Consider your crew. If the cargo ship stretches nearly a mile, but has only a cockpit smaller than a Volkswagen lacking essential space for a toilet, let alone shower or kitchen this will not make a comfortable interstellar journey make. God help the crew if they’re stuck in sub-light. Why not forgo a crate or two of alien spice rum and build some essentials? Additionally, though you may be the best Bryce modeler who ever lived, a sizable portion of your potential customers may have grown sick of Bryce and moved on to better things years ago. Would it not be beneficial, educational and potentially profitable to convert your Bryce spaceships into a format more generally useful? Food for thought (since I don’t have enough time left to do anything productive tonight.)

LOL :lol:  Things that I have thought, myself!

One thing that ALL designers might profit from is to sit down with a PENCIL and a piece of PAPER and doodle out the main areas.  When I was a kid, I thought a LOT about spaceships, especially living on one.

Drives will determine general shapes and other things about the design. What is the mission of the vessel?  An Aircraft Carrier, a Nuclear Submarine and a Battleship ALL float in water, but WHOA--they do NOT function the same beyond the projection of power as weapon systems. However--they do not look alike.

3D doodles do not make a space-ship,IMO. 

Place yourself into the ship, into that universe, into the commanding officer's station and MAKE yourself see what you command.  It's an exercise of imagination that builds the muscles of creation that not only apply to spaceships, but an entire design philosophy.

Agreed wholeheartedly... and not only spaceships, if you're making anything that will be inhabited or used by humans, you have to use consistent scales and relate them to the size of the human form. It doesn't mean you have to be all about function and ignore beauty and aesthetic, but if you do use a lil bit of thought, it can make your work much more believable and realistic. This is also why the work of people like stonemason is so awesome. He models very very precisely and it shows in the quality of his models...
Me, i just import one of the default P* figures into a scene if i'm ever feeling confused about scales. Just looking at the design alongside a human often clarifies lot's of things and gives you new ideas on how to add and change stuff.

If you are into realism, nothing better than have a look at www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html; there you can find some hard science about anything spaceship related.

If you want something "outlandish" but firmly set into real physics, google for "Alcubierre". Most references are technical papers, but even if physics is not your bread and butter, abstracts can tell you enough for a reality check.

If, at last, you want something outlandish (or better, too good to be true), but still with some physical consistency, google for "Heim theory".

For body dimensions, sizes, ranges of actions etc., google for "anthropometry" and/or "ergonomics".

Bye!!!

I wouldn't wanna be Lost in Space without a Toilet! Same goes for those long "Seven Year Missions"!  

IMHO the Magellan SS3 by PoserWorks sold on their site as well as CP is the best interstellar transport
very detailed with crew quarters, captains quarters, mess hall and the works

There is also the Serenity Firefly class ship to check out. There is a tutorial on modeling it, sorry don't know the link, but it has all that in the plans.

Quote - IMHO the Magellan SS3 by PoserWorks sold on their site as well as CP is the best interstellar transport
very detailed with crew quarters, captains quarters, mess hall and the works

Yeah I have that one but I honestly have not checked it out completely. They may have "Facilities" but I never actually found them yet.

For some reason I can accept Faster Than Light Drives and maybe Inertial Dampers but I always have trouble with Artificial Gravity...

I would also like to toss in that modelers who do space ships look into basics of maritime engineering.  The only basic difference between an ocean going ship and a space going ship is the hull, some of the habitibility processes, and the medium the ship travels through.

On the Destroyer Escort I served on I used the schematics and blueprints of the Enterprise (Star Trek) as a way of teaching naval engineering, water systems, electrical systems, and any other concept that the student sailor might need to learn.

Bulkheads need to be double strength, hatches (doors) have to be air tight and seal from either direction. Ladders need to not interfere with floor hatches.  Large open spaces have to have redundancies in order to protect the rest of the ship from flooding or loss of atmosphere and pressure crushing.

Just some observations.  There are several other sailors on the lists here, perhaps they may have links to training materials.

Attached Link: SciFi 2106 one of my favorites from RMP

I "made" a planet hopper ship by using BAR-CODE's drone as a drive unit and putting a projected field in front as the crew compartment.

Then there are organic models like the Lexx.

What has tied me up is making good handrails, hanger tracks, or gyro based aerosol propelled tow pods or spring bang sticks for maneuvering in zero-G. I have made the zero-G interiors by cludging interior compartments construction sets or in the case of coflek-gnorg stuff just flipping the scene.

Then of course I have wasted time trying to make gene-altered figures with upper and lower arms rather than arms and legs...

Quote - For some reason I can accept Faster Than Light Drives and maybe Inertial Dampers but I always have trouble with Artificial Gravity...

You can define mass in two ways:

1. thru the acceleration formula F = ma, as the conversion factor between the force you apply to an object and the acceleration it exhibits or...
   2 ) ...thru the gravitation attraction formula F = G m1 m2  / d^2, as the factor between the force you see w.r.t. to a known mass, at a certain distance.

The first is called inertial mass and the second one is gravitational mass.

