02-12-2002 17:27									#1
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I think I'am enlisted into SPDT as artist, but nobody seems to contact me with tasklist , so I pick random target and hit it hard. I select chopper.

Author's description:

"Stingray" class Fortrification Leveling Unit (F.L.U).
Anti-ground futuristic chopper, slick, stealthy and deadly. Best deployed against "soft" targets, but may wreak havoc even among heavy armoured units. This chopper prefer to stay somewhere nobody may spot it, occationaly rushing into unstoppable strafe run, unleashing lethal storm of ASM-P652 plasma discharge cluster missiles and "Hasher" rapid-fire rail miniguns.
NOTE: This unit is't capable of deploying of tactical fusion, fission or AM bombs as it can't leave area of effect quickly enough to survive.

Design concerns:
1st of all, I got a pictures from the forum. One was a helicopter. IMHO, this chopper design is 1960ish, bulb-like hull with compensator rotor at the tail. Trusted, well adopted and surely non-futuristic. Modern war choppers lack some critical point: stealth. Front aviation unit must penetrate deeply into enemy territory, kill its prey then return to base. Typicaly, chopper lives until something big and evil, like interceptor, spot its position . Chopper can't run and can't fight against specialized aerial predator. So chopper must be as hard to spot as possible while it is compatible with its primary function (blowing stuff up). IMHO, hiding rotary wing inside hull may resolve some questions (sonic noise and inability to make rotary wing stealthy). Also, hull must be slender, so it'll blend with terrain smoothly. So this copter is thin, pair of counter-rotating rotors are concealed inside mostlly toroidal hull. Rear hemisphere is covered by pair of turrets which both may fire even straight sidewards, harrasing enemy infantry etc and keeping six-sooters at bay.

No propietary programs were used during creation of this model.

P.S. Description is only the my random inspiration and is subject to free
change in order to fit SP storyline and tech tree.

Suggestions are always welcome.

Attachment: chopper_blur000030.png
This has been downloaded 105 time(s).

	02-12-2002 17:38									#2
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Concerning picture #20... was it created using Terragen or it's just an artist's mistake? Terragen produces horrible cubistic pictures, esp. water reflections. Any terragenish picture is plagued with same problem, but its author seems to ignore it.

	02-12-2002 18:20									#3
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No, it wasn't. It was generated with pov-ray 3.1. It's a text-based ray-tracing program - and it's freeware.

www.povray.org

	02-12-2002 18:25									#4
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Targon -

That is one heckuva 'copter you've got there...
Veeerryyy nice!

What program did you use?

And about that 1960's chopper you saw.... It was a joke.

	02-12-2002 18:33									#5
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Modelling: KPovModeller 1.0
Rendering: PovRay 3.5
Motion blur: Cinelerra (as my Imagemagick installation seems to be broken... , anyway, it's darned bad blur indeed...:shame
It taken me something like half a day to model and another half to fight against various porgrams to make rotor really rotation-looking (in fact, I'm failed

	02-12-2002 18:38									#6
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Povray sometimes generate really bad tiled pattern where tiles are in fact unwelcome, and it's hard to overcome. Watch your six - I can't belive in squared waves!

	02-12-2002 18:39									#7
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Is there suposed to be two rotors in the middle, rotating in the opposite directions? Because that could compensate the rotation of the ship?

But I guess the ship rotation could be taken care of with thrusters....

	02-12-2002 18:42									#8
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Heeh... It has waves coming from two different directions. This phenomenon is called interference. But in this program, this was just an unexpected result...

	02-12-2002 18:48									#9
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Why not? It's common design for, say, Kamov "Ka" war helicopters. Counter-rotation is automatic, cheap and easy to use, while thrusters require constant care and additional design problems.
And as you may see, it's pretty effective

Attachment: scene.png
This has been downloaded 108 time(s).

	02-12-2002 18:51									#10
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But this type of copter would eventually require thrusters to make it move quicly.

But now that you mentioned it, yep. there are copters with counter-rotation blades... IIRC...

BTW, nice explosions. Paintbrush?

	02-12-2002 18:55									#11
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BTW, one common mistake with rendered shore images: waves _must_ run || to shore. This phenomenon is called dispersion. If non-aligned wave runs towards shore, its deccelerates as wave speed is proportional to sqrt(g * depth). So wave is effectively rotated towards shore. Nature is exciting.

	02-12-2002 19:03									#12
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OK, thrusters are welcome, while helicopters are rare case of machine what can enjoy real 6DOF using the only propulsive agent.
Explosions are five-minute kludge using The Gimp.
BTW, can _anyone_ tell me what things I need to do fo StP besides rendering useless pictures and expressing my military science knowledge in the forum? What units need to be done, etc.?

	02-12-2002 19:24									#13
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Oh, that chopper looks a lot like manta.
I believe those 'eyes' are the cocpits of the chopper. But does it need two cocpits? Or the other could be used for steering, the other for navigation/hostile detection/entertainment/whatever...

And what you could do...?
Well, useless pictures are 'almost never' useless. All kind of unit renders are wellcome. You can use your imagination as you like. You can re-design some units if you want to.

No designs are final so far.

If you have more ideas like this chopper, I ask you to show us more of those ideas.

	02-12-2002 19:29									#14
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Okay, I didn't do it accurately. Please forgive

As a matter of fact, I don't even know how it could be done accurately with pov-ray... perhaps with a hand-made height-field ... too difficult...

