[WIP] Walshicus' Ships

[Walshicus]

Hey all, been lurking for a while and figured I'd show some of the various ships I've built recently for a Stellaris project. First up are a trio of Denobulan vessels, using the Barzai medical ship as a template:



Luckily some decent views of the ship were available now that Eaglemoss have released their model. Here it is in Blender, close to the final version that would be exported into Stellaris:

In game-terms, the vessel forms a "Support Wing", a group of more than one ship that function as a single unit. The ship is scaled to 50m - probably larger than it should be from the episode - which means even at maximum zoom the vessels appear fairly small.

 

[Walshicus]

Next up was a larger Light Cruiser, the Ruzan class, scaled to 216m:



Here I got to play around a bit more in terms of design, bringing the lower "wings" out and adding a command deck in place of the cockpit from the Barzai.

 

[Walshicus]

And finally the Phelox class Command Cruiser:

This expanded the primary command deck and added a secondary near the rear of the ship, repositioned the wings and added a large shuttle/fighter bay to the front of the ship.



I wouldn't say the texturing on these is the best in the world, but I'm fairly happy with how the larger ships turned out.

 

[CABAL]

Welcome to the site! Great work on the models! I hope you'll post more stuff here in the futre.

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:
Welcome to MSFC! those are very good models, I like the textures aswell

Edit by CABAL: It most definitely never said anything other than MSFC. Definitely.

 

[Hellkite]

DA ??

@Chiletrek have you been hitting the Terremoto early I see that or the Chicha it seems or maybe pisco sour .

Welcome to MSFC! is what our resident toaster ment

 

[Chiletrek]

DA ??

@Chiletrek have you been hitting the Terremoto early I see that or the Chicha it seems or maybe pisco sour .

Welcome to MSFC! is what our resident toaster ment

Oh, For the Lords of Kobol!! Please Lord of Death can you change DA for MSFC? Please?

 

[Majestic]

Wow awesome work, love it when someone fleshes out a full fleet of a basically non existent fleet.

Welcome to MSFC too, look forward to seeing more.

 

[Walshicus]

Wow awesome work, love it when someone fleshes out a full fleet of a basically non existent fleet.

Welcome to MSFC too, look forward to seeing more.

Thanks!

Yeah, I'm a sucker for the minor races' ships in Trek.

 

[Majestic]

I remember Avon I believe it was did a whole Hirogen race years ago that was also pretty cool.

 

[Terra_Inc]

Well done, those are some really cool ships!

I remember Avon I believe it was did a whole Hirogen race years ago that was also pretty cool.

Yep, it's pretty great. His Caretaker mod pack is IMHO the greatest collection of random minor race's ships. And do not forget Dan1025's lovely Vulcan race mod, one of his older works I think, but still very good work.

 

[Walshicus]

I really like Atolm's minor race stuff too. Actually, his Chalnoth concept art was so good I ended up getting one of them modelled.

Atolm's original concept art (colourised by myself):

Pre-texturing:

In-engine:


Love how he channelled a mixture of Klingon and Talarian designs in the concept.

 

[Walshicus]

But yeah, took that design and made a smaller Scout ship from it:


And a larger Battleship:

 

[Majestic]

That's pretty awesome stuff. Love the creativity behind this.

 

[Walshicus]

Started working on this at the weekend. I kind of liked how the Kreetassan ship looked in Enterprise:

Starting to break the model down:

Texturing:


And finally, how it appears in-engine:

The ship wasn't named in the show, but I'm referring to it as the Deelos class Scout, using some of Memory Alpha's Kreetassan Language detail.

Not entirely sure how to start the Light Cruiser and Command Cruiser kitbashes I want to make from it, but I guess we'll see!

 

[kjc733]

That is some good, and fast, work.
I can see I'll need to keep an eye on this thread.
Out of curiosity, what sort of poly count are you working to with these?

