Hyperion Class Armed Dropship

[headdie]

My hi thread yielded this

Cool stuff. Some of your ships look like they might work as our Hyperion-class Armed Dropship. It's a mixed dropship/fighter we plan to include but lack a model. It wouldn't require any animation, just a texture as well as some changes to the model to create an "interior". I'm thinknig the Pitbull or Tornado crafts in your deviartart gallery look like possible matches.

"I'm thinknig the Pitbull or Tornado crafts in your deviartart gallery look like possible matches." But if you've got another idea, go for it. Key is that it should be able to be a fighter jet that can store 5 or so soldiers as well. Oh, and it should if possible have vertical take off and landing.

To this end I have opened this thread to explore this possibility.

Unfortunately while the Pitbull probably has a better form to work with on this, it is a product of someone else's concept art which will complicate licencing as the concept art was for a company iirc.

Leaving the Tornado


To provide background on the model it is an original concept by myself, intended as a medium aero/space fighter with 4 light cannons mounted in the structure top centre of the model, a medium cannon mount lower centre circular structure on the front view and missiles mounted in the tall rectangularish structures either side of centre mass.  Engines in the rear rectangular structures which join the wings to the main fuselage.

Now for a few ideas.

The changes to make will depend mostly on how we arrange the cargo bay, do we have a "traditional" rear cargo door for deployment or use Firebird style side cargo doors, or a variation where they open forwards where the missiles are now?

For the engine layout as this is a terrestrial tech VTOL craft it will probably want the engine structures I have near the front making more prominent and adding vertical thrusters to the rear engines.

Lastly weapons how does the team see this thing armed, will it be similar to the Stiletto? or less powerful?perhaps 2 light and a medium weapon mount with the medium where the light cannons are in the original concept and new mounting points for the lights on the centre fuselage somewhere?

Also as is demonstrated in the attached model is that the lower hull is not currently brilliant for this roll and will need filling in. what are everyone's thoughts on that do I fill it in following the existing silhouette or change it moving everything towards the rear for example.

What are everyone's opinions on this?

[ShipIt]

The changes to make will depend mostly on how we arrange the cargo bay, do we have a "traditional" rear cargo door for deployment or use Firebird style side cargo doors, or a variation where they open forwards where the missiles are now?

If this does not conflict with the votl engines, I would favor the side doors, because it gives better possibilities in tactical combat. Having the door at the front sounds interesting, too. This would give a more uniqe touch.

Lastly weapons how does the team see this thing armed, will it be similar to the Stiletto? or less powerful?perhaps 2 light and a medium weapon mount with the medium where the light cannons are in the original concept and new mounting points for the lights on the centre fuselage somewhere?

The hyperion is supposed to be some early, human-tech aircraft. Although armed, it is still a dropship. So it should be able to bring a Scout UFO down and assist the interceptors when dealing with bigger UFO´s. Maybe two slots for whatever weapons?
Btw, none of the existing aircraft models does show its weapons.

[headdie]

Side doors should not interfere with the engine layout as the main engines are right at the back and the forward engines are currently little recesses where the forward fuselage widens into the main section.  The only issue might be the wings, though an idea that has just come to me would be to fold the wings in some way.

While weapons are not shown I like it to be so that you can look at something like this and be able to see where important things are like engines and on combat craft where weapon points are, even if it's just a bulge where a cannon mount ends for example, it is far from critical but helps detailing the thing in a meaningful manner.

[H-Hour]

Leaving the Tornado

Sweet, that was my favorite. I really like the unique nose on it.

The changes to make will depend mostly on how we arrange the cargo bay, do we have a "traditional" rear cargo door for deployment or use Firebird style side cargo doors, or a variation where they open forwards where the missiles are now?

Your call.

For the engine layout as this is a terrestrial tech VTOL craft it will probably want the engine structures I have near the front making more prominent and adding vertical thrusters to the rear engines.

Sounds good.

Lastly weapons how does the team see this thing armed, will it be similar to the Stiletto? or less powerful?perhaps 2 light and a medium weapon mount with the medium where the light cannons are in the original concept and new mounting points for the lights on the centre fuselage somewhere?

The stilleto -- probably the firepower equivalent of the hyperion -- has two medium and one small weapon mount. I think we should aim for that and no more with the hyperion, which means we have three slots to work with (2 light and one medium is fine as well). Where you put them is you're call, I think. You could mimic the stilleto's layout by making the cannons two medium mounts over the back, then putting a little mount under the nose for a light mount.

Also as is demonstrated in the attached model is that the lower hull is not currently brilliant for this roll and will need filling in. what are everyone's thoughts on that do I fill it in following the existing silhouette or change it moving everything towards the rear for example.