For lots of reasons (experimental evidence and theoretical consistency, see on Wikipedia if you are interested) inertial mass is exactly equal to gravitational one so, if you could control in some way inertia you must, in a related way, be able to provide artificial gravity.

Obviously the "if you could control in some way inertia" part is the "tricky" one in real life...

For a consistent SF background I like the Heim theory which nicely bundles together a way to provide "inertialess" drives (so we have a way to go from surface to orbit and vice versa plus in-system travel), and a way to perform "FTL" travel. In both cases I used the "-s because Heim theory is a bit above crackpottery and provides sensible ways of performing the two feats (at least, differently from 99.9% of customary SF, Heim theory abides to conservation of momentum!).

Bye!!!

AAAuughhh....ALGEBRA!  Ok, I have to admit, I taught my algebra three dimensional navigation using my thumb, index, and middle fingers to explain the XYZ axis, then tossed in Tau and Te for time and dialation. As I ususally fail algebra he was fascinated, understood perfectly, but wanted to know where I learned this example.  I asked him: "Don't you watch Star Trek?  Don't you realize how they figure out where they are going?"

XYZ... I remember back we had networked a text based Star Trek game... back when printouts were on punch tape and we were dialed in from dumb terminals that looked like teletype machines... no CRT screen even. Maybe 1976 or '77?  It was a huge leap in tech from 'Hunt the Wumpus'. Somehow when I was a kid I got into some university computer courses and learned ForTran; got access to the local university keypunches and mainframes, you would drop off a big card stack job and pick up the run results later printed on wide accordion fold pin feed paper...  I remember the magic of the first time I saw a rotating cube on an amber screen. Times change. BTW I just turned 42 a couple of weeks ago. 

3 dimensions, tau and te? Isn't that from Heinlein's The Number of the Beast?...;)
Y'know, if he hadn't brought up modeling in Bryce, that woulda hit pretty close to home..;)

In all the Star Trek episodes, I only recall seeing the bathroom once, and that was the TNG episode where they turned into animals...;)

Ok, I'll take it under consideration, just as soon as other artists start putting pilots in their aerial dogfight scenes...;)

Truth be told, the vast majority of the structure of most spaceships (IRL) is fuel tank. The more non-fuel items you have, the more fuel and engine you need...;) Tiny is good. The Lunar module came out looking that way mainly to save on weight..;)

I do most of my models in .obj, but I have a backlog of .3ds to convert. One thing at a time..;)

Bows deeply  I understand work loads.  I am currently in the process of grading five classes of freshman composition 1 research papers.  I've only looked for the razor blades twice so far, so it's been a good semester.

Thanks for the responses...good to see others who remember early games and RAH RAH Heinlein...I'd love to see a REAL movie version of Starship (I'm a rabid constitutionalist) as well as Time Enough for Love, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and of course Stranger in a Strange Land.

Sergio Aragones did a short piece on Star Wars for Mad Magazine (back in the day when it was good) of Luke Skywalker going into  the "Mens" room, and finding all sorts of bizarre devices for toiletry uses, that fit a wide variety of alien ... uh.... parts.  That's why they don't have toilets in Skiffy, the variety of nozzles would take up half the ship....... I think the idea is that you just,... uh... do your business and then Phaser it away.
in the series Firefly... they used toilets.... but not showers.

"in the series Firefly... they used toilets.... but not showers."

No showers but they did have the wash basin/ toilet combo. I thought it was a good design. compact and funtional.

Not a star ship but maybe the coolest sci-fi apartments were Ridley's space station apartment in Aliens 3 and the cab driver's apartment on Earth in the Fifth Element.

I loved the setup in Fith Element apartment, most of it is do-able now days. For ideas, go check out an RV show. They know how to use space.

I have to admit, I find this thread about realism in space a little funny when you look at what else we use in the Poserverse...

Just raising the point... :-)

Yeh but spaceships we can do something about and people will buy realistic spaceships just as easily as fantastic ones.

Not so easy convincing them to give up their basketball boobies, microscopic noses or physics defying dresses... :P

BEWARE teh basketball boobies!!!

LOL  we can't save the Poserverse from itself, just our little corner of it. :lol:

Yes, those are indeed breasts on that spaceship, in what was the pinnacle of 80s SciFi B-movies.

EDIT : Flagged for nudity, though i'm really not sure what the ToS says about nekkid spaceships >.>

Flying around, I always thought it looked more like a scrotum. :lol:

Quote - Flying around, I always thought it looked more like a scrotum. :lol:

Yeah, I think that was the real intent. It's a big ol testosterone-laden space opera.

I always thought it was breasts cause of those 'arms' (the wings) on the sides that lead into the swell of the boobage and those nipple like things at the end.

I could be wrong of course... :P

John-boy Walton in space.... loved it.... weird take off of 7 Samurai.  Roger Corman's best movie ever, so good in fact, that he used the space ship battles in subsequent (unrelated) movies... cool flashbacks (like the android with an 8 Track in it's chest!

OMG...I'd comletly forgotten this movie!  Yes, someone needs to model that ship and get it out for use.  Perhaps Spaceballs would be a good counterpoint?

LOL! The Maid Spaceship with the vacume cleaner was a hoot!