Recovery Mission

[Patrickivan]

Captain’s Log, stardate: Classified.

Mission: Recovery of Starfleet’s new Banting Class Science Vessel, U.S.S. Sir Frederick Banting, due to an unbalanced new centralized warp power reactor.

Photo taken from the U.S.S. Yarmouth, North Atlantic Class Corvette.

Recovery Vehicles: Sikorsky Class Recovery Vessel, U.S.S. Kaliningrad; Hudson Class Frigate, U.S.S. York; North Atlantic Class Corvettes, U.S.S. Battle Creek (off the starboard stern of the York), U.S.S. Kanata (following up the rear of the Kaliningrad), and the U.S.S. Yarmouth (outside of frame- documenting the procedure).

Mission Status: Recovery underway. Banting is secured and nestled under the care of Kaliningrad. Warp core shut down procedures are commencing, and the return voyage back to Starbase (Classified) should be underway within the hour.

Commander MacCray-

End Log.

Background image wallpaper from spacetelescope.org. The Constellation Crux.

You can see the larger image on my wordpress site.

 

[Kaiser]

very nice image and story behind it

 

[sojourner]

Cute, I would move that one corvette, it's getting lost in the body of the frigate.

 

[BorgMan]

*poke* Install Kerkythea on your machine, install the SU2KT plugin, and come back with nice pictures with blinky stuffs

 

[Patrickivan]

very nice image and story behind it

Thank you. Always a pleasant comment from you.

Cute, I would move that one corvette, it's getting lost in the body of the frigate.

Yaaaaaaa. I know. It really corvette is really washed out by the frigate. But I was so frustrated with how slow my computer was trying to process all that information. It took me two hours just to import each image. Every change of view took 5-10 minutes. It was horrible. Faster in wireframe, but it took forever to swtich back...

*poke* Install Kerkythea on your machine, install the SU2KT plugin, and come back with nice pictures with blinky stuffs

I tried to install Kerkythea a few months ago (I think on Sojourner's recommendation), but it wouldn't install properly or I was screwing it up.

I have podium, but I'll be damned if I can figure out where the saved image is going. I can see the ship in the preview window, and then I hit save (in the podium window), and nothing happens. I can't figure it out. And oh man does it take forever for the previews to render! My tiny little covette took 15 minutes for two glowy bussard collectors!

I want a computer just for the purpose of building my Starfleet! Nothing else... (well, other that and sharing them here).

 

[sojourner]

Hehe, well there is a trick to the bussards. You see, the slowest thing to render in an image is a surface with an illumination. Now, with a bussard, what you see is this nice curved surface, but what the software sees is lots and lots of small flat surfaces that are illuminated. For each illumination it has to determine things like where those rays of light are going, what they are reflecting off of, and what shadows are created. This is alot of computational power even for one flat surface. Added in a bunch of tiny flat surfaces radiating at different angles and BOOM! computer melt down!

The answer? Make the bussard semi-transparent and put a nice flat single surface behind it emitting the light. MUCH easier for the software to do the math on that single surface. You'll get much faster renders.

 

[Patrickivan]

Hehe, well there is a trick to the bussards. You see, the slowest thing to render in an image is a surface with an illumination. Now, with a bussard, what you see is this nice curved surface, but what the software sees is lots and lots of small flat surfaces that are illuminated. For each illumination it has to determine things like where those rays of light are going, what they are reflecting off of, and what shadows are created. This is alot of computational power even for one flat surface. Added in a bunch of tiny flat surfaces radiating at different angles and BOOM! computer melt down!

The answer? Make the bussard semi-transparent and put a nice flat single surface behind it emitting the light. MUCH easier for the software to do the math on that single surface. You'll get much faster renders.

I am going to try that tonight!

Any idea's as to my issues with saving the image? I must be missing some step somewhere...

 

[sojourner]

Sorry, I don't use Podium.

 

[BorgMan]

You COULD try to zip the file with all the ships and mail it to me; that way, I can make sure that all the settings are correct and make a scene for you

 

[Michael_One]

Very nice and moody. Patrickivan!

At first I thought the ship on the lower right had a third, smaller warp nacelle. Though that's an interesting idea of its own, a smaller engine for low warp speed patrol and reduced warp field signature; it'd be harder to spot at a distance.

 

[BorgMan]

Still around with this one Patrick? I'm running a new system and I'm dying to do some tests

 

[Patrickivan]

Still around with this one Patrick? I'm running a new system and I'm dying to do some tests

I've been beat the past couple of weeks working a mind numbingly minimum wage job, spending all my free time looking for something more gainful... To no avail. Just been to in the dumps to do anything here.

That said- it's the long weekend here and I'm feeling a little more motivated for some recreation. So I'll zip it and ship it to you right now! I can't wait to see what you do with it.

I may work on the corvette today, or make another little ship. I'm feeling Star Warsy today.