Learning New Skills - Update

I invested a few hours this weekend in the Google SketchUp 6 tutorials, then I set out to experiment on my own. An acquaintance of mine recently asked for help in designing some vehicles for a game he’s planning, so I tried porting some of my paper sketches to 3D to see what can be done. Here’s the result (the tires aren’t mine, but the rest is):

As you can see, I built half the vehicle, copied it, and flipped it, but I’m having the toughest time getting the two halves to match. Some of the issues are no doubt caused by my unfamiliarity with the software, because I’ve seen some amazing things in the Google 3D Warehouse. One thing that really bugs me, though, is that I can’t find the exporter to other file types (.fbx, .obj, for example). If this is found only in the SketchUp Pro version, I might as well switch to Softimage XSI right away, steep learning curve be damned.

Learning New Skills

I’ve started playing around with Google SketchUp 6. It’s a 3D modeling program that, while simple compared to the rest, is much faster to learn (the learning curve on Maya, XSI and 3DS Max is very steep).

Blogging might be light during the next few weeks as I shift some of my available time to this. However, if I can manage to get good at it, expect to see some dramatic upgrades to the Projects page…

A Cornucopia of Mecha

I went to dinner with a fellow veteran Podster the other day. I was telling him how something funny happened as I was working on Project 7. It kind of split in the middle while I wasn’t watching.

P7 was originally supposed to be a re-imagining of the old Jovian Chronicles setting, updated with 15 years of experience and knowledge. Though actually, calling it a “re-imagining” is somewhat of a misnomer: all I’m doing is starting from the same premise, and seeing where it goes. I already know that the colonial locus is going to be Saturn, not Jupiter, and I’m designing more concrete excuses for the various nations to be at odd with one another.

That said, as I was taking notes and making some research, I realized that making the setting very realistic will necessarily impact its “wow” level. Which means, though I can work in giant robots somehow, and even contrive ways of having them face off with melee weapons, this will not be a common occurence. Heck, if I’m 100% honest, mecha combat, period, isn’t likely to be a common occurence.

You can see the problem right there.

The thing is, I like mecha combat. I watch Gundam, Macross, and all those other series, and I can get over the fact that a Valkyrie would cook in its own waste heat, and that a Gundam can’t possibly contain enough reaction mass to be a viable combat unit. So I started thinking that perhaps it would make sense to do a second setting, one where I can indulge in all the trimmings of the genre without feeling guilty for any scientific inaccuracy. So now I need to make a page for Project 8. [sigh]

Maybe I should just pick one project and get it done to start with. But the ideas, they keep coming… Is there such a thing as too many mecha worlds, or is it acceptable as long as they all have cool machines, engaging backstories and endearing characters?

Friday Mecha Doodle

Projects Status

I did a quick update of my central Projects page, separating the various entries into “Active” and “Inactive” entries.

Looking at the whole thing, I realize I’m about due for another template update and general site reorganization. Maybe something with a more “high tech” look, if I can find the right fonts.

I’m open to suggestions, if you’ve seen some nice sites that could serve as inspiration…

Saturday Mecha Doodle

Sunday Mecha Doodle

Sunday Mecha Doodle

It’s been a while since we had one of these, so here we go.

I was thinking about building a Space Marine army for Warhammer 40K but I didn’t want the usual gothic imagery. I started to wonder what the Marines would look like as a more technological armed force.

This is what the Dreadnought unit would look like. The arms are small because the Twin Lascannons/Missile configuration lacks close combat weapons, and I didn’t want them to look like powerfists.

Sunday Mecha Doodle

Sometimes the doodles on the placemat from the usual Sunday’s morning’s brunch can be turned into something useful. Case in point:

VK-4 Main Battle Craft, a.k.a. “Bone Dancer”

The VK-4 is the Solar Block’s main battle unit. Light, versatile and easy to transport, the VK-4 is found in virtually all of the Block’s regiments and expeditionary forces. Onlookers are often fooled at first by its appearance; despite its skinny construction, the presence of a large field generator provides this battlerider with more than adequate protection for a line unit. Alliance intelligence has code-named this vehicle “Bone Dancer,” a reference to both its appearance and strange, bounding stride.

Code Name: “Bone Dancer”
Official Code: VK-4 Main Battle Craft
Use: frontline battlerider
Height: 13 meters
Empty Mass: 17 tons
Full Combat Mass: varies with loadout
Generator: fusion
Thrusters: 4 x 10,000 kg
Apogee Motors: 14
Usual Armament: 1 x railgun rifle, 2 x missile pod, field generator

(Specs originally written as part of the design notes for Project 1.)

