[Ghostrider93]

Hello people,

I am relatively new here. I started playing Diaspora a few months ago.
During my time here in the community I read a post (don't remember where) of someone wanting a new plane in game.
When I looked at some photo's of WWII and Vietnam era planes I got the idea to make a sort of dive bomber.
After some sketching I came up with the Viper Mk II B, with B for Bomber.

This plane should have a similar role to the WWII Variant.



This is a quick photoshop sketch of the layout of the fighter (please don't comment on my skills in photoshop, it is not my best skill).
It could have fought in the first cylon war. Being a strike weapon and not so much a fighter, it has a turret which houses 2 or 4 .50 cal MG's and has 2 forward fixed 30 mm KEW's and multiple hardpoints underneath the hull and wings.
This fighter is not so manoeuvrable and fast as the regular Mk II but has more armor and a defensive turret.
This fighter is limited FTL-capable for quick hit and run strikes.


This is a LONG term project for me, as I am a busy person who has just learned the basics of modelling in blender.
I want to ask you people if you are interrested in a ship like this and wish to hear from me from time to time.
Or if you want me to (crudely said) shut up till I have something decent to show.
This way I can determine if I should release it when I have it ready.

Please tell me what you think.

Cheers,

Ghost

[Woolie Wool]

The tail fin is just begging to be shot to bits by the tailgunner.

[YIIMM]

^ AFAIK most WW2 planes with a tail gun setup like that would not allow the gunner to shoot from an angle that would hit the tail.

The concept you describe has, to me, more in common with the Boulton Paul Defiant than a dive bomber analogue. though with the loss of the third engine, increased mass and change in the centre of mass it it would definitely be a relatively poor dogfighter as you say.

I get the feeling though that any strike variant of the Mk II would resemble a P-47 or Hawker Typhoon rather than an SBD Dauntless (which I think is what you were going for) - i.e. a heavy, but still fast, single-seat fighter with a lot of firepower. I certainly like the idea but I think your current setup hamstrings the Mk II too much for the sake of the turret to be an effective plane.

[karajorma]

To be honest, I don't know if we'd ever use that design officially (We have a huge pile of concept art lacking the modellers to make them) but I'd certainly love to see it flying around in the game.

When it comes to 3rd party mods, our only rule is to please not step on our toes by making the same models we're working on. For instance someone working on a Valkyrie would annoy us cause we've already shown off pics of ours, so there's no good outcome from someone else modelling one (Even if it's better than ours, it means that Newman wasted months when he could have been making something else).

Original designs like this one, are exactly what we'd like to see 3rd party modellers making. If you're interested in building it, feel free to keep us updated. Or come up with another design you like even better based on the comments here. As long as it's original, you've got the support (and maybe even the help) of the Diaspora team.

[Woolie Wool]

^ AFAIK most WW2 planes with a tail gun setup like that would not allow the gunner to shoot from an angle that would hit the tail.

The concept you describe has, to me, more in common with the Boulton Paul Defiant than a dive bomber analogue. though with the loss of the third engine, increased mass and change in the centre of mass it it would definitely be a relatively poor dogfighter as you say.

I get the feeling though that any strike variant of the Mk II would resemble a P-47 or Hawker Typhoon rather than an SBD Dauntless (which I think is what you were going for) - i.e. a heavy, but still fast, single-seat fighter with a lot of firepower. I certainly like the idea but I think your current setup hamstrings the Mk II too much for the sake of the turret to be an effective plane.

This looks more like the later Il-2 Sturmovik variants to me.

[Ghostrider93]

I have begun modelling the MkIIB.
I have created the main outline of the fuselage.



I did not get very far at the moment but it is a start....

By the way, any tips and comments are welcome.

[fightermedic]

keep this up, it looks promising

[Ghostrider93]

Added engines and turret:







Any thoughts?

[Ghostrider93]

More screens on recent development.

[fightermedic]

if you can make the turret look a bit more like the scetch it would be perfect, a bit more rounded and less flat at the top
don't know how it would look like ingame if you actually modelled some details in the interior of the turret and texture it as glass, but i think it could be worth it

regarding the stats: i think this bomber should have very strong afterburners (top speed and acceleration both), probably stronger than the VIIe's even, to fill its role as dive bomber - this together with the speed when not using afterburners being lower than the mkII's should provide some interesting gameplay

overall this looks great so far!

[Ghostrider93]

if you can make the turret look a bit more like the scetch it would be perfect, a bit more rounded and less flat at the top
don't know how it would look like ingame if you actually modelled some details in the interior of the turret and texture it as glass, but i think it could be worth it

regarding the stats: i think this bomber should have very strong afterburners (top speed and acceleration both), probably stronger than the VIIe's even, to fill its role as dive bomber - this together with the speed when not using afterburners being lower than the mkII's should provide some interesting gameplay

overall this looks great so far!

Thanks for the comment. I was planning to make the turret more round but I didn't get to it at that point.
Now it is changed and I think it looks pretty good. I don't know where to start on the internals. maybe someone could fill me in on this one. If not I will let it be as it is now. Maybe in the future when I have more experience I could do it.

I have placed a Fixed gun barrel and a missile hardpoint.
This is one of the few Ideas I have left. I want to add more hardpoints for missiles but after that I don't really have an idea what to add.
I think this is about final now.

