Infinity Fan Art

Development
10

It’s a pretty nice SFC design. Quality of the concept is definitely on par with what we want. While the finned radiators look cool, they’d really only be used when entering atmosphere capable of the required convection to dissipate heat I think. Also, they might have to be removed during modeling to meet tri budget, as they might not be a good candidate for normal mapping, hard to say at this point.

I’d replace that satellite dish with something else, radar/sensor dome of some type.

There is also a very odd thruster arrangement, specifically the ones on the cockpit, but we are making a game, and for our development team, what looks cool usually will trump technological realism. Except for aerodynamic control surfaces like wings & fins on space vehicles. The fins on this ship are fine as they do not look like aerodynamic surfaces for flight.

All in all, with some minor changes, this is a design that to me fits well as an SFC fighter/interceptor (Edit: actually looking at the scale it’s a bigger ship than that…). Though it would need some hard points, probably on top & bottom of the “wing” that connects the cockpit to the engine portion of the hull.

2 Likes
11

Radiators can work in space, but more slowly. Of course a ship with a fusion power plant, warp drive, and multiple weapons-grade laser cannons is going to be generating way more heat than these puny fins can dissipate. They’re just there to nod at the issue of heat buildup and suggest that it’s being dealt with somehow. Also, I think they’re cool, so there’s that…

The dish would most definitely be mounted on a hardpoint. I wasn’t paying any attention to hardpoint sizes since this was mostly for kicks and I didn’t know if the old specs were still valid now.
There are actually three main LMK1 hardpoints over on the right, near the engines, marked with the yellow arrows. More can be dotted around as needed.

Asymmetrical designs are always a bit tricky, but the thrusters should be balanced for all translations, yaw, and roll. Pitch would skew the ship up and to the left, but unless you’re actually simulating thruster torque in the engine, it shouldn’t matter.

12

I wonder… would it be possible to have the radiators fold out, somehow, while in vacuum? In an atmosphere, sufficient airflow over metal ribs can dissipate a substantial amount of heat (intel pentium 4 processors allegedly generated more heat per volume than a nuclear reactor and I had one of those cooled by metal ribs and airflow), but in space said ribs would, as far as I can work out, have barely any functional value - after all, the only way they’re dissipating heat is by shining it off as IR (or visible) light, and if that light then hits another rib…

I mean, apart from the technical capabilities and limitations, would you be able to make a folding system look good?

PS: Oh hey, forums are back, cool. Any way I can switch it to a different colour-scheme?

13

Actually, in this concept, radiators may be the reason it feels archaic and fragile to me.

A while ago, on the old forums, someone (IIRC, he was a specialist in thermodynamics) suggested having heat management in Infinity. After some thinking, it struck me as the single most brilliant idea ever proposed on said forums. It would bring an easy to grasp, but more original and potentially far deeper mechanism in resource management than simply ammo/energy ones.
Possibilities include, but are not limited to, heat-sinks or coolant fluids that you can throw away, heating a ship to impair it (stun mechanics), trade-of between stealth and cooling (radiations), between heat and vulnerability (exposed cooling systems), better cooling in atmosphere, ejecting heat-sinks as decoy flares so running hot is actually an advantage for fighters… Maybe I should re-create a topic about it.

The point is, I did a bit of research and if you want to be even slightly more realistic than Star Wars or Galaxy Express 999, the most conservative numbers ask for such a radiator to glow blue at temperatures with nearly 5 digits. Note that it would definitely look cool (Oh god, pun definitely not intended), but it shouldn’t look like a piece of metal one expect to find in their 90’s computer. When tungsten would explosively vaporise, you need something somehow high-tech-looking.
In fact, IIRC, to have even remotely believable external radiators to really help (assuming the hull already radiates normally), you need them to be the size of sails. It would bring interesting gameplay - deploy them only if you’re safe, or they will be torn apart by the first volley, but it asks for more art, code and balance.

tl;dr : To bring things back to those radiators, they would look old even by today’s standard (still used, but out there for decades). They are also for immobile things in the air, not fast-moving crafts and definitely not for spaceships.
Especially not for spaceships that may want to go close to a star and would have to make sure it’s never facing said star.
So it would look very incongruous on an Infinity spaceship.

Other than that, as the fragile look is intentional, it does looks great. I’d expect it to be a cheap, light fighter, that can’t take a hit and may be a bit tricky to master, particularly in atmosphere, but can still pack quite a punch.

14

Hey, i am working on some capital freighter concept as a fanart project for infinity.
Here I uploaded the line art, because i am unfamiliar with the design language of the infinity universe. I want to make sure, does it fit?

