David’s Babylon 5 Stuff

[David cgc]

I always thought the Doomsday Machine looked like a geode, with translucent crystal above the colored base. I tried to do something with the White Star, suggesting multiple layers of specularity and density in the skin.

I revised the contouring on the undercarriage, adding some more gray lines to the lower level, and removing some from the upper level. I've been looking at it in test renders for the past couple days and my brain doesn't itch when I look at it anymore, so I think I struck the right balance. I also spotted an ugly crease in that section, which I was able to massage away with some hand-editing of polygons. It's still there, but it doesn't fold over itself anymore, so it doesn't look like a render error when the light catches it from the wrong angle.

 

[David cgc]

I've got some White Star updates. I revisited the "tech" section in the nose to add more detail. I researched greebles, and found a few reference sources I liked from digital and physical model-building (I'm curious if anyone will recognize them). I also added some more yellow lights scattered around since just having the light from the tip of the nose reflecting off the main cannon made the rest of that section of the ship look weirdly dead, especially since the way the hull wraps around it means its usually mostly in shadow.







Near the back of the tech strip, I added an airlock for ship-to-ship docking. I based the design on the sets of the Liandra from Legends of the Rangers (on the theory that an airlock would be a universal component and more likely to have an older industrial style, plus it means I've been able to incorporate aspects from every Babylon 5 production era into the model).

I've also made the meditation room from The Road Home. There were only a couple of possible places where it might make senes, and I decided it'd go at the bottom of the ship, where the lower wings meet in the center, with the skinny window right above the yellow strip there. Pre-production art indicates it's a perfectly cylindrical room, but based on what's actually in the movie, I went with a triangular shape. I decided the room's mood lighting would match the wall panels on the bridge of each respective ship, and the accent lights would match the bridge railing, though with the size of the window and the darkness of the room, the effect is extremely subtle.





I'm working on the boarding tube from War Without End, now. After that I want to make a couple of walk-up ramps, then comes the landing bay. At some point I'll also have to make the little crew, but I think that'll be it and then it'll be time to start prepping it for use and distribution.

 

[Anthony Scott]

That's some pretty nice work on the Whitestar. Always did like that ship.

 

[David cgc]

I finished the boarding tube and landing gear seen in WWE, and added a couple of foot-ramps. The ramps are designed so that they can lower in either direction, forward or aft, and they operate independently. Unfortunately, I wanted to avoid rigging and set them up using morphs, so they can't actually animate. Well, they can, but it looks really dumb.



I also did work on the "tech" textures. I added some bronze and silver accents to various details to break up the coloration subtly, as well as scorched metal effects to the cannons.



I'm running out of ways to avoid making little crew dolls. Why does everyone on Babylon 5 wear cloaks, or mantles, or unique robes? If this was an Earth ship, I'd just paint new textures on my old Starfleet figures, add some noses, and be done.