 

[Walshicus]

Thanks! To be honest I recognise that a lot of my geometry ends up a little bit... sloppy, even if it looks reasonable in-engine. Hopefully that'll get better with experience! I'm starting to work through the Drex assets that people don't seem to have modelled already, so plenty of practice opportunities there.


The Denobulan ships averaged just under 8k tris, about 16k for the Chalnoth and about 18k for the Kreetassans. There's a soft-limit of about 40k vertices per material in the engine I'm importing into, but TBH I don't really hit that ever.

 

[Majestic]

That's some quality stuff.

Always a pleasure seeing these kind of designs coming to life.

 

[kjc733]

Thanks! To be honest I recognise that a lot of my geometry ends up a little bit... sloppy, even if it looks reasonable in-engine. Hopefully that'll get better with experience! I'm starting to work through the Drex assets that people don't seem to have modelled already, so plenty of practice opportunities there.

Your own eye will always be the most critical of stuff like that. If the finished product looks fine then it is "good enough." You should only really worry if mesh geometry problems start to cause issues with the texture mapping or if they are obviously noticeable. Remember, a lot of people around here started out modelling for A2 where we aim for less than about 3k polygons, so most of us know the compromises that sometimes have to be made.

The Denobulan ships averaged just under 8k tris, about 16k for the Chalnoth and about 18k for the Kreetassans. There's a soft-limit of about 40k vertices per material in the engine I'm importing into, but TBH I don't really hit that ever.

That's a nice level to work to. It gives you the freedom to accurately recreate the geometry and add the important physical detailing without goading you into modelling everything. Something what is easily forgotten (and I'm guilty of it too now I'm not really modelling for A2) is that efficiency is a good thing. There's no point creating a 10 million polygon mesh if the same thing can be done with ten thousand. I sometimes look at some renders and wonder how the creator managed to make it so poly heavy.

Any way, keep up the good work. It's nice to see something different.

 

[Walshicus]

Was able to kitbash out a Light Cruiser and Battleship from the first model.

From left to right:
Kelaas class Battleship
Seely class Light Cruiser
Deelos class Scout


And same from top to bottom:


And the front:


I'll probably work on a single model for their colony/transport/construction ships. Not quite sure how to handle that yet, but we'll see!

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:
It is very cool how you were able to define a design style for that fleet!

 

[Majestic]

These are awesome a lot of creativity has gone into this.

 

[Terra_Inc]

It's all good stuff! That battleship is particularly impressive, looks powerful.

 

[Walshicus]

Tried my hand at an adaptation of the "Vridyat" class Hur'q ship, as modelled in STO. Off the bat realised I preferred it rotated 90 degrees on the y axis:

Tried a fair few variations of textures that I wanted to match a wasp-nest... ish feel for the outer hull, but couldn't quite get them looking right. Ended up mixing one of the wasp-nest textures over the top of an existing metal texture I had, which worked okay.
If I had time to do it again, I'd probably make the maroon-coloured solid metal areas additions rather than subtractions.

 

[Majestic]

Awesome work mate. Loving the quality of your work.

 

[Walshicus]

Thanks! One day I'll find the time to learn Substance Painter or something, finally move move on from the amateur leagues.



Spent the afternoon on a Lower Decks run today. Not 100% screen accurate, but given the size of the ship I'm fairly happy with how this Pakled Battle Harpy turned out:

 

[Walshicus]

In-engine:

 

[Majestic]

These are awesome and well done. Loving the textures.

 

[dvatreknerd314]

I'd love to see what you can do with this:


This was the ship found adrift by the NX01 when it entered the Delphic Expanse and started experiencing anomalies. It's got a nice blend of Starfleet/Cardassian influences and a lot of character and potential on its own for kitbashes.

 

[Walshicus]

Hmmm... yeah okay. Challenge accepted!

I'd started work on a Starfleet transwarp conduit based on a design I saw from Priority One a while back: