Continue reading »]]> Once again I did a lot of work on the ship without writing one of these updates so there will be 2 updates. In this update I am focusing on the designing of the front entrance of the ship, the front landing gear and the main docking rings. In the next update I will be covering the rear landing gear, the buildup of the primary weapon and a few exterior details.

In order to accommodate a front entrance for the ship I added on to bottom of the bridge section giving the ship a “big chin”. The additional depth of the bridge section allowed me to extend the turbolift shaft to the new entrance. In addition to being the front entrance to the ship, the new bottom of the bridge serves as the front landing gear.

Since the turbolift can only be opened on one side, I created a new instance of the turbolift with the front door closed. I also created a version the turbolift shaft without windows or doors so it can be walled off. I then created the walls inside the entry room using the same panels from the escape pod junctions.

This entrance is designed much like the main entry in the stern as in the hatch is also the loading ramp. The final angle for the ramp when deployed was determined after the front feet of the landing gear were finished.

The front landing gear are basically just leveler feet. They are designed to conform to the surface the ship is landed on. I started out with a rectangle to represent the outermost dimensions of the leveler feet. I then made the front and back of the rectangle pointed. 120 degree point in the front, 150 degrees in the back  I then rounded each corner in the new 6-sided shapes using arcs that are tangent to the vertex of each corner. I then used the offset tool to repeat that shape several times, progressively smaller inside the first. I then used the push/pull tool to create the profile of the ring that will surround the future leveler foot. I then beveled the edges of the ring that extend down the most. I didn’t want the surrounding ring to look like it was just a ring on the surface of the hull so I gave it an inner surface.

The actual feet for the leveler feet are the same shape as the outer rings. They are just enough smaller in size to move freely inside the rings. I made the feet thick enough to make them look substantial enough for size of the ship. I beveled the outside of the feet and added treads that fit the shape of the feet.

I decided to make the docking rings on the bridge section of the ship similar to the ones on the Tantive IV Corellian Corvette but with a different hatch design. Why a different hatch design? Well, it’s impossible for me to tell how the ones on that ship even work. Yes, I did eventually figure out the ones on the Millennium Falcon for my first ship design but there was more to work with on that one. The ones on the Tantive IV just look like a bulge with a tiny out-of-scale hatch on it. So, the actual docking rings are similar but that’s where it ends. The images in the gallery below will show the buildup of the outer ring.

The hatch I designed is comprised of 8 doors arranged in an octagon that open inwards. The doors are surrounded by the inner rings of the docking ring which are designed to interface with small freighters and transports. More specifically, the inner rings are for my smaller 210CR Blockade Runner to dock with. The center hub that locks the hatch is attached to the bottom door. The upper 7 doors open first followed by the bottom door. The bottom door recesses into the floor of the airlock when open. The airlock will be finished at a later time.

What’s next? The rear landing gear, the buildup of the primary weapon and a few exterior details.

See the gallery below or here to see what was added this update:

Continue reading »]]> Now that I finished working on the basic shape of the hull and the sub-light engines it was time to design the Bridge Hull Section and the Observation Deck.

The original idea for the front of the ship was to be rounded and to somewhat resemble the Tantive IV Corellian Corvette but after quite a bit of thought I have decided to change the layout of the bridge and make the front of the ship pointed. And how it turned out in the end is much different than what I had envisioned.

Earlier in the project I laid out the bridge section to be a series of rooms connected together with a wide main bridge. But, now I have decided to make the bridge interior similar to a Star Destroyer bridge which is longer than it is wide. On the previous ship I did something similar but this time it is going to be much closer to what is seen in Star Wars. Maybe I am overdoing it again for a small capital ship but the bridge is the most important part of the vessel.

First I took the existing rooms in the bridge and moved them down by one deck. I then copied the Mid-Hull Section plating and placed it in front of the Escape Pod Hull Section. I then widened it and gave the sides the profile of the narrow parts of the Escape Pod Section. I needed the hull to be even wider to accommodate the airlocks and docking rings so I made it wider with the profile of the wide part of the Escape Pod Section. At the same time I duplicated the cowling on the other side of the Dorsal Corridor, turned it around and put it on top of the Bridge Section. I then cleaned up the new hull parts and made them flush with each other.

Next I removed most of the rooms for the Bridge and replaced them with a single narrow room three decks high on the inside. The wall panels inside were mostly left the way they had been to be changed later.

Now I created the front fascia of the ship. This is another part of the design process that I neglected to take pictures of but to summarize…: I created a single face from the profile of the front of the ship and extruded it forward to give me enough to work with. I then created the front faces of the bridge hull making them swept back by 30 degrees both horizontally and vertically. On either side of the hull I pushed back a portion of angled front of the ship to define the weapon rooms that are on both sides of the Bridge. I then made the front of the Bridge swept back even farther at the corners. The front of the cowling above the bridge was made wider and sloped to match the front edge of the hull. Finally I cut out space for the main viewport.

I wanted to get an idea what the main viewport would look like so I quickly made a place holder until I got to it. The front of the upper bridge cowling was just three faces so I added the faces to the cowling and finished it by making it solid. The two ridges flanking the cowling needed to stop somewhere so I built a shape on to the front of the cowling for the ridges to terminate against. Next I finished off the shape of the interior of the bridge and hollowed out the front fascia. I then removed the placeholder for the main viewport.

The cowling on the top of the Bridge Section is the canopy for the Helm so it needed its own viewport. I designed the shape of the viewport by adding lines to the face of the canopy and once I was satisfied I cut out the shape of the viewport. The viewport was then modeled to be a foot thick. Next I modeled the main viewport making it also a foot thick. I decided the front of the ship looked a little too wide so I stepped in the sides a bit and I resized the rooms inside the hull appropriately. The side of the Bridge Section needed something so I added beveled hull panels that are similar to the ones on the Mid-Hull Section.

The Bridge Section was designed to have docking rings attached to airlocks like the last ship only bigger this time. To accommodate the docking rings I added a  housing to the side of the Bridge Section. The housing is hexagonal with a short tube at the end and is tapered up to the top of the hull plating. When I merged the housing with the hull section it was slightly too wide and the side of it stuck out into the back of the hull section. I thought the accident looked good so I kept it. The beveled panel blocked where the docking ring will go so I cut out the part in the way.

I then took some time to work on the interior or the Main Bridge. After looking at the design of a star destroyer bridge I decided that I wanted the bridge to be tri-level. Sure, I am not fond of tri-level houses being a wheelchair user but in the case of a fictional starship I’ll never have to navigate it so it works great. On the bridge of a star destroyer there is an upper level that surrounds two pits that the bridge crew operates from. In my ship I didn’t want the upper platform to be too high so I designed it to be half a deck higher than the pits instead of a whole deck higher. Because the platform is lower than the main viewport there is room for control consoles to line the bottom edge of the viewport leave the view unobstructed. The rest of the bridge’s upper level is a full deck higher and a ramp takes you down to the area around the pits.

Now on to the Observation Deck… I’m not quite sure what it would be used for yet so I will figure that out as time goes by. The design is pretty straight forward: it is slightly arrow shaped and resembles a star destroyer bridge tower only it is a single deck. Once I finished the outer shape I decided it was missing something so I added some “wings” on either side. The top of the Observation deck and wings will have communications equipment attached to it and perhaps the sensor dish. The inside has had the basic wall panels put in and a turbolift shaft. The view port is designed the same way as the Mid-Hull Section windows except there is a bend in the middle and there is no emergency bulkhead door. There will be an emergency bulkhead for all exterior windows and viewports eventually except for the Helm Deck which could pose an issue.

What’s next? I’m as undecided as a Republican presidential candidate but, it will be good, trust me.

See the gallery below or here to see what was added this update:

Continue reading »]]> In the last progress update I addressed the creation of the escape pods and the piece of the hull section corresponding to the pods. This time I am going over the modeling of hull behind the Escape Pod section and including the basic design of the sub-light engines. A lot of work on the model has been done beyond what will be covered in update so I am running behind on the updates. But, it’s not like there is a deadline on a hobbyist project like this… Now that the ship is really starting to take shape I am now posting pictures throughout the updates.

First up I worked on the Dorsal Corridor that goes from the Hangar Catwalk to the Bridge Section. I removed the top part of the Escape Pod Hull Section to make room for the Dorsal Corridor. Starting with a narrow corridor section I removed the door openings, cut the top half off and stretched it to the length of Dorsal Corridor. Then I designed the profile of the canopy to be similar to the shape of the Hangar Catwalk only upside down. I extruded the profile to the length I wanted for each canopy section. I then designed the “ribs” between each canopy section. After I was happy with the design I copied each section until I filled the entire length of the corridor. I then made the terminated ends of the corridor that connect to the other sections of the ship. The lower walls of this new corridor need wall panels and dividers so I fleshed them out with standard wall panels and created new wall panel dividers that were half the normal height.

Now to join the Dorsal Corridor to the rest of the future hull I created a cowling that would act as a junction and run to the edge of the Hangar Hull. I got inspiration from the Consular-class ship, the Radiant VII, that was used by Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and the Padawan  Obi-Won Kenobi to board the Trade Federation battleship at the beginning of The Phantom Menace, which was then destroyed. But before it was destroyed it had a dorsal corridor that connected to a cowling on either end and that was the basis for the cowling on my ship. To make this design work I had to make a narrower turbolift junction to fit inside the new cowling.

I then got inspired to finally add some color to the ship. I made the main hull color a dark grey. The Dorsal Corridor looked a bit boring so I added a strip of dark red as an accent color. These colors may eventually change but for now I think it looks good. To properly display the colors of the ship in the SketchUp Style that I use I have to make sure every piece of the model uses only one color so the lines on the edges of objects are the same color as the color of the faces of the objects. The only time individual faces have a unique color or material is if it is intended to be a light source or surface detail. If you are not careful when the edges are set to be the same color as the object’s material you can end up with flashing edges that show up when using the camera controls to move around the model. When I colored the Dorsal Corridor, I went back into the components and divided them into groups of pieces to isolate the colors I‘m using.

For the Mid-Hull Section between the Escape Pods and the Hangar I basically extended the profile of the end of the Escape Pod hull section to the Hangar. Because not all of rooms in this section would fit into this shape I widened the top and bottom out to the full width of the hull section to make everything fit. This left it with the sides appearing flat, so I made a raised panel for the outside of the walls and colored it in a contrasting lighter grey. I suppose this would act as additional protection for the Briefing Room contained inside the section.

At this point I decided to add windows on either side of the Briefing Room. On the inside, the cutout for the window is surrounded by a cowling similar to the internal windows overlooking the inside of the Hangar. On the outside of the hull I created a cutout for the shape of the window and beveled the inside edges to make the windows look more deliberate. For the transparasteel windows themselves, I made them the same shape as the inside of the inside window cowling and made them 6 inches thick. I also designed bulkhead doors that will slide across the outside of the windows in the event of the windows being broken from enemy fire. The bulkhead doors are not apparent to the casual observer because they are one big door with a hole in the shape of window opening and work like a guillotine.

To transition the Mid-Hull Section into the Hangar hull I created another cowling to go from the Dorsal Corridor cowling to the top of the Hangar. I then created the basic shape of the Hangar Hull Section. It is slightly pointed to avoid it from looking flat and thrown together. I beveled the edges parallel to the ship instead of rounding the edges like I might tend to do. I then inset the front faces of the Hangar so I can later add random details to the surface that are seen on vessels from the Star Wars Universe. These details would serve no real purpose but to add an industrial feel to the ship.

