on my old 3D printer just so I have an idea of how big they actually come out, this will help see if the sizes are right or need adjusting.

Well I am pleased with these first attempts at producing 3D spaceship models, I can’t wait to see what they actually look like as printed models.

Producing the models was quite difficult, but the more I use the program the more things are getting easier.

I found adding the details on both sides was a real pain, manipulating the blocks in the program is not as easy as I would like, I wish there was a quick simple way of flipping an object vertically or horizontally.

You can spin objects around but it is a bit fiddly and I always seem to spin the object the wrong way to start with!

Any way once I can get these printed and painted up, I will put some pictures up to show what they look like once finished.

I have done some more work on these ships after seeing comments on Facebook, and I came up with a couple more options for the carrier version.

This carrier doesn’t look too bad, I do like the double launch bays.
The carrier this time has the launch bay slung underneath, makes the ship look more compact.

I am waiting for the first 3D prints to be done to see how these ships come out, when they are done I will put up some pictures.

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4 Comments

    • Mac

      Glad you liked them.

      I think that the extra launch bay might work.. mmm I never thought of that, thanks.

      I was thinking about releasing some STL files of ships at some point, but I was thinking that I would need to get a lot better at designing them and get a lot better at using the program first.

      Mac

  1. Joe Dokes

    You might want to release some customization bits– different sensor pods, radar dishes, cameras, visible weapons, etc. These are very serviceable as ships but all of them are basically the same thing repeated in different lengths. Just a suggestion.

    • Mac

      Hi Joe,

      That’s a good idea thank you, I had thought about doing some turret weapons after chatting with a friend, but I hadn’t thought about the other stuff like dishes etc. they might be fun to do.

      And do I get the “same” feel to these ships because that’s what I wanted for them, they are meant to be the sort of simple ship that could be mass produced simply and quickly ( in a sci-fi setting ) these were really just for me, but it has been suggested that other people might like them as well so the added extras will be good.

      Mac

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