Monthly Archives: May 2012

(May 30 2012) Zoom V2 Test Build

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Okay, this is kinda important because it’ll affect how I unfold the trucks and pretty much all of the other wheeled vehicles in this set. I did an alternate unfolding for the Limoën Zoom that eliminates gluing the wheel wells to the sides of the car and changes up the assembly sequence a bit.

Short form: the car goes together as an upper and a lower half. In my 2 test builds, it seems significantly easier, but I don’t know how much of that comes from all the practice I’ve had building this model and how much of that really has to do with the new unfolding, so that’s where you guys come in.

Meet Bunbun:

I’d like you guys to take a poke at building it. You can skip the wheels and the lightbar if you like–I’m more interested in your opinions on how the chassis goes together.

Download link: (link removed. Thanks for testing!)

Let me know how you get on in the comments section. Thanks in advance!

Want to support this project?

Visit the project page for details: Project: Spaceport

(May 28 2012) Of trucks and choppers

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This is another multi-project update.

Spaceport

Pickup received an enclosed work box:

The enclosed workbox is another one of those amazingly versatile things with a zillion uses. I think that concludes the basic “get those over with now” options for the pickup, and I can move on to the more exotic and purpose-specific options. Also, we’re at the point where “this truck” and “that truck” are just gonna get confusing, so I named them. The pickup is the Samson, and the big truck is the Atlas.

Speaking of which, this is the Atlas-based refueling truck:

I’m still experimenting with the area where the options mate up with the chassis, so I haven’t modeled rear fenders and stuff like that yet.

Hangar Bay

Nothing much to show, but texturing of the new Percheron options is underway.  All of the new options except for the jump pod fit into  a single 2048x2048px texture cell, so there’s not a huge amount of work involved.

What I Did On My Holidays (with apologies to Terry Pratchett!)

I took part of Sunday off from the various projects to do some personal stuff. A few of you guys are fans of Defiance Games’s plastic figures, and while I was aware of them before, it wasn’t until all the talk in the comments that I took an active interest in what Defiance was up to.

They released plastic marines this year, and they’ve got alien bugs and female marines coming up. I’ve been the token male in the family for years, and I’m not about to tell Mrs E or my stepdaughters that they have to make do with Private Dirk Beefslab or Sergeant Chesty McHair during the “pick your figure” phase, so I’m hoping Defiance delivers on the female marines.

With the prospect of actually owning some plastic marines of both genders plus zillions of bugs by summer’s end in mind, I decided I wanted some vehicles and scenery to accompany them. I didn’t have a ton of time to spare yesterday, but I was able to make a respectable start on a helicopter gunship:

I drew influences from the AH-1 Cobra and the A-10 Warthog, and I wanted something that wasn’t an Avatar-style tiltrotor, a Caprica-style vectored thrust VTOL, or a conventional helicopter in zorty makeup. After messing around with a bunch of different permutations of rotorcraft, I settled on a dual-rotor configuration where the rotors were stacked in the middle of the fuselage and the stub wings grew out of the rotor shroud.

I liked how funky it looked, so I ran with that ball. The thing is about 12 inches long!

I’d also like to do some sort of Osprey analog. I don’t have any real idea how that’s going to look just yet, but I plan to mess around with some ideas the next time I take some time off.

(May 27 2012) More underwing ordnance

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Got a bit more stuff done yesterday. I modeled, unwrapped, and blocked in the colors for 2 new underwing options and a jump pod.

Percheron configured as a jump scout:

You can see the new 2-tube air-to-air missile pods on all 4 underwing stations, plus the jump pod on the centerline.

The jump pod isn’t standard equipment. Partly because it costs an eye-wateringly huge amount more than the plane it’s attached to and partly because jumping is significantly more dangerous than gate travel. The job of a jump scout is to jump ahead alone, reconnoiter the destination point and make sure it’s clear of obstacles and enemy activity, and then report back so a gateship can jump in to open the other end of the hyperdimensional tunnel for the rest of the fleet.

Nutshell: jumping gets you anywhere you want at high risk, while tunneling is much safer but requires an active gate at both ends of the tunnel. Civilian/commercial traffic uses fixed system gates, military fleets bring along multiple jump-capable gateships.

I also did pointy-nosed Hind-style 90mm saturation-fire rocket pods as an additional gunship option:

They’re on the inboard underwing stations. I’m not sure how they’ll look until I texture them. If I can’t make the angle-cut tube openings in the nose cone look convincing, I’ll just flatten the fronts.