Sunday Mecha Doodle

Another quick sketch on a placemat. Could be something from Front Mission or Steel Battalion, I guess.

Saturday Mecha Doodle

A quick sketch to tide you over the light blogging. This started out as a 1” high doodle on a placemat, which I scanned and reworked in a graphic program. Not too bad for half an hour of work.

Yet Another Mecha Doodle

Not much to say about this one, except that my first (very) rough draft looked somewhat better before inking, in my opinion. I need to practice a lot more before I can get a polished render.

As for the design itself, nothing fancy, it’s very traditional. I don’t know why, but I seem stuck in the same general humanoid proportions. I need to break out of this rut if I’m to do truly original stuff.

Another Mecha Doodle

Another slow night for me (tired… so tired…), so here’s another mecha doodle for you.

Nothing much to say about this. Not very tall, cockpit in chest, autocannon in hands. About the only interesting bits are the articulated neck for the sensor head (to look above walls) and the snowshoe-like articulated plates on the feet.

Mecha Doodle

Exploring ideas for alternate body shapes for more realistic mecha design (for Project 7).

This is inspired by the robotic arms carried aboard the Space Shuttle and the ISS. Each articulation would need one rotor for each axis, and it wouldn’t necessarily follow the classic humanoid’s arm structure.

Sunday Morning Doodle

A quick sketch I drew while at breakfast this morning. Scanning the picture in, rather than taking a photo with the digital camera, is a lot faster and easier.

Random Mecha Sketch

A quick sketch that I did at breakfast this morning while waiting for our friends. No idea what I’d use it for.

Project 7 Technology Assumptions, Part 1

I’m going to be taking a break from posting for the next week or so. I’m leaving you with a longuish post — feel free to comment, but please don’t burn down the house.

—-

The main goal of Project 7 is to see whether I can create a mecha-based setting with a very “hard” approach to the science involved. This means a minimum of technobabble, and nothing that violates the laws of physics as currently known: FTL or force fields are out, but fusion engines and nanobuilt diamondoid materials are in, for example. Story-wise, we want things to be interesting, so if at all possible I’ll pick technologies that let us do more interesting plots. Engines should have high enough thrust to allow days rather than months of travel, spacesuits should not need hours of pre-breathing before use, and so on. We also need to examine interactions to ensure that unexpected social ripples do not arise (e.a., if private citizens can buy a ship propelled by the equivalent of atom bombs, what happens?).

This said, let’s examine the major pieces of technology we’ll need to build our mecha and spacecraft. Many thanks to the crew of Atomic Rockets, whose work I used to make sure I didn’t forget anything. I was hoping to get around to the “war technologies” part today, but time is running out, so it will have to go in a “Part 2” entry later on.

Total Delta-V Capacity: in space, a vehicle’s Delta-V is effectively its range. Sure, you can coast to your destination, but orbital speeds still have to be paid for. Our vehicles will have to have engine(s) and enough propellant to manage delta-V of between 5 km/s (short-range craft) and 50-100 km/s (interplanetary ships). This is affected by the spacecraft’s Mass Ratio (loaded mass/empty mass) and the exhaust velocity of the engine; we want the former to be as low as possible (to maximize useful payload) and thus we need to maximize the latter (see Engines). This steers us toward high-energy propulsion systems, since a mecha full of fuel tanks would likely look like the Michelin Man.

Engines: I’m going to cheat a bit here and use a plasma engine with a variable thrust magnetic nozzle (kind of like the VASIMR engine, but more advanced). This means that I can get both high thrust/low endurance or low thrust/high endurance, out of the same package. It’s going to make calculating the range of my vehicles harder, but at least they won’t have to carry two different engine systems. It also means that I don’t have to deal with as much waste heat, since most of the fusion reaction will take place well outside the chamber walls. Lastly, by handwaving the nature of the plasma, I can use pretty much anything as reaction mass (hydrogen, methane, water — asteroid dust?) since it merely has to be dumped into the plasma flow — in-situ refueling will make for both longer range and interesting plots.

Structure: remember when I mentioned something about center of gravity? I still want to make that post; however, for the time being just know that we want the spacecraft to balance on its thrust vector, so it has to be fairly symmetrical. This also applies to mecha, so if I want one to carry a big massdriver on one shoulder, I’ll need to put something else on the other one. Ships won’t be a problem — all of my hard science design had a “skyscrapper” designs already, with decks stacked one above the others instead of length-wise like a naval ship.

I’m going to postulate that nano-assembly is possible (we’re already doing some basic stuff today), so the structure of my spacecraft is going to be extremely light yet extremely sturdy. No choice, really, if I want a decent mass ratio. Using nano-assembly also allows me to include all sorts of systems inside the structure itself.