For the Hangar Bulkhead Door openings on the Hangar Hull, I made them the same shape as the inner perimeter of the bulkhead door cowling on the inside. I decided that I should also inset the space around the outside of the Hangar Hull Bulkhead Doors. Because there wasn’t enough space on the side of the hull to do this I just framed out larger side panels with beveled corners and merged them with the side of the hull. I was looking at hangar door openings on some ships from Star Wars and found that many had a luminescent border to highlight the entrance s I added a similar element around the doors. After contemplating what to do next I decided I didn’t like how the angle of the front of the Hangar Hull transitioned into the cowling so I made it flat where the pieces meet. Next I colored the Hangar Hull Section in dark grey. The Landing Bay doors needed an opening in the bottom of the hull so I took care of that.

After some thought I decided the ship needed an Observation Tower at the stern for tactical purposes. It is similar idea to the bridge towers on a Star Destroyer or even an aircraft carrier or battleship for that matter. Also, I needed something tall in the back of the ship to house the smaller backup sub-light engines that I created placeholders for. I started out making a tower that was similar to the one on a Venator-class Star Destroyer except for only one structure on top instead of two. I made it about 7 decks high from the top of Deck 5. It looked a bit strange being as narrow as I made the tower so, to compensate for that I added bulges to either side. The bulges could possibly be for fuel storage and/or the main reactor but that hasn’t been decided.

I needed to extend to tower to the back of the ship and I needed there to be a turbolift shaft right under the Observation Deck. This required the tower to extend farther forward than my initial intent. I had no need for more rooms to be in the back of the ship so I left it at 3 decks. I didn’t want a bunch of wasted space there so I contoured the rear of the hull into the lower height of the stern of the ship. The back of the tower was too narrow for the backup sub-light engines so I made the width of the tower widen in the back and taper towards the front. I tried to make it look good with the tower all the way to the back of the ship but it wasn’t working for me so I pushed the part above the bulges forward. This caused me to eliminate one of backup engines. I then made the face of the back of the tower slightly sloped and added a ridge to finish it off.

The next thing I did was work on the rear fascia of the ship. I made a panel to fit the shape of the back of the ship and created a surround for the loading ramp. The large part above the ramp would probably house the Hyperdrive Generator. This is approximately where the Hyperdrive Generator is located on a Venator-class Star Destroyer. On the panel I added a beveled edge and inset the face of the fascia. To add more detail a spacer was put between the hull and the rear fascia.

Now that I got to this point it was time to work on the sub-light engines. Unfortunately I failed to capture images of the buildup of the engines and the struts they are attached to so I will summarize the best I can. First I removed the place holders and then I went a different direction that I had originally intended again. I got inspired again by the Consular-class Radiant VII and I decided to make the engine layout similar to that. The Radiant VII has three main engines and they are evenly spaced and in line with each other. They are attached to wing shaped struts and then attached to each other. I made some wing shaped struts and made the front of the engines and attached them to the struts. I had to give the engines a proper scale and when I got them to a size that looked good I realized they were almost touching the ground if the ship were to land. To fix this I skewed the tips of the wings upward a bit. I was going to have just 2 main engines and have 2 backup engines but I decided the 2 main engines were very far apart. There was enough space for 2 more main engines so I decided to have 4 main engines and forego the idea of smaller backup engines. I then went back and extended the rear fascia along the back of the winged struts.

The back of the engines were based on the engines from a concept sketch of the Rebel Blockade Runner. They are big and bulky and just what I was looking for. Inside the engines is a turbine that I borrowed from my last ship only this time twice the diameter. I decided to make the outer two engines about 20 feet shorter than the inner ones and visually I think it looks better. The last thing I did was try a few different paint schemes and settled on one that looks balanced. The whole ship might end up with a different paint scheme but this will work for now.

In the next update you will see the Bridge Section and Observation Deck take shape. I’ve already done the work I just need to share it on the blog.

See the gallery below or here to see what was added this update:

Continue reading »]]> It’s been a long time since I last written about my new starship project but I haven’t stopped working on it. I have taken 104 snapshots of my progress since the last update so I will be dividing it in half. I left off last time with the round turbolift and since then I have made quite a few interior layout changes, completed the escape pods (what a pain that was) and designed about 70 percent of the outer hull which I will address in the next update.

The first thing I did this time was putting up the basic wall panels in the infirmary. After that I took the Bacta tank from my 210BR and adapted it to fit in this infirmary.

At this point I looked at the ship from above and I realized it was just way too long. To shrink it down a bit I decided to remove the rooms between the engineering room and the turbolift junction and I relocated the rooms so they flank either side of the turbolift junction. To allow for this the cargo bays were shortened significantly. The new rooms are much larger and will accommodate a lot more equipment. I remade the infirmary and the bunkrooms to fit the new room shapes.

I decided that the engineering room should be 5 levels high so after changing that I changed around the adjoining turbolift junctions.

I then decided to mockup the approximate shape I wanted for the rear hull. I also created mockups for the sub-light engines. The final engine layout will be addressed in the next update.

Next I worked on the rear entrance of the ship. I had been watching the entire series of Firefly on the Science Channel and I decided to model the rear entrance like Serenity’s. It’s very simple which I like. The ramp acts as the bulkhead door and lengthens as it is lowered down. Because of the change I made to Engineering I was able to open up the space around the turbolift to make it nicer to look at.

Now for the fun part: the escape pods. I decided from the beginning that this ship would use the same standard escape pods that the Tantive IV Corellian Corvette uses. I wanted them to be as accurate as possible. When I started gathering imagery of the Class-6 Escape Pods and I quickly realized it wouldn’t be so easy… The way one enters the pods was a complete mystery at first and the actual scale of the pods is not really known. I had to base their size on how they appear on the Tantive IV model. It turns out that the pods on the Tantive IV model look almost nothing like the model of the pod seen blasted out of the Tantive IV that Artoo and Threepio escaped with. Furthermore when you watch Artoo and Threepio get in the pod it never actually show the pod interior so there is no way to know exactly how to enter the pods.