15

Not bad. A little simple in shape for a Star Fold ship (box-with-thrusters is a no-no; your ship’s not quite that simple, but close enough for that to apply). The details are in the right direction, too, but not brutal and industrial enough.

I suggest looking here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4oT4WhsYIn6WkZ3dnhmWGlvQ3c/edit?usp=sharing

That’s the latest version of the SFC design guide. I also suggest looking at these links for other exaples of SFC concept art:


http://artofinfinty.blogspot.com/2013/11/visual-experience-of-infinity-universe_13.html

1 Like
16

Thanks, that is realy helpfull :smile:

17

@TerranAmbass - Could you be so kind as to post the links to the Deltan + Cent styles? I can’t seem to find it.

18

They’re all three at the bottom of the blog post I linked:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4oT4WhsYIn6WHJPVEhFb2NlZ0k/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4oT4WhsYIn6c2x4OUJvVDl3R0U/edit?usp=sharing

19

@IllOO I’m a big fan of the stumpy pencil brush for line work. It nice clean lines that have a pencil feel to them. You should try it out: http://stumpypencil.blogspot.com/

If you want to go full pencil with tilt support you should check out this pencil brush: http://andantonius.deviantart.com/art/Photoshop-Pencil-Brush-105284502

20

Thanks, it`s nice to have these brushes to sketch some ideas on the ps canvas… but it’s not realy my style, also i think it’s not “technical” enough for spaceships or still objects in general.

21

Sorry for the spam :stuck_out_tongue:
It’s essentially how I would have reimagined the Bellerophon, if given the chance. It’s exactly 2014m long, btw…

4 Likes
23

Seems like it’s lacking some complex-curved plating and interesting angles for a proper Deltan look to it. (currently looks high-tech/low-greeble SFC to my eyes.) Having perfect 4 way symmetry on the engine pods is kind of off-putting too.

Personally, I’d cut the thing in half right in front of the engine pods, then swap the direction the ship’s front is pointing and have that flat face at the back of the top ridge as the ship’s bridge and call it SFC. :smile:

Hmm… I’ll go draw up what I’m talking about…

*Edit, MS-Paint-hackjob:

24

I not entirely sure I understand the first two parts, but I’ll try to add some more curvature to it while retaining the brute militaristic expression. Perhaps you could show me what you meant?
Also, I did try cutting off the rear section and flip the forward movement direction way back in the begining - It simply didn’t work well for the model to put it midly. I could try with a T-configuration for the rear section (which did look promising), but it will leave me with a pain as to how to do the configuration of the maneuver thrusters. Also the engine pod contains the reverse thrusters. I could leave all of them in the front, but I just think it would be more logical to have as much of it as possible assembled near the reactor.

Anyway… I just guess my style has always been a mixture of SFC and Deltan :stuck_out_tongue:

25

If you take a look at the Deltan Faction Guidline, you’ll see that your design is missing the mark on the “high tech, long slopes, rounded corners” elements of a Deltan design.

Compare your ship to some of the concept art in that doc and I think you’ll understand. It does indeed look like a low detailed/unfinished SFC ship as of right now, like others have pointed out.

26

I’ll guess I’ll change the description to SFC then. It would be completely back to the drawing board to make it look Deltan by the looks of it. But even then it might be too symetrical to be SFC too?!.. God I wish I had my older capital ship models for reference.

27

Wow, I can’t believe I missed out on this entire discussion. I saw this when Timmon originally started it, and ignored everything in it since.

I wanted to weigh in on the use of radiators in space, and specifically the radiator in Timmon’s concept.

This is true, but your radiator won’t. Note that the fins on your radiators are parallel to one another:

|    |    |    |

This means that any photons that are radiated by any but the two end fins will simply be re-absorbed by its neighbour:

<--- | <---> | <---> | --->

Instead, radiators in space are designed like so:

/\/\/\/\/\/\

Where each plate is held at an angle no greater than 45 degrees from the horizontal (plates are at no less than 90 degree angles to one another). This means each radiating plate has an unobstructed normal, and photons can radiate out into space without being re-absorbed by the radiator. Space radiators are also extended out on booms, so that photons can be radiated from both surfaces of the plate.

28

Nice… Does the ends on the ///\ connect, or is there a small gap between them?

29

I would think they could be, and the angles between the ///\ would be 90 degrees or more.

30

Well, there’s a small gap between them on modern spacecraft if for no other reason than how they’re made and deployed. They’re usually designed to fold out so that they can be encapsulated during launch. This also makes them modular - if one radiating panel breaks, it can be replaced independently of the rest of the array.