Heat Radiators: this is something that’s always overlooked by designers. Vacuum is a great insulator (no conduction or convection possible), so spacecraft need a way to radiate excess heat away. Unfortunately, by their vary nature radiators can’t be armored, and they need to be fairly large (unless you want them to run at impossibly high temperatures). Fortunately for me, I chose a propulsion system that dumps most of the heat in the exhaust plume, so I don’t need to give butterfly wings to my mecha (though I did, once). Again I’m going to use a piece of “wiztech” and postulate the existence of nano-built, foldable sheet radiators: these will simply be retracted for combat or acceleration. I will also equip spacecraft with a way to vaporise reaction mass (plain old water, likely) as a way to get rid of additional heat in emergencies.

Comm Antennae: all spacecraft need those, of course. I was thinking of using large portions of the outer skin of the vehicles as receivers, since those can be built right in during the nano-fabrication process. We might yet still need dish antennae or some sort of landing radar, but these will be retractable.

Radiation Shielding: back when I wrote Jovian Chronicles I had no choice but to include a powerful type of “radiation screen.” It was the only way to establish a colony around Jupiter. I must admit that I did not think it all the way through — wouldn’t such a shield make all beam weapons useless? — so this time I’ll shoot for a more realistic approach (thus we’ll likely have to drop Jupiter from our list of destinations). The easiest way to go is to use the reaction mass tanks for basic shielding, so we’ll do that. Rad-bulkheads, made of complex organic and hydrocarbon compounds in a nano-fabricator, will stop most ionizing radiation if they are thick enough (and it also forces us to secure a good source of organics for the factories. Bonus plot seed!). Some sort of charged magnetic field would stop quite a few types of natural radiation, but might interfere with the engines.

Gravity: I don’t think there’s a realistic way to make a ship burn continuously at a good fraction of a gee, so we have a choice between no gravity and spinning, here. No problem — I’ve studied the problem for Jovian Chronicles, and the same solutions apply.

Controls: these will be a mix of traditional voice/touch/view controls and mind scanners for certain applications, such as directing the motions of certain parts of the ship/mecha. There will be a lot of pre-processing involved by the onboard computers to ensure that the crew aren’t overwhelmed by data.

More later in Part 2. I need to get some sleep.

A Quick Sketch

I did this sketch at breakfast the other day, so it’s not really detailed or clean.

It has the usual engines on the shoulders, plus additional units in the hips (right next to the center of gravity). The long booms on the thrust pods are the housings for the deployable heat sinks. The latter can be retracted because you really don’t want such fragile yet vital structures to fall prey to collisions or enemy fire. The circle in the middle chest is the universal docking adapter. The boom behind the head is to give a better field of vision to the comm laser (the thing on top of the boom — I should have put a sort of lens there).

Problem I have with this design: still too needlessly humanoid. There’s no sensible reason why you would need a single head unit instead of distributed sensor pods. Also, I just realized that I haven’t thought about the hardpoints for the fuel tanks, tools or seekers.

Back to the drawing board.

Yet Another sketch

This is another drawing, cleaned up in a graphic program, from the sketchbook.

I’m using just bare silhouettes right now to try and gauge the visual balance of the things. I don’t want opinions to be cluttered by details that may change later on. I’m more concerned, for example, whether I’m making them needlessly humanoid at this point.

As you can figure out by now, all three designs I’ve shown so far have engines on the shoulders. There’s a reason for that, and it’s based on what I had promised a blog entry about, which is center of gravity and thrust lines. I’ll get around to it, I just have to do a few funny sketches to get my point across.

Another sketch

I’m still working on stuff, just not, you know, fast.

This was a quick doodle for the sketch book that I cleaned up a bit. I’m starting to get a good idea of what I’m looking for, but while this configuration works I still find it a bit too classic, as mecha designs go. I’m still not happy with how the legs are shaped.

Remember, I’m trying to make sure that everything has a purpose and works logically. If all goes as planned, I should be able to name all surface features and even give you precise ranges of motion for all articulated segments.

Spacecraft Structure, Part 3

It’s a few years down the line, and the colonists are now well-established. Trade with the homeworld, as well as local factories, mean that they can now afford to specialize a bit. Just a bit, mind you — there’s no reason to build a dedicated tanker and cargo when the same ship can be equipped with modular holds.

Space remains a dangerous place, and the colonies have put in place a sort of “coast guard” organization that uses drones and manned vehicles to patrol the lanes, helping people in trouble and generally troubleshooting problems that arise.