To accommodate the pods I needed to make the portion of the outer hull that the pods would be housed in. I designed the hull sections similarly to the Tantive IV’s hull section containing its escape pods and secondary gun turrets. The size of the hull section turned out large enough to accommodate 12 pods as opposed to the 8 on the Tantive IV. The 12 pods will allow for the ship to accommodate 72 crew members and passengers. To get to this shape I had to resize all of the empty rooms to make the diameter of the ship smaller.

After determining the proper size of the pods I created the basic shape of the pods and put them in the hull section. I then cut holes in the hull section to accommodate the pods. After this was done I then had to redesign the main corridor the ship to allow access to the pods. The corridor section is now basically a large plus sign with 4 small rooms off of it and then two more elongated rooms for accessing the escape pods.

The escape pod access rooms were given a new wall panel design meant to appear utilitarian. These panels will likely be used on the bridge and other utility areas. In the launch sequence of the pod seen in Star Wars, you can see that the pods are housed in a tube. I designed tubes for my escape pods similarly to the tubes on the Tantive IV. It was only from watching this scene that I realized the access panels on the sides of the pods are the way into them.

Because there is no real information available on how the pod access door works, I had to figure that they were hinged and would swing outward. The doors are huge so I know that would be an issue. I contemplated redesigning the pods to make them designed better but I decided to continue on with what I started. I could go over every detail I put into the pods but that would take too long so following along in the photo gallery for this update should suffice. They will not have the same level of detail as the pod model used in the movie because it was very highly detailed. My pods are greatly simplified but if all I was doing was recreating the pod instead designing an entire ship then of course the pod would be modeled in great detail.

Next I worked on the doors in the ship that allow entry in to the pods. They are giant and red and large enough for the huge pod doors to open. Is this the way it’s done in the Tantive IV? Probably not. Do I really care? No. Making them resemble anything like the doors Artoo and Threepio.

To be continued…

In the next update you will start to see the rest of the outer hull take shape. You will also see the finally engine layout for the ship which will give the ship its unique shape.

See the gallery below or here to see what was added this update:

Continue reading »]]> After finishing Boba Fett’s EE-3 Blaster I decided to revisit the Stormtrooper blaster model that I had never finished from a previous challenge. I hadn’t touched the model for almost 2 years. Oh boy, what did I get myself into… This is a long blog post so if you don’t feel like reading it, just go ahead and skip down to the pictures at the end.

This one takes the cake for the most detailed prop model I have ever made. I wouldn’t say it was overly difficult but it was very time consuming. No longer in the time constraints of challenge I did a lot more research on the E-11 Blaster and was able to find countless photos of the blaster and the British-made Sterling Mk.4 L2A3 submachine gun it was based on. It turns out that the pictures I had gathered back in July, 2009 were highly inaccurate and represented an inferior attempt at a replica of the prop. So after consulting The Parts of Star Wars website I found out there were at least 8 known versions of the E-11 used in Star Wars Episode IV – A New Hope. I decided to go with version B because it used a functional Sterling instead of one that was had been deactivated with cast resin replacement parts. My model differs slightly from version B by using the scope used in version A because I like the look better. Luckily for me I found a blog that detailed the build-up a realistic replica that the author had built. The blog had every possible photo I needed to work from which made the modeling a lot easier.

When I opened the SketchUp file of the unfinished version, and examined what I had yet to do’, I found out that the dimensions were way off and some things were just plain wrong. I start correcting the problems with the model when I made a laughable mistake. Some of source photos had a ruler in them for size reference. I used one photo to determine the correct dimensions of the Sterling SMG that showed the right side of the gun. According to the ruler in the photo, the gun was 22 inches long. This showed that the gun’s receiver tube was about 3 1/2 inches too short and about an quarter inch too narrow. Because of that I felt I had to start over and make it the right size. I modeled the new receiver tube next to the old one so I could copy parts to the new tube. I then worked on the magazine well and then the magazine itself. Right when I finished doing all of that I read on Wikipedia that the gun was actually 19 inches long. So, I looked at the photo of the left side of the gun and it measured 19 inches and not 22! It finally occurred to me that I forgot to account for perspective! The photo of the right side had the gun resting on the magazine well which made the ruler further in the background and the receiver tube in the foreground. So all that work I did on the model was a complete waste of time because what I had before was already correct for the most part.

After the mishap I made I added the magazine well to the original model which not till much later did I realize that its dimensions were way off. I then worked to correct some other shortfalls that I had fixed when working on the wrong sized receiver tube. The next part I worked on after finally getting back on track was the trigger group. That was no big deal.

After the trigger group I worked on the folding stock. This was part of the model that was more difficult to figure out exactly how it worked than actually modeling it. I managed to find the operators manual for the Sterling SMG in PDF on a gun website which turned out to be invaluable help. I also found photos of a disassembled folding stock on another website. If it wasn’t for the manual I would never have been able to figure it out without have a physical Sterling in front of me. The design is a very clever one. In fact, everything about this firearm seems clever to me and I don’t even like guns. The final result of the model was to be a virtual recreation of a movie prop so how I feel about guns is beside the point. Back to the folding stock… After learning about the function of the stock I got to work on it. I decided that if II was going to do it right that I have to show it not only to show it folded but also fully unfolded. To make sure that everything would line up I modeled the stock in its unfolded position while folding it up along the way to make sure it looked right. The stock on this blaster had to look right or the whole blaster would look wrong because it is a very prominent element of its design.

At this point the Sterling SMG in the model was now complete except for the magazine and magazine well being dimensioned wrong and the bolt of the SMG. The next part of the modeling process was to “convert” it into the Blastech E-11 Blaster Rifle. This involved adding the M38 1942 gun scope, the fins that fit in the cooling holes in the barrel, the Hengstler industrial counter, and the somewhat illusive cylinders that go on top of the magazine well.