I also did a couple scale checks to make sure the ordnance also fits the Crotale and Apsara:

Just as I guessed, 2 underwing stations on the Crotale and 4 on the Apsara.

I’m leaning towards doing a separate set of underwing weapon systems for the Crotale and Apsara for the sake of aesthetics, because the beefy gunship-sized rocket and missile pods look a bit huge on the Crotale. Then again, the Crotale isn’t really supposed to be a ground attack aircraft anyway, so I guess it just needs to look good with air-to-air armament.

The ground attack pods look fine on the inboard stations of the Apsara, but the outboard wing stations look better with smaller and lighter weapon systems. Plus, I’d like to be able to squeeze six underwing stations onto the Apsara so it’ll be more like a F/A-18.

I think I’ve sorted out all the new bits I wanted, so I just have to start detailing and weathering them.

Want to support this project?

Visit the project page for details: Project: Hangar Bay

(May 25 2012) Percheron, Haflinger, and Apsara Tweaks

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I’m between chores right now, so this is just a quick update for today.

I remodeled the Percheron’s wings a bit. Instead of being sharply triangular, they’re a little more like those of the Haflinger now.

The Haflinger was originally intended to be a direct Percheron replacement, but since the Percheron has recently had new life breathed into it with the various upgrades and texturing overhaul, the Haflinger became a personnel/cargo shuttle instead. To better reflect that, I’ve modified it. It’s longer, wider, and the proportions have been adjusted a bit.

It’s now capable of carrying 22 passengers in the back plus cargo down the centerline, and there’s room behind the cockpit for a pair of side doors.

It’s a bit over 10 inches long and almost 8 inches wide. I haven’t made any firm decisions on how to arm the Marine combat shuttle version, but I’d like at least a couple of rocket/missile pods and some sort of funky centerline gun pod that looks like a conformal belly hump with a streamlined minigun turret at the front. Or something like that, anyway–I’ll figure it out when I start fleshing out that model’s geometry a bit more.

The Apsara is also larger and heavier than the Crotale now. As with the Haflinger, it was originally intended as a direct replacement, but the pylon system on the updated Percheron got me to thinking that it’d be nice to have a fighter that was large enough to mount at least 4 underwing pylons and maybe a centerline pylon as well. The Crotale can manage 2 wing pylons at the most due to its small size.

I guess the difference between the two is supposed to be something superficially like how carrier-based aircraft have gotten larger and heavier over time.

Want to support this project?

Visit the project page for details: Project: Hangar Bay

(May 23 2012) Mr. Potato Plane

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This is a two-fer update for both the hangar bay and spaceport sets.

Hangar Bay

I got hit by a minor flash of inspiration the other day when I couldn’t decide exactly how I wanted to kit out my new Percheron build. It occurred to me that I didn’t want to be forced to build a whole new base model for each variant if I didn’t want to, so I went ahead and modularized all the options.

This is the pylon slot system on the underside:

All of the underwing options have built-in pylons, you just slot them into place:

The wingtip hardpoints use a clip system:

The other hardpoints use a peg system:

I still have to do the top hardpoint, which is why it isn’t pictured yet.

In addition to the hardpoint system, I’ve also modified the rest of the geometry for a cleaner build. Instead of the old “build a bunch of 3D volumes and glom them together” method, the entire fuselage is joined together into a single unit. The belly plate, upper nose plate, and rear upper plates are glued to the fuselage part to create a hollow volume that’s open on the bottom. Because you don’t close off the bottom until near the end, you should be able to achieve tighter joins and a cleaner build.

Spaceport

Incidentally, while working on Mr. Potato Plane, I had another sudden idea hit me out of nowhere. I think I know how to make the Zoom in the spaceport set (and all other car models, really) a bit simpler to build. I have a half-built follow-me car next to my laptop that I physically kitbashed with the necessary changes, and it seems cleaner and easier than the old way.

What I did was remove all the the glue flaps on the car sides for the wheel wells, remove the bottom glue flaps on the wheel well pieces, and then I added glue flaps to the wheel well notches on the belly plate. I glued the wheel wells to the belly plate, then glued the box reinforcer to the belly plate afterwards. The upper half was assembled normally. At this point, the car now has an upper half and a lower half, and it just seems easier to register and glue together like this. I’m glad this idea hit me before I unfolded the trucks, and I’ll be putting something together for you guys so you can try it. If it works as well for you guys as it did for me, I’ll do a full update of the Zoom files.

Want to support these projects?

Visit the project pages for details:

Project: Spaceport

Project: Hangar Bay