What do they use for this? Well, they are likely to operate far from help or reinforcement, so their ship needs to be adaptable and rugged. This means the ability to refuel in the field, and if possible to consume as little reaction mass as possible to extend their range. So we add more vernier booms — they cost in overall mass, but can be used to modify orientation for very little or no fuel, and if we use them as cranes, they earn their keeps in rescue and construction ops. The landing gear is modified so it can move the ship on the ground by itself, which avoid the need for auxiliary transport vehicles or mass-burning powered “hops.” Finally, numerous multi-purpose attachment points (some of them universal, shaped somewhat like hands) are built-in, to hold drop tanks, drones, sensors, etc.

Hmmm… Interesting silhouette, is it not?

Spacecraft Structure, Part 2

Yesterday I put up a post that looked at a basic spacecraft layout. Very simple, very utilitarian, something that’s already flying today. Now, I ask that you cast your mind a little further in the future.

Mankind has colonized space and ventured out into the solar system. Nothing much, really — just a few outposts here and there. The would-be colonists have access to high tech material imported from Earth, and basic stuff they can manufacture themselves. They need spacecraft that are both rugged and versatile, since they don’t have the luxury of having too many specialized vehicles just hanging around waiting for a task.

What does the latter mean? Well, modular hardpoints would be good. The engine must be able to use various kinds of fuel or reaction mass, or at least something that’s easy to find and refine. Ideally, anything that saves fuel is useful in the long run, so verniers are placed at the end of long booms for maximum leverage. If we’re going to carry that extra structure, might as well use it to provide a greater baseline for our sensors, which means we can carry smaller ones. One of the booms can be articulated, in case we need a crane, or a docking arm, or maybe just to pick up something that’s floating nearby. Finally, some sort of landing gear would allow us to touch down on asteroids and moons, either to refuel or to simplify transport and exploration.

Not perfectly efficient, but very useful and versatile. Now we’re going somewhere.

Come back tomorrow for the final part.

Spacecraft Structure, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Mecha

I’ve decided to start putting entries regarding my projects on the blog. These can be considered “design notes” or “work in progress” — but mostly, they are here to keep me involved and motivated. I really dislike blogs with no fresh content, so it’s a good way to keep me disciplined — and writing.

This time I’m mostly working on Project 7, which is a science-fiction setting that I intend to use for fiction and maybe even a tabletop RPG, if I find (or design) rules I can live with. Number 7 is a weird hybrid: I’m going to attempt to mix transhumanism, hard science, and mecha in one place.

I know what you’re saying, mecha are not hard science. They look cool but they totally break suspension of disbelief. Other types of specialized vehicles would do better. Well, maybe there’s a way…

First, let’s take a look at a basic spacecraft layout:

The proportions of the components do not necessarily reflect real world designs, but it’s only a schematic, so please bear with me. Examples of this are already flying today: think of a Soyuz ferry, for example. The Apollo CSM and the upcoming CEV also match this layout. You can play with the technology — use a NERVA nuclear engine, or an ion drive — and still get something similar, with just the overall proportions changing.

So far so good. Where am I going with that?

Come back tomorrow for part 2.

So it begins...

I’ve uploaded the first draft of the various project pages.

Not much to see there for now. I’m afraid I spent entirely too much time designing a template, and not enough filling it with substance. But at least there’s progress.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Starting to Emerge

Just to prove that I’m indeed working on stuff, here’s a quick sketch.

Yes, that’s a mecha. Sorta. You’ll see later.

I’m not quite happy with it yet, because it’s still too “classic” in terms of proportions and functions. I’m trying to define my own look, and I ‘ll need to revise the proportions a lot. The upper sensor turret is way too large for what it is, for example.

I also need to figure out how the various parts fit together, not just what the final thing looks like. I’m trying to put some of my old (and buried) engineering knowledge into it, with (alas) not as much success as I hoped. (There’s a reason industrial designers exist, not just engineers.)

I’m also hampered by my lack of artistic skills — Ghislain Barbe, I’m not.

More later after the mobility sub-systems are worked out…

Starting to Emerge

Just to prove that I’m indeed working on stuff, here’s a quick sketch.

Yes, that’s a mecha. Sorta. You’ll see later.

I’m not quite happy with it yet, because it’s still too “classic” in terms of proportions and functions. I’m trying to define my own look, and I ‘ll need to revise the proportions a lot. The upper sensor turret is way too large for what it is, for example.

I also need to figure out how the various parts fit together, not just what the final thing looks like. I’m trying to put some of my old (and buried) engineering knowledge into it, with (alas) not as much success as I hoped. (There’s a reason industrial designers exist, not just engineers.)

I’m also hampered by my lack of artistic skills — Ghislain Barbe, I’m not.

More later after the mobility sub-systems are worked out…