The version B of the blaster that I decided to make is supposed to have a M32/M19 scope on it but I did the M38 from the version A instead. The reason for the change is that I liked the look of it on the blaster better and I already had many good photos of the M38 to work from. First I had to add a rail to the receiver tube to mount the scope. The front of the rail is bent at a couple of 90 degree bends to fit in to the Last barrel vent hole. The back of the rail was likely riveted directly to the rear sight of the SMG and that is how I attached it. The scope was easy to do because it is mostly extruded circles. The most difficult part was the adjustable eyepiece which has ridges on its surface. I finished that and bonehead me failed to realize that piece was never even part of the finished blaster. And that really makes sense considering that the scope is intentionally mounted backwards making it useless anyways. The scope is mounted to the rail with its original hex Allen head bolts. The Allen bolts are two different sizes and have ridges like the adjustable eyepiece had.

I then worked on the fins that go along the barrel. These to hobbyist prop modelers’ best guess are made of plastic drawer guides. The Boba Fett EE-3 Blaster uses these on its barrel as well. The strips of the guides were then bent and shaped on their ends and Inserted into the barrel vent holes. The drawer guides are actually a bit wider than the holes causing me a headache. I tried several different bend angles and bend radiuses until the tapered ends finally fit in the vent hole without causing collision with the receiver tube. One thing I cannot stand in SketchUp models are components that overlap into the space of other components. It just seems sloppy to me and I like things to fit right.

Next I started work on Hengstler counter. These counters are used in manufacturing and other industrial purposes. Version B of blaster uses one that has the name Hengstler on it with an eagle with the number 890 in the middle. The other versions used in alternate versions of the blaster have just the eagle. These counters are hard to find because the new version of that model counter no longer has the eagle on it at all because, after World War II, the company felt the eagle too closely resembled the Nazi eagle insignia. The difficult part of the counter to model was the rotary counter wheels. I tried to “engrave’” the numbers into the curved surfaces of the wheels but I couldn’t stop the faces of the shape from disappearing. That happens when the dimensions of what you are working are so small that SketchUp cannot record the vertex coordinates accurately causing vertices to jump and make the face disappear. At least that is the best way I can describe the problem. To get around this I typically size the component or group 10 times larger than it is supposed to be, then I do what I ‘m having trouble with and then shrink it down to the right size. But in this case it just wasn’t working. So, instead I made the wheels 10-sided so when I inset the numbers, they were on flat faces instead of curved ones. The counter body was difficult to measure leaving me to keep adjusting it until it looked right. It is very close but not perfect. The counter is mounted to the blaster using a short piece of metal strip bent at 90 degrees and screwed to the side at one end and bolted to the scope mounting rail using the Allen-head bolt from the scope.

On the prop there are 2 small cylinders and 2 smaller cylinders mounted to a bracket that go on top of magazine well. It is somewhat a mystery about what these came from but likely they are oscillator vacuum tubes from an old amplifier with smaller capacitors between them. The same parts appear on Luke Skywalker’s speeder and the mouse droids so in the least I have photos of the actual parts to examine. Easy modeling.

After I added the cylinder part I discovered that the magazine well was not looking right in comparison to the photos I had as I mentioned earlier. Somehow I made it 5/16” too wide and 5/16” too thin. I don’t know how that happened but it was so far off that I had to redo the magazine all together. The second time around I was much more accurate in my modeling and I included a few more details such as the scalloped edges and making the end cap so it actually appeared to be slid on instead of just a flat shape. I don’t have a problem redoing something if I make it better.

Some versions of the blaster have wires that go from the counter’s plug to the cylinders. I debated doing that but in the end I decided to omit the wires. It isn’t clear how the wires are attached and the version B of the blaster, according to the Parts of Star Wars website, doesn’t have wires. It I were to have built the original props I would have soldered metal wire terminal ends onto the wires to attach them to the bolt heads on the cylinders and soldered the other ends of the wires to the counter connectors and cover the connector with shrink wrap.

The final part of the blaster model that I added was the gun bolt for the SMG. I had just a cylinder inside the receiver tube in place of the bolt up to this point. It was not difficult to make the bolt. I was worried about the diagonal grooves that the gun bolt has but it was not a problem. I just drew the lines for the grooves of each face of the bolt cylinder at the right angle and did the same a little farther down to make the width of the groove right. There is a large spring that goes behind the bolt. To make the spring I first created a ring in the right diameter and thickness using 24 segments. Each complete turn of the spring was a half inch in length. This meant I need to move each segment over by 1/48” of an inch to get the right pitch of the spring. I didn’t need to move every segment over because all I had to do was copy, paste and rotate a single segment of the spring until an entire turn of the spring was complete. Then I exploded the copied segments and duplicated the result enough times to make the spring long enough.

When all of the blaster was modeled it was time for me to finish coloring the model. I had been doing most of this during the modeling process and I made sure everything looked consistent. In reality the prop would probably been sprayed all the same shade of black but with mine I alternated a few shades of very dark gray to give the model more definition. I did this because models in SketchUp can look flat and hide the fine details. To further combat that issue the SketchUp style I created shows the lines of the model the same color as the components which basically highlights the edges to make them stand out. The only texture I used in the model was the texture of the grip. I actually tried to make the texture with actual geometry when I tried to do it; SketchUp kept crashing because there were way too many vertices. So in the alternative I made a small section of the textured geometry and screen captured a close up of it and turned it into a repeating pattern in Photoshop and applied it to the grip.

And finally I created some scenes to show off the model. Done. Wow, this blog entry is way too long.

See the model in the Google 3D Warehouse here and the gallery below:

Continue reading »]]> It has been a while since I participated in the Google SketchUp 3D Challenge as I have been spending much of my time modeling starships. But when the topic of Ray Gun came up I decided to “give it a shot.” So I decided to do a blaster from Star Wars… no surprise there. At first I was going to do Han Solo’s blaster from A. New Hope. After downloading some reference photos I decided it was much too complex for the time allotted. The Mouser handgun it is based on is highly detailed and just too complex for the amount of realism I try to put into my models in a short period of time. I finally settled on Boba Fett’s EE-3 Carbine Blaster Rifle from Return of the Jedi. It was much less complex overall. In the end it turns out I ran out of time to submit my entry because I had other priorities to work on. But I wanted to finish it so I kept working on it until it was done.