I have been looking around to figure out how to make a turret like mine work but I cant really wrap my head around it.
If anyone could do it for me or help me with this I would surely appreciate it.

Some more screenies for the interested:










Please tell me what you think.

[fightermedic]

you should check if the turret's barrels are far enough apart to shoot left and right of the tail when fiering exactly backwards, or this could indeed create some problems
other than that, if the texture will be as good as the model suggests, this will be excelent

[Black Wolf]

Are your turret arms a separate submodel to the turret base? At the moment, it looks like they come directly out of the base as simple extrusions. If you want it to work properly in game, you'll need to separate them.

[The Dagger]

Just found this thread :

First of all I really like the concept and you have fleshed out nicely.

You seem to have a lot of edge loops going by the upper part near to the central line. You should avoid this because, in my experience, little faces cramped together like that will create some sort of shading glitch and will look off. Evenmore, you will have to triangulate your mesh before importing it to FSO, so you don't have to keep all your faces as quads, so perfect edgeloops are not important. Also, you can have non-manifold meshes. I know most tutorials on the web talk about how important it is to have perfectly smooth edgeloops and all-quads models. As far as I know, the reason for that is that it makes character animation smoother and may help you if you're doing a multi-resolution mesh (for example for sculpting). You don't need any of that for FSO.

Also, you're using a flat shading, which makes  the model shape look faceted. Change it to smooth shading. then add an edge-split modifier. Finally, set the sharp edges. This will make your shapes more smooth and helps visualizing problems with normals orientation.

I can't wait to see this baby ingame. Keep up the good work! 

[Ghostrider93]

Thanks for the tip Black Wolf, I have done that now.

Just found this thread :

First of all I really like the concept and you have fleshed out nicely.

You seem to have a lot of edge loops going by the upper part near to the central line. You should avoid this because, in my experience, little faces cramped together like that will create some sort of shading glitch and will look off. Evenmore, you will have to triangulate your mesh before importing it to FSO, so you don't have to keep all your faces as quads, so perfect edgeloops are not important. Also, you can have non-manifold meshes. I know most tutorials on the web talk about how important it is to have perfectly smooth edgeloops and all-quads models. As far as I know, the reason for that is that it makes character animation smoother and may help you if you're doing a multi-resolution mesh (for example for sculpting). You don't need any of that for FSO.

Also, you're using a flat shading, which makes  the model shape look faceted. Change it to smooth shading. then add an edge-split modifier. Finally, set the sharp edges. This will make your shapes more smooth and helps visualizing problems with normals orientation.

I can't wait to see this baby in game. Keep up the good work! 

About the many centerlines, you can see a lot of them running down the rear end. I have done that so I can create such a complex rear area. The area between the exhaust pipes has a shape which required a lot of lines to get in the shape I like.
Now I am working on getting rid of a lot of the unnecessary lines that run all over.

That was a thing I didn't to do yet. I first wanted to get everything in shape. But I was not aware of the effect it could have on the object in game. Thanks for the headsup .

As for the edgy surface, that is just when I am doing the main designing. I use subdivision surface for a smoother surface.
What do you mean by triangulating the mesh?

Glad you guys like it, and thanks for the help.

[The Dagger]

By triangulate I mean convert your quads (faces with four vertices) to tris (faces with three vertices). As far as I know, FSO can only handle tris. In Blender you can select all faces and convert them to tris using Ctrl+T. There's a command to go back to quads but it's a little buggy, so I usually only triangulate the mesh before exporting. You can also use the triangulate modifier included in the latest blender release.

[headdie]

By triangulate I mean convert your quads (faces with four vertices) to tris (faces with three vertices). As far as I know, FSO can only handle tris. In Blender you can select all faces and convert them to tris using Ctrl+T. There's a command to go back to quads but it's a little buggy, so I usually only triangulate the mesh before exporting. You can also use the triangulate modifier included in the latest blender release.

collada exporter should have an option to triangulate the model for you on export which saves a lot of hastle in the modelling phase, especially if you need to adjust the model later

[Ghostrider93]

Just an update guys.

I am trying to unwrap my viper,  following this guide: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=74591.msg1474358#msg1474358

but when I try to make a template of sorts like in the guide I get this:



No matter what I try, the result is still the same. just a mess of triangles that by far do not resemble my viper... What am I doing wrong?

[ThePsuedoMonkey]

You've marked too many sides as seams, so it is separating all of those faces into islands on the UV map.  You'll need to clear off of them and start over.  It looks like you were trying to split the model down the center; I believe you can do that by taking the active selection you have and going to "select" -> "edge ring", which will reduce your selection to the perimeter edges (then you can mark them as the seams, after you clear the others).

[The Dagger]

Yep, apparenly all your edges are seams. Select them all then Ctrl + E -> Clear Seam. Select only the edges of the UV islands you want to create and then Ctrl + E  -> Mark Seam.

It looks like you were trying to split the model down the center; I believe you can do that by taking the active selection you have and going to "select" -> "edge ring", which will reduce your selection to the perimeter edges (then you can mark them as the seams, after you clear the others).

Seems only half of the ship is selected cause he's using a mirror modifier.