I think either way could work well. The only thing I'm concerned about, though, is making sure the soldiers can exit with plenty of headspace. Maybe that means not having them exit under the wings. However, if your concept is for this to be large enough for the soldier to walk comfortably under the wing, it could be a nice tactical element -- exit with cover from enemy positions up high in dense areas.

[ShipIt]

I should stop getting distracted and leaving posts unfinished. 

I was just looking at our existing interceptor models and noticed they show nothing about their weaponry. Looks somewhat naked that way. The way you suppose (giving the beholder an idea about where the weapons are, without revealing too much detail) is much better.

[headdie]

I should stop getting distracted and leaving posts unfinished. 

I know that one all too well mate

and time for a little update with pretty renders.
Outside

***the transparency in the canopy is for rendering purposes, for simplicity of the model it will probably just be a solid "glass" colour come final release to reduce the model load on the game***

Troop Bay

I downloaded the male soldier mesh from the git repository for scale purposes.

I am currently experimenting with the side door version as i think it has the most promise.

Believe it or not i have got problems with a oversized troop bay, scaled so that the pilots are justers in terms of fitting in the cockpit, the area i had in mind for the troop bay could have fit 8-12+ soldiers in it

By introducing benches, resizing the main fuselage down to about 70% of its original width and placing a pillar down the centre I finally have a 6-8 seater.

To be honest I think the narrowing of the hull has made the lines work much better as well so winner all round imho

still to do
* Join the passenger bay mesh to the rest of the hull
* Tidy up some nasty geometry I was hiding with smoothing
* UVmap and Texture (blegh not my favourite part of modelling)

As always feedback, suggestions and comments welcome

[ShipIt]

I think it´s great. Just hope it is not getting too big.

[headdie]

I think it´s great. Just hope it is not getting too big.

yer I am a bit worried about that myself, does anyone have or know where I can grab a copy of the Firebird that I can directly import into blender for comparison? I am struggling to find one

[MCR]

Hi headdie

Good to get some help.

Attached is the firebird like requested:

[MCR]

I hope you are aware that we need the roof to be separated from the rest (to be able to levelflag it and look inside the dropship in-game).
Also in v2.4+ we are using 2 different models showing different aircraft depending on their status (in-transit/landed).
A lowpoly version of the dropship for the geoscape would be needed also (with a 256x256 texture)...

Our model renderer supports glowmaps, specmaps and normalmaps (with height encoding in the alpha channel) as well btw 

[H-Hour]

The actual model can be scaled before exporting. The real question is whether the bay area is too big, and I'm afraid a 6-8 person bay might be too much for this particular dropship. Attached are a couple ideas for how you might shrink it without disturbing the overall shape of your craft too much.

Another thing to keep in mind when scaling is that you'll want the hull and doors to "fit" our grid system as best as possible. This is something that will likely take some trial and error, exporting the MD2 and trying it out in-game. If you need help with that, feel free to attach an MD2 or OBJ and some of us more experienced with the maps can try it out.

[TrashMan]

I seem to recall having an old model or two that might work...will have to check.
Headdie is on this, but it wouldn't hurt to have a backup, just in case..

[headdie]

Many thanks MCR that has helped greatly, texturing is my big weakness atm so it might just be supplied with the base map and possibly a glow map.

I plan to try and learn how to do a start to finish job myself, but I will be sure to ask questions when I hit the inevitable, usually with my hard head.

I seem to recall having an old model or two that might work...will have to check.
Headdie is on this, but it wouldn't hurt to have a backup, just in case..

Ohhh ye of little faith

In all seriousness might be a good idea, though I plan to post the model soon as a community backup, especially given the progress below.



Based on the side by side I reduced the model size by about 25%, shunted the engines forward a little and moved the cockpit back a little



Also I made the bay doors much wider so that it corresponds with the firebird



lastly I trashed the old troop bay and made a much simpler box one extruded where needed with completely open sides, the bay is now a solid 4 person or one 2x2 UGV due to the size of the bay and if needed it can easily be expanded due to its shape.

My next potential issue with the size is the overall width, a potential fix I am thinking of is to partially fold the wings but H-Hour initially commented about the wings being useful for cover and I would like to run with that idea, especially given the squad size deployable so any other ways to do it are very welcome.

[H-Hour]

Idea for width below. Wings would still provide cover outside the cover doors.

[H-Hour]

I should also add that our model format doesn't support transparency in the model, so the cockpit can't have proper windows. That said, if you want to build the cockpit interior, in the future if we ever support transparency we'll have the model ready to go.

If you can properly unwrap and create a base texture for your craft, I can work on finishin the texture off. Similar division of labor was done on the new stilleto model.