This blaster was made from a 1916 British Webley & Scott No. 1 Mark I Flare Gun. Starting with the flare gun the prop makers added a PVC pipe and various other parts to give it a futuristic look to it. On either side of the gun’s breach they glued a bomb rack part from a F4E Phantom scale model to cover up the writing engraved there. To the stock of the gun they added a gear case from Revel Visible V8 engine model on both side. In addition to the engine part they also added an undisclosed plate cover to both sides of the stock. It was then painted and then distressed to show a lot of use.

My virtual replica represents the blaster in “new” condition without any wear and tear. To give it the distressed appearance I would have to add textures to the model which would take much more time to do. Most of my models are without many textures because they take too much time, increase the file size and really don’t add much to the model.

I decided to model the Webley flare gun first then went on to make the changes to “convert” it into the blaster much like the original prop builders. Thankfully there were enough photos of the flare gun online to study. If it wasn’t for so many fans building blasters from these old guns there might have been nothing to go on besides screen captures from the movie. It was difficult getting the curves in the handle and the stock bracket to match the actual gun and I got fairly close but I could make it better if I had the time to do it during the challenge. Had I known I was going to run out of time to finish by the deadline I would have spent more time getting the curves right. I duplicated the finished uncolored flare gun and moved it over so I could later show a comparison of the Webley to the blaster.

Once I was done modeling the Webley flare gun I then started modeling the new barrel. That was no big deal. I moved on to the scope. The scope was pretty straight forward except until I got to the adjustment knobs on top. They are supposed to have a cross-hatched texture for gripping on them which would be easy enough to do with a textured graphic but I did it with actual module geometry. It was more time consuming than difficult. Modeling fine details like that in SketchUp is nearly impossible unless you know a trick or two. When working in a micro scale the program has a bad habit of randomly omitting faces leaving holes in shapes. To get around this I take the shape I am working on and scale it up to 10 times the intended size and when I am done I resize it back down to the correct size. Doing that also prevents the need to deal in 1/128th of an inch increments when going that small.

The final modeling work was on the rest of the details the prop makers added to the blaster. After that I added color to the model. I colored the original flare gun to match one version of it in a photo. Apparently the flare guns were made in a variety of metal finishes and this one happened to have a brass handle with everything else the typical gun metal grey. For the blaster I chose a slightly reddish black and gave all the screws a rusty brown color. I created scenes to show off both finished guns.

Even though I didn’t finish in time for the challenge I enjoyed finishing the model. Maybe I‘ll go and finish the Stormtrooper blaster for the Rifle challenge I failed to finish. I will see about that.

See the model in the Google 3D Warehouse here and the gallery below:

Continue reading »]]> This time around I made a lot of progress on the model’s interior. In my last update I said I was going to work on the engineering and cargo section but I didn’t stop there. I did some preliminary work on the Bridge, designed the Turbolifts twice, modeled some interior windows to allow viewing of the Landing Bay and Engineering Room, designed the Sleep Pods for the Bunkrooms and made the Briefing Room much larger. While working on all of those aspects, I also reconfigured the layout a bit to make things more cohesive with what I envision the ship looking like. I now think the model is almost too big for SketchUp to handle so expect some growing pains in the future.

In the Engineering Room I accomplished putting up all the basic wall panels and implementing the enclosed catwalk that will surround power core allowing unauthorized passengers to bypass the engineering room. The floating catwalk is based directly off of the design of the catwalk above the Landing Bay. In addition to the straight sections there are corner sections allowing for 90 degree bends. Initially the catwalk was to be a true circle around the power core but I decided it was too complex to make and would take away from the theme of modularity. I could have done it, but I didn’t want to devote too much time to doing it. After the floating catwalk was done I added some support struts to, you guessed it, support the weight of the catwalk over the floor of the Engineering Room.

After working on the Engineering Room I started on the Entryway which will serve as the main entrance for the ship and access point for the cargo bays when landed. When it comes time to work on the ship’s exterior the loading ramp will be added. The first thing I did here was to create an enclosed catwalk along the ceiling that will eventually provide access to the maintenance ports for the sub light engines to be added later. Once that was done I put up the wall panels. I then modeled the bulkhead doors for the cargo bays. At the front of the entry I added two small rooms that connect to the Engineering Room. The next step was to add the wall panels to the cargo bays.

I decided to do some work on the main bridge but only as much as I could do since there is no outer hull. All I did was added the wall panels for the back and side walls and model the floor for the upper level.

Next I went to work on creating the Turbolifts. At first I was lacking inspiration so I made a big square box of a turbolift. I’m not go into much detail on their design because I ended up scrapping their design. But, before I made the decision to scrap them I worked on other parts of the ship.

I did some thinking about the Briefing Room and I thought there should be some windows for observation of the Landing Bay. For the windows I simply modified the standard bulkhead door to have a pane of transparasteel in place of the door. I added the windows to the back wall of the Briefing Room’s second level. I also added these windows to the turbolift rooms in the entry area. This allows observation in to Engineering Room and into the entry area.

The next things I decided to work on were the sleeping pods in the bunkrooms. The bunkroom will be the sleep quarters for the starfighter pilots/flight crew and for the engineering crew. The reason I decided to make pods instead of bunks was to save space. Their design is based directly off the sleeping pods used in the Kamino clone training facility as seen on Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season Three. I scaled mine a little smaller to fit my standard wall panel dimensions. The inside of the pods are actually pretty spacious inside and include a ceiling mounted computer terminal and a storage cabinet for personal belongings. They kind of resemble an MRI machine but that is purely unintentional.

The Briefing Room seemed too small so I doubled its size and put up it’s wall panels. I then extended the second level around the perimeter of the room. I then added an inner wall on both levels as a back drop for the speaker’s podium. It also creates a buffer zone for the entrance into the room. I also added a entry door for the upper level.

