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Reactor-Axe-Man — Yellowjacket Squadron

#carrier #cruiser #destroyer #empire #hornet #navy #spacecraft #starfire #starship #terran #warship #yellowjacket
Published: 2014-12-08 17:25:17 +0000 UTC; Views: 4432; Favourites: 60; Downloads: 162
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Description Moreover the LORD thy God will send the hornet among them, until they that are left and hide themselves from thee, be destroyed.

-- Deuteronomy 7:20, KJV.

The Terran Empire Navy's Strike Squadron FORTY (STRIKERON 40) on deep interdiction raid somewhere in the vicinity of the Xi Scorpii 5 complex of stars. Wearing their Yellowjacket colors, the light cruiser Paris (CL-77), the light carrier Hawk (CVL-82), the frigate Thedus (F-329), and their destroyer consorts Norfolk (DDE-207), and Southampton (DDE-221) plus Interceptor Squadron NINETEEN (The Reds) seek out the soft underbelly of their enemy's interior to raid and sow confusion and disarray in the 'safe zones.'  These high risk/high reward missions attract only the finest ships and crews, their captains and squadron commodores given nearly unlimited latitude to conduct operations. 

I think at this point, this project represents the most ambitious effort that I've been able to come across to bring the world of the STARFIRE tabletop game to 3D life. I've done my best to interpret the byzantine array of rules and versions of rules, while at the same time presenting them within my existing style's rules for deck orientation, heat rejection, laser armaments, logical placement of sensors and EWAR arrays, RCS thrusters and all of that.  I had to do this in 3 renders, and composite the image together. Total throw weight of the composition was 4.73 million triangles, and Kerkythea said oh HELL no...

Modeled with Trimble SketchUp. Rendered (grudgingly) with Kerkythea. This is a commission for
Available for 3000 px wide download ->click
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Comments: 20

markusglanzer [2016-05-08 08:08:39 +0000 UTC]

I'm still in love with the color-scheme, and since I recently got to do a spherical spacecraft, I thought I'd pay you a little homage.

Unfortunately, shit happened along the way.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

SAINT-I [2014-12-15 15:59:59 +0000 UTC]

Not very well camouflaged, are they?
Also, they look like lego

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Reactor-Axe-Man In reply to SAINT-I [2014-12-15 18:30:06 +0000 UTC]

Camouflaged space warships? Not really seeing the point of that.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

SAINT-I In reply to Reactor-Axe-Man [2014-12-15 19:06:03 +0000 UTC]

Black spaceships maybe?

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Reactor-Axe-Man In reply to SAINT-I [2014-12-15 19:15:56 +0000 UTC]

They'd be visible on IR telescopes at distances where visual ones would be unlikely to spot them, even painted white.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

Dimsdale00 [2014-12-11 13:18:42 +0000 UTC]

wow, way cool!! excellent work and a truly pleasant experience end to end as always

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Reactor-Axe-Man In reply to Dimsdale00 [2014-12-11 17:48:20 +0000 UTC]

I'm working on a battle scene at present, since I actually made projectiles for the cannons and missiles for the launchers that have never seen the light of day.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

dmaland [2014-12-10 00:02:00 +0000 UTC]

Chris Foss lives on!

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Reactor-Axe-Man In reply to dmaland [2014-12-10 18:02:57 +0000 UTC]



Mission Accomplished!

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

Jake821 [2014-12-09 20:34:30 +0000 UTC]

God damn I wish I could see these things in action.

DIRK! Learn how to do animation and make a video of these! I wanna see them blow things up!

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Reactor-Axe-Man In reply to Jake821 [2014-12-10 18:00:23 +0000 UTC]

*shudders*

Jake, the three renders, plus compositing took about eight hours to do. For one frame of animation. A ten second video clip at standard animation frame rates would take me six months of 80 hour work weeks...  Even if I somehow knocked this scene down to thirty minutes a frame, it would still take 120 hours.  This is the reason why the big VFX houses have tremendous render farms at their disposal.

👍: 0 ⏩: 2

William-Black In reply to Reactor-Axe-Man [2014-12-10 22:04:00 +0000 UTC]

*shudders* right along with you. I once did exactly that, six months of 80 hour work weeks making an animation of some of my spacecraft - I literally got so burned out that I was getting nauseated working on it, the compositing, editing, cutting and re-editing to fit a soundtrack ... Some people I showed it to thought it looked great, but I was never really happy with it ... never again man.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Reactor-Axe-Man In reply to William-Black [2014-12-11 17:46:30 +0000 UTC]

I'd love to try something animated, but it would have to be something far less ambitious than this particular scene. Either that or some kindly Sugar Daddy out there decides to be my Patron of the Arts and loans me his render farm. >_>

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

Jake821 In reply to Reactor-Axe-Man [2014-12-10 22:01:48 +0000 UTC]

I... Jesus tap dancing Christ.

Uh, nevermind... 

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Reactor-Axe-Man In reply to Jake821 [2014-12-11 17:47:16 +0000 UTC]

It was a nice thought, Jake.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

TheAtomicDog [2014-12-08 19:48:27 +0000 UTC]

Tremendous, disco-era, TTA-type design and full-scale liveries.
*applauds*

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Reactor-Axe-Man In reply to TheAtomicDog [2014-12-10 17:58:02 +0000 UTC]

Mission accomplished then, since the invocation of 70s Sci-Fi art, and the TTA books in particular was a goal for the project.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

TheAtomicDog In reply to Reactor-Axe-Man [2014-12-11 06:00:06 +0000 UTC]

*nods*
You nailed it.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

William-Black [2014-12-08 19:27:08 +0000 UTC]

Man I just love the bad-ass detail and color scheme you have going here. Beautiful, and no doubt beautifully deadly in combat.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Reactor-Axe-Man In reply to William-Black [2014-12-10 17:57:22 +0000 UTC]

Thank you! I can only wish to have done the STARFIRE games justice with these.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0