Starship Design Project

jedicharles

I've been working on a starship design project for over a year and it is finally finished so I thought I would share it here. I could have finished it much sooner but it is something I chose to take my time creating. I am an avid Star Wars fan so it made sense to make a ship. It is not based on any particular ship in the Star Wars universe but it is designed to exist there. I chose to make it a blockade runner like the Tantive IV in the first scene from Star wars - A New Hope that gets swallowed up by the star destroyer.

My goal was to design one that in theory could have better odds of fleeing its pursuer. It is a bit smaller than the Tantive IV but would have maneuverability and speed similar to the much smaller Millennium Falcon. It also has a ridiculous amount of firepower with a total of 20 guns. It isn't the fanciest ship out there but the simpler design allowed for a much smaller file size and relatively fast performance in SketchUp. Textures have been used very minimally and practically only for the display screens seen inside. That is typically how I model with SketchUp because I figure that if I can do it with model geometry alone why bother with textures whatsoever. I have modeled the entire ship including the interior. All components used are original and created by myself. So without further delay I present the Outer Rim Industries 210CR Fortified Blockade Runner:

For more pictures of the ship visit the gallery (there are over 80 images):
http://picasaweb.google.com/jedicharles/OuterRimIndustries210CRFortifiedBlockadeRunner

I chronicled the entire project on my blog throughout it's creation, see here:
http://jedicharles.com/category/starship-project/

Here is a summary of the ship detailing it's specs:
http://jedicharles.com/starships/210cr/

On the page linked above there is also a slideshow of the image gallery and a link to a zip file containing the entire model. The model came to 23MB making it too big for the 3D Warehouse so I had to post in a zip file elsewhere. The zip file is only 7.6MB.

A version without the main interior has been posted to the 3D Warehouse and can be found here:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=28ae603e7836706b2e7c5c2a99a86839

I would appreciate any and all comments you have about the ship. Thanks.

-Charles D. Rhodes

dolphus

Well done.. Thanks for sharing, hope to seemore.....

numbthumb

Looks great, it surely would be fun to explore it in WalkAbout 3D or something like that.
Unfortunately, only the 3DWH version - without the interior - (but with John´s suggestion to change your avatar picture ) is compatible with SU7, which I am running, so that is impossible for me to do
Nevertheless, great work indeed Are you planning on rendering it?

jedicharles

@numbthumb said:

Looks great, it surely would be fun to explore it in WalkAbout 3D or something like that.
Unfortunately, only the 3DWH version - without the interior - (but with John´s suggestion to change your avatar picture ) is compatible with SU7, which I am running, so that is impossible for me to do
Nevertheless, great work indeed Are you planning on rendering it?

Of course, now I regret adding the logo and I can't remove it... I just created a version compatible with 7.0. I'll get that uploaded as soon as possible for you. As far as rendering goes, I think I need a little more practice before I can deliver anything decent. I've been tinkering with Kerkythea a lot lately and I am trying to get the hang of it. I will eventually get there.

-Charles

numbthumb

@unknownuser said:

I just created a version compatible with 7.0. I'll get that uploaded as soon as possible for you

Hey, that´s great! Thanks! Looking forward to see more of your work.
Cheers!

jedicharles

@numbthumb said:

@unknownuser said:

I just created a version compatible with 7.0. I'll get that uploaded as soon as possible for you

Hey, that´s great! Thanks! Looking forward to see more of your work.
Cheers!

As promised, here is SU7 compatible file:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/1buf01ltf2iz2df/210CR-SU7.zip

The file size is a little bit smaller and I think that is because there are no scene thumbnails. It would be great if SketchUp was able to compress it's SKP files. That feature would be very useful because the data is highly compressible. When I zip up the original SU8 version there is a savings of 15MB.

I just started on the next ship. It's going to be bigger but hopefully it won't take as long. Before I started on this project, most of my creations were for the Google SketchUp 3D Challenge entries. If you want to take a look at what I've done see the link below:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/doadvsearch?nickname=jedicharles

-Charles

liam887

Looks pretty good, I would beef up the landing gear tho it looks like a heavy ship for such small legs

jedicharles

@liam887 said:

Looks pretty good, I would beef up the landing gear tho it looks like a heavy ship for such small legs

You are absolutely right about the landing gear. I already decided to address that as part of a "refit" later on but for now we will have to pretend that the repulsorlifts are holding most of the load. The Lucrehulk-class Core Ships seen in Attack of the Clones were supposedly so massive that they used the same principle; their landing gear were only used to stabilize and anchor the ship. My idea is to replace them with legs that simply flip down and lock into place. That should hold.

Charles

numbthumb

Just a random thought - that landing gear has a very similar appearance to those of Eagle One that I have attempted to model some time ago.
Sorry for the OT

jedicharles

@numbthumb said:

Just a random thought - that landing gear has a very similar appearance to those of Eagle One that I have attempted to model some time ago.
Sorry for the OT [attachment=0:3fatuy8x]footpad.jpg[/attachment:3fatuy8x]

I don't consider this off topic at all. Your design seems a lot stronger than mine.
I am working on a much bigger ship now (about 2.5x the length and 3 primary decks). It's going to need something even more substantial for it to land. This time it's going to have a landing bay with the capacity to hold a small but well-known freighter and a few star-fighters. I hope SketchUp can handle it.

numbthumb

Thanks, but that is just a screenshot of a 3D model found on the internet.
My pathetic little model is here, if you´re interested: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=27402