Me and Vasudan Admiral are knocking together a HTL TC-TRI to go with his HTL Triton, and we've hit upon a difference of opinion regarding the shape. So, at an impasse as far as debating between ourselves, we've decided to get some second opinions.
On the left of the attatched image is the TC-TRI from Sparky. On the right is a quickly cut and pasted together rendition of what my current HTL one would look like were the two poly counts similarly low (I've not used an actual screenie of the new container as the extra polies make it look better, and this is a question of design, rather than purely of aesthetics). The question is whether the left or right one should be used as the basic design for the HTL ship (I'm going right (regular), VA's going left (irregular).
Anyway, on the one hand you have the basic, fundamental tenant of HTL that requires one to stick at least relatively closely to canon. also, the left hand design is, in VA's view, more interesting and breaks up the squareness of it (I think - he can come along and clarify if I'm getting it wrong). For my part, I reckon that the more uniform design is better because it gets rid of the apparently random changes in length of the extruded prongs and, while technically breaking canon, the model remains recognizably a TC-TRI. Also, if the left hand design is used, the cargo braces (X shaped texs - check them in MV if you don't remember) are applied to non square polies which, if my memory from physics is any good, wouldn't work that well.
So, opinions?
(Oh, and to forestall the inevitable question of "Why are you HTLing a cargo container anyway?", go check the old pof in Modelview. It has 75 polies spread over an object the size of a fenris. It'd stick out like the proverbials if we docked it to the nice, new HTL Triton).