The final thing I worked on was redesigning the Turbolifts. The reason I didn’t like what I first designed is that they completely blocked the view down the corridors and they just looked boring. The new turbolift design is round and see through and a lot better looking. There will probably be many other components that I will end up changing in some way.

What’s next? I’m really not sure. I might add some color because all the white is starting to irritate me. I will probably finish the rest of the basic wall panels before doing much else. It won’t be too long until I begin on the exterior.

See the gallery below or here to see what was added this update:

Continue reading »]]> Now that my first starship model (the 210CR) is finished I have decided to start on a new one. This time around I have decided to create something much bigger: a capital ship. By definition a capital ship is an armed military vessel with a length of 100 meters or greater. Based on the work I have already done it is currently 236 meters long which is 86 meters larger than the Tantive IV Corellian Corvette that I used as a benchmark for my last starship. It will have many of the same features as the 210CR but on a much larger scale. In addition to those features it will have 3 full decks, a hangar/landing bay for a small complement of star fighters and a shuttle or small freighter (must fit Millennium Falcon), retractable laser cannons, traditional Star Wars style escape pods, robust landing gear and more viewports this time. It will also have a more complete engineering section including backup power cells, life support systems, garbage compactor (dianoga free) and water treatment facilities.

So far I have modeled the general design of the interior walls, the bulkhead doors for the rooms and main corridor, and created the empty rooms and bulkhead sections.

I decided to continue the idea of keeping my ships modular. This time around I expounded on the idea by creating a layout grid of 4’x4’ squares spaced apart by 6 inches that every wall panel, fixture, door will strictly line up with. Each wall module will be four feet wide and nine feet tall. Each basic wall module will consist of a top and bottom light bar for ambient lighting that are both 6 inches tall and a 4×2 grid of 2 foot square wall panels. These standard 2 foot square panels can then be replaced with additional modules that fit the 4×2 grid configuration.  Between each wall module will be a 6 inch wide divider. When a perpendicular wall is added, it will take the place of the divider this will prevent the need for fractional wall panels.

The bulkhead doors I for this ship are based on the design of the ones from the 210CR with the exception that there is just one layer of doors instead of two. The corridor bulkhead section doors function the same way as the ones on 210BR but are designed more similar to the room bulkhead doors. The openings of the corridor sections are arched and have cowlings that are reminiscent of the ones seen in the Millennium Falcon.

With modularity being key to the design of the ship I have created standard rooms/bulkhead sections that all align with the layout grid I have established. Each room section is spaced apart precisely to fit the layout grid. These standard room sections have cutouts with matching plugs for multiple bulkhead door configurations. This makes it so the standard room shapes are versatile for any type of room. All non standard bulkhead sections will also align to the layout grid.

To assist me in the layout of the ship I have created a rudimentary drawing in Photoshop with guides arranged in the layout grid I chose. This allowed me to visualize and plan where the bulkhead sections will be. I then finished creating the bulkhead sections for the ship and arranged them according to the drawing. After doing this I quickly realized that the bulkhead section for the hangar/landing bay was much too small to accommodate star fighters and the Millennium Falcon comfortably so I moved things around and significantly enlarged the section. This currently makes the ship appear to be pregnant but I will try to balance it out soon.

See the gallery below or here to see what was added this update:

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Continue reading »]]> Now that my starship was done it needed a name so what I came up with is the Outer Rim Industries 210CR Fortified Blockade Runner. I didn’t want to use a known company name from the Star wars Universe because I don’t want my ship to be confused with ones in the films, books and other expanded universe sources. I choose the name Outer Rim Industries because the Alliance to Restore the Republic (a.k.a. Rebel Alliance) was mostly comprised of worlds from the Outer Rim territory of the galaxy and my intent is that this ship serve the Alliance. .Why 210CR? CR are my initials and 210 was derived from 2010. CR is also the prefix on the model number of the Tantive IV Corellian Corvette (CR90) in Star Wars which is similar to my 210CR. The Tantive IV was used as a blockade runner but due to the amount of guns my ship has, it is no ordinary blockade runner so I added “fortified” to it’s name.

To read the full specifications of the 210CR Fortified Blockade Runner, visit the My Starships section of my website.

To download and view the entire model you must have either Google SketchUp 7.0 or 8.0 installed. Click the link below download the model in the version of SketchUp you’re using:

SketchUp 7:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/1buf01ltf2iz2df/210CR-SU7.zip

SketchUp 8:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/a7av5wnrgl5c9nc/210CR.zip

To see the image gallery click here or  view the slideshow below:

Continue reading »]]> After working on my Starship Project for over a year it is finally finished! It’s not like I am tired of working on it because I have enjoyed working on it the entire time. There just comes a time when you have to declare a project done before it becomes the proverbial white elephant in the room.

In this final update (which it turns out to the longest and with the most pictures, 55 total) I have wrapped up all of the loose ends. I finished head and showers room as well as the stateroom bathrooms, furnished the cargo bay with cargo containers and a way to move the cargo, redid the furniture in the mess hall, created ceiling light fixtures, created graphics for the display screens and made miscellaneous changes.

I created individual stalls for the waste extractors; there is not much difference between these and ones seen on Earth. I decided to make the doors swing in and to make that work in the limited space, the doors are made in two parts where one side nests in the other. When the doors are swung inward the nested half would automatically retract to save space. The waste extractors are the same as the one in the brig.

On the opposite wall from the waste extractors I modeled the hand wash sinks. I used the lower half of the waste extractor as a starting point for the sink. I shortened it and created a bowl and drain. The faucet has buttons on top of it to control temperature and flow rate. There is a simple soap dispenser to the right of the faucet and a hand drier on the left side of the sink.