	02-12-2002 19:42									#15
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Sure. I have called it "stingray", but "manta" is better.

Two cockpits are for two pilots. Helocopters are just too fun to control for a single pilot. And last but not least, it looks cool. I belive that war mashines must be both beautiful and terrible, like life itself.

I really appreciate such a freedom of imagination, but I saw someone titled "Graphics Manager", what is his job indeed?

I love to invent futuristic war machines (some days ago, I found my old pictures of space battleships and battle landscapes, dated as I was 6-years old). So I have some ideas, some good, some bad ... community desires. BTW, I'am dissappointed by degree of ignorance to fresh enlisted graphics artist (nothing besides Rasbelin mail from 29.11.02 ... he said I need't any other applications...).

	02-12-2002 19:47									#16
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Why hand-made?
There is something called Terraform lurking around. When I tried to emloy it, I recieved lot of obscene gestures from PovRay commenting intellect of include file creator etc. But possible I simple have't tried hard enough? Terragen's heightfields alone are beautiful, with auto-generation of erosion, flow, rivers and much more stuff. Try in.

	02-12-2002 19:58									#17
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Posted by Aaglo...

quote: Hold your horses, targon. We ain't in a hurry. We don't even have our boards up yet (well, actually we did have, but they were shut down some three months ago). Yes, I am the graphics manager... But that's only, because earlier I was the only enlisted graphic artist in the old forums. So the title was just passed to me. I didn't ask for it. And as I have a job (I'm not a student nor unemployed), I have some responsibility towards my employer. And I don't have internet at my home, so most likely I'm not online during weekends. As a conclusion: At this time you are quite free to design almost whatever units you want. Well, actually whatever units you want. I emphasize; nothing is decided so far.

Sorry, I was re-organising the threads.

	06-12-2002 13:08									#18
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OK, here are some sprites of the above chopper. They are 95% complete, still need to remove ugly messy periodical camo. Orho, 8 views, PNG 320x200 with alpha, some motion blur for blades.

Attachment: sprites.tar.gz
This has been downloaded 2 time(s).

	09-12-2002 13:50									#19
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New unit: light bomber

This kind may seems to be not especialy deadly, but, in fact, this fast and maneuvreble craft is't thing to safely ignore even for much larger ground units. This guy may sneak into enemy territory, realease its payload and safely escape. Fun against "soft" targets, esp. infantry. This craft is designed specialy for reasonable high speed at low altitudes it is't espacialy good "climber", but it surely can run away from any hunter chopper and can hide form more fast interceptors. SAMs and, even more, AAMs both have hard time catching low targets.

Attachment: bomber.png
This has been downloaded 73 time(s).

	09-12-2002 13:59									#20
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New unit: "Perfect Lie" class stealth bomber

In background: "MANA PRIME: Concentration", loud

This unit was specialy designed for cheating even most advanced air control systems, and most targeting computers simply can't aquire its position. Big, ugly, fast and lethal, this craft is truly "city killer" with its heavy fussion bombs. Its stealth nano-plating "thinking armour" is way too expensive, but this unit definitely deserves it.

Attachment: bomber.png
This has been downloaded 68 time(s).

	09-12-2002 14:01									#21
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BTW, another one picture of last unit

No, aaglo, this explosion is't Paintbrush

Attachment: bomber_scene.png
This has been downloaded 68 time(s).

	09-12-2002 14:07									#22
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Cool, but how it will look in the game?
As i understand we will get something like SMAC and Civ3 where units are considerably small...

	09-12-2002 14:18									#23
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Nobody ever saw this sacred game engine. AFAIK, developers are currently unsertain whatever they must employ sprite or true 3D graphics. BTW, "cool" pictures may be useful in unit statistics, game encyclopedia etc.

	09-12-2002 14:39									#24
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DEAR ENGINE DEVELOPERs

I think you should know here are some people drawing graphics. Currently this graphcs are sprites, so if your wish us to switch to true 3D (much better, IMO), please inform poor folks doing artist jobs ASAP, so volume of wasted work will be keept minimal. I believe engine you're working on will be pure killer, but we are team, or possible I'm wrong? Some time ago some high-ranked SPDT people seemed to agreed with true 3D, but I still compeltely out of information about _possible_ graphics formats etc. Best regards.

	09-12-2002 14:54									#25
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targon - i think that we all wait GOD to come, almost all information about this will be in it

	09-12-2002 15:04									#26
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All praise the GOD!

	09-12-2002 15:12									#27
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Targon-
those units look very nice

The light bomber looks a bit like a mixture of a glider-parachute and a modern helicopter

The stealth bomber looks like a butterfly (butterflies are quiet - does the shape come from that perhaps?)

	09-12-2002 15:27									#28
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aaglo,
Light bomber is in fact two-mode thing, as its engines are rotating and thus create additional lifting for low speeds. For high speeds, they are straight, producing more thrust. Hull is wing in its own right, improving new lifting.
Stealth bomber looks as it looks because I've think it's cool
At its second pic your could see it's blends with background somewhat...

	09-12-2002 16:08									#29
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OK, here is one more unit. It's like space marine...
This guy is 10% compelete and I fear I'll have hard time completing it, as PovRay lacks some valueble aspects like true Scene Graph (may be simulated using Unions). Also, its bi-patches are humble, way too short (just 4x4 CVs) and hard to join.

Attachment: standing.png
This has been downloaded 62 time(s).

	09-12-2002 16:41									#30
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However, it still looks fine to me

Nice job, targon.