All,

I was invited here by Kenneth of Borg... I've made a bunch of royalty free, zero-cost Star Trek Models (and other sci-fi) in Blender that you can use as you please. Link:

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/author/kuhn0362/

I'm working on some new ones, but let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like. I love your stuff, and would be happy to help as time allows.

-Chris-

Welcome Chris, we are delighted to see you here. Thank you so much for the offer. Let me look through your stuff. In a nut shell we are looking to upgrade ingame 2D images of our ships. I will link you to some of that shortly. The 3d Combat engine does not exist at this point but that will come later. Again welcome. Bringing your level of skill here makes you an instant hero.

OK, here we go: (Captain Bashir will be able to add to this I am sure. He has spent more time using Lightwave to make 2D images to use in the game.)

To see a pre alpha version of the game look here.

Ships, 2D and 3D: I like to us this Sharepoint location to look up what ship model we currently have for what ship type in the game. That is look in the Fleets, Ships Stations folder as most of the rest are outdated folders. (If you use EI you can see the images but I am told that some users of Firefox only see them as a file name.) You will see, for example, we use the Federation Constitution class as the Federation Cruiser II and it's upgrade as the Cruiser III. The 2D images here are copies of what we actually use in the game that are in the .png format on a transparent background. The game puts in the background. Sorry to say we do not use any shuttles in our fleets but I did see you have some other Federation work. Even the assorted craft had a number of likely minor race ships. I like your DS9 but as you say it is too big for the game engine. We have not coded the engine yet but have set up limits for the models based on what we expect. Look here Captain Bashir can show you more in a PM about what is going on with a second generation of these images.

2D Structures images: here

Tech images have a thread here

There is more but that is more than enough for now.

Kenneth,

I understand your limits on polygons. Give me a good estimate of what size/quality you are looking for in terms of poly/vertex count. I can make a much simpler version of DS9, or most of the famous ST:TNG era ships. Are we talking 1K polys or 10K polys? If you let me know what level of detail I have to work with, I can do some models for you guys along those lines.

Thanks!

-Chris-

It was a rush job putting all those models into SharePoint a few years back. Most of them are donated from people that had posted them online. The reason I stopped work on ship for the game was our Windows XP 3D game engine no longer worked in our now Windows 7 game upgrade. We still do not have an engine to replace it.

Since then I have been working on intro Videos for the major races in the game. Captain Bashir has been working on 2D images. If you have some high quality models I would say lets talk about rendering some .png images on a transparent background for use in the game. Take a look at your 'new messages' on that blue strip near the top of this page. You will find another link to images. Look at that and the Fleets Ships Stations folder on Sharepoint. You will best know what ships you can do a better job on.

Poly count: I am thinking that when we do get a combat engine it will be on newer PCs and we can up the old counts anyway. If you have a high poly count ship for renders now we can always use that function found in most 3D programs that automatically will make a lower poly count version for you.

Took a look... very cool. So if you like I can do a high poly model of some of those ships for 2D Renders. Or if you prefer I can always do the Enterprise, Excelcisior, etc. I have fairly detailed models of the Enterprise-A and the Excelsior right now. I also have a "re-imagined" version of the Enterprise that I'm working on. If you guys want to post a list of which 2D images you'd like, I can work with that...

Lets go for the low hanging fruit first. The Enterprise A would be our fed_cruiser_iii.png image.

Make a 640 x 480 png on alpha transparent with no part reaching the boarder. Captain Bashir and I can load it for you. It would be named fed_cruiser_iii.png in the game files.

For now I would save the model as a .3ds file and with texture files in a folder named fed_cruiser_iii. Then 7zip it up and we can load it on Sharepoint as is. Issues of scale and orientation we can deal with when the time comes.

After that the Excelcisior is our fed_cruiser_iv

I should explain that the game puts a background on your .png image that is larger than the boarder of your image. In that way any part of your image, be it ship or glow, will apper to be cut off abruptly as seen in game if it gets to the boarder in your image. You want to keep the ship inside the boarders as well as have any glow or glare dissipate to zero by the edge of your image.

Hey K0362 (Chris). I went to the blender site and saw the runabout and the DS-9 station. Did I miss any? I sent you a PM (personal message). As Kenneth_of_Borg said, it is the blue notification box at the top when you log in, that takes you there. Otherwise to go there and reread a message, click on "0 new messages" just under the STAR-TREK-GAMES FORUMS icon at the top.

I was thinking that some of your other models would look good as minor race ships. Are any of them textured?

Speaking of models, we still need the new shipyard rotating models - currently there's only the Fed's level 1 ships (except the Cruiser I).