The shower stalls are one-piece units that hang on the wall in the shower room. They each have a built-in bench to sit on and a shelf for bath supplies. The showerheads resemble those trendy UFO shaped ones becoming popular these days. The showers are controlled digitally with a panel across from the benches. In the shower room I also modeled a bench for dressing with hooks above to hang clothing.

The details of the bathroom are quite boring and nearly make me yawn as I sit here writing about it. The elements of the crew bathroom are used again for the bathrooms in the officer staterooms. Moving on…

The next part I needed to tackle was the cargo bay’s container storage system. I couldn’t find a good example for the types of containers that would be used in Star Wars so instead I settled on ones you might see watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and beyond. The ones used in the later Star Trek series were typically containers that are actually used in real life that look sleek and modern and made of plastic. So I searched for plastic crates I liked on the web and came up with one that would work. I made some additions to the design of the containers I found: one being the ability for them to interlock when stacked, another being hinge less and lastly an electric locking mechanism that could also be used to track the container. I made the containers in two different sizes that can be stacked on top of each other interchangeably. I originally thought the containers need to be held in cages but after several failed design attempts I decided it wasn’t necessary. I settled this in my mind by making the many containers magnetized to hold together during transport. While working on the containers I decided to enlarge the engineering room and shrink the cargo bay down a bit to make it easier to view the inside of the engineering room.

After the containers were done I needed a way to load and unload the cargo bay. I know previously I said I wouldn’t be modeling droids for the ship but out of necessity I decided to make a cargo loader droid. Again I went to the web for inspiration and found examples of cargo droids on Wookieepedia. I liked what I saw but they did not seem big enough for the job. I finally decided on modeling something similar to the Viper probe droids that were sent to Hoth to surveil the Rebels in the Empire Strikes Back. They are plenty big enough (though a bit menacing) for moving the cargo containers but with too many arms. I reduced the arm count down to just four placing them in the corners of the droid. The droid didn’t need as many sensors as the probe droids so I left many of them out. The resulting Viper Cargo Droid is just what I needed and should surely scare off any looting Jawas lurking nearby.

To complete the cargo system I needed a vehicle to move larger quantities of cargo containers. For this I designed a repulsorlift pod with the cargo containers in mind. I found these on Wookieepedia and they were mentioned in a few Star Wars comic books. It is basically a floating platform piloted from the back that is powered by repulsor engines. The engines use imaginary space-time mumbo-jumbo particles that are harvested by black hole power refineries. The point is they defy gravity and effortlessly move stuff around in planetary environments or any place or ship generating it’s own gravity.

Before I made the cargo repulsorpod I took a slight detour. I got to thinking about the tables and chairs in the mess hall and how they didn’t go with the flow of the room. So, I ditched existing tables and chairs and came up with a new idea for chairs and subsequently their matching tables. The chairs are formed from just 3 pieces: two metal rails and a sheet of “transparasteel” (a strong glass like substance) that are bent into the final shape. The tables are made the same way to match and made to be long and narrow to accommodate more people. The new furniture works much better in the room.

Next I worked on lighting fixtures for ceilings in the rooms off of the main corridor. They’re designed to be modular and comprised of an array of recessed lights (resembling can lights) that are surrounded by a tapered bezel with illumination around the edges. They would likely be made in a shiny black material that would gently reflect the light. For the large open sections of the ship I created a small square array of these lights to be repeated evenly across the ceilings.

A smaller change I made to the ship involves the docking ports. Early on I modeled the docking ports to match those found on the Millenium Falcon but I was never quite aware of how they operate and even now I still don’t know how they work. But at the time I made them I left no way for them to open due to my uncertainty. All I did this time was add a hinge to the doors so they can open outwards. So now at least they appear to function. Someday when I get a better idea I will change it. Also, early on there was an outer ring that protruded past the doors but when I changed the hull design to have alcoves for the docking ports I got rid of outer ring. I added the ring back into the design to make it once again consistent with the Millennium Falcon.

From the beginning I knew that the display screens were going to need some graphics. Nearly every screen on the ship up until now were just blank and at some point in time I was contemplating leaving them that way to save on size of the SketchUp data file. After I blew way past the size limit of file uploads for the Google 3D Warehouse the file size savings became irrelevant. For the screen on the computers in the computer core I created a simple status display with statistical graphs on one side and a meter of some sort on the other side. For the weapon targeting displays I carefully positioned the camera between the gun barrels and created snapshots of their view. I put crosshairs on the targeting displays and they were done. Every computer console needed a keyboard so I created a keyboard graphic that resembles the layout of the keyboard I saw in an interior photo of (again) the Millenium Falcon. For the display of the cargo computer consoles I made an overhead shot of the cargo floor to indicate a visual record of the cargo bays contents. This is to help keep track of and to find all of the cargo listed in the manifest. I borrowed elements of the computer core displays placing them above the overview. I labeled the screen using a galaxy basic font that is used in Star Wars. The final display screen I created was for the engineering computer console that displays the status of all of the ship’s vital systems. Again this display borrows graphics from the computer core displays and portions of the display are labeled in galactic basic.

One final detail to the ship was added in the ready room. The ship needed an insignia to represent who owns it so I added a large logo of the Alliance to Restore the Republic also known as the Rebel Alliance to the back wall of the ready room.

There were many mistakes that were fixed and micro changes that were made in the completion of the model which are really too negligible to mention but effected the overall quality of the model. I tried to go through the entire model with a fine toothcomb and I think it is in pretty good shape.

My final work on the model involved creating all new scenes for the model to show off all the details and features. There are now 99 different scenes in the model. About a quarter of the scenes are not labeled and they are there purely to smooth transitions between scenes when the scene animation is played.

The production of the Starship is now complete. It was really fun working on it and I am already contemplating the next one I intend to model. In the next blog post I write on the ship I will unveil the name, make and model of the ship. I post a link to the model so anyone with Google SketchUp 8.0 can download it and take a look. I will post a final image gallery using the labeled scenes I created and possibly post the animated walk through on YouTube.

See the gallery below or here to see what was added this update: