After committing to donate another image to the official Traveller Calendar 2014 and possibly a proposed official 2300AD Calendar 2014, I’ve started working on the concept of the new image.

Have a peek…

Key elements are the presentation of typical Traveller ships or vehicles landed on a remote starport – possibly a Class C, perhaps a Class B. I always wanted to do a piece with the Armored Merchant, the Free Trader and perhaps the Patrol Cruiser or the Fat Trader. The latter is currently in the works, so maybe that’s a maybe.

Here are the pieces I use for Inspiration. William H. Keith drew a scene with the Armored Merchant for the RPG Mag “High Passage” No. 3 (1982). A scan of that drawing is also shown in my article about the ship, which forms the basic scene, as you may see when comparing it with the sketch above…

This will be appended to the left to leave more room for more action. The Free Trader will probably go to the left as shown in my first concept sketch above. The ship in the far center of the screen is not decided upon yet. It might be the Scout Courier shown, but that would essentially mean I have to model that ship, or it might be the Patrol Cruiser or Subsidized Merchant. Perhaps I will even use the Challenge Class Subsidized Merchant I made for TheTravellerGroup Challenge on deviantART.

Further inspiration comes from various Favourites I collected on deviantART, as for example (and not in any particular order):
A spaceship and some coffee by ~DrawingNightmare
Mars Spaceport by *JonHrubesch
Rig by *WhoAmI01
A Long Journey by ~JadrienC
Boomz Bike by ~claren89
OTJ 05 by ~Apostolon-IAM
Castaway by *steve-burg
Hello? Is there anyone here? by *BenWootten

There are likely more that I will add later, as the project progresses.

So whats needed? First of all I’ll need terrain with environment (includes Sky, Lighting and the like. This will probably be done in Terragen or in  Blender) so the scene has the right frame. I’ll probably do my own with the exception of the clouds. Terraspace is the correct term for this kind of image, which only forms the stage for the scene here.

Obviously I need the ship and vehicle models. I already have the Traveller ships and need to model a decent looking motor bike or car. I already dropped the idea of placing a gull-wing door car into the scene but a ute or something along that line would do too.

And there will be a few Characters in there, that need representation. Especially two are fairly detailed. Susan Bonner in the front an Tarlon Rhaan leaning on the motorbike/ute (with a mug of coffee) on the left side. I hope to use my old Mr. Default for the rest of the image, as he is low on poly-count and far in the distance or shadows.

Containers, crates, luggage and cargo handling equipment are needed to be moved around, about and aboard and the passengers and crew scattered about the landing field to depict a busy port are needed too.

The Free Trader in the image above will be the Brawlin Beast. See a glimpse of her here…

And there is an ambulance livery in the works for the Lopec G-Carrier.

Tiny update: Less than one month to the deadline.

I fiddled around with the scene a bit and fixed other questions. My hardware will pretty much limit the complexity of the scene. I first decided to make it a daylight scene as the lighting is much simpler. But RL time constraints I won’t leave me with too much time for good texturing. So I will likely make it a foggy scene or hazy scene in early evening light or in the morning light.
However I’ll have to see how that turns out.

So… The vehicle… I do have an old model of a flying gull wing door car that could be great for the scene. Which basically means that I have all the vehicle’s models ready at hand. They will need paint, though.Maybe a simple Air/Raft is sufficient. I have yet to decide..

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Workshop – Coffee at the Port
Category: 3D-Model,Armored Merchant,Free Trader,Ground Vehicle,Starship,Subsidized Merchant,Traveller,Workshop — admin @ 18:00
Jul
31 2013

The famed Type H (SN) Bounty Hunter from White Dwarf Mag No.70 is sadly one of the ccoolest ships ever designed an published for Traveller. The deckplan promised a very sleek ship.

One of the cooler Feature is it’s revolving vehicle Bay. A design feature that practically encourages fast paced hit and run action.

The sad truth is there is no full side view available. Actually no one seems to know for sure how it’s supposed to look like. This model matches the deck plans and the visible side profile of the published material.

I always wanted to do it in 3D and it was meant to prove every detail of it’s ultra cool appearance.

How can it be, that it utterly fails to look cool?

I never expected it to look so chubby.

Now I’m going to tweak the model to look cool. And I will use Ian Steeds Version the „Huntress“ as my primary source of dimenional data.

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Starships – 100ton Type H Bounty Hunter
Category: 3D-Model,Bounty Hunter,Starship,Traveller — admin @ 22:43
Jul
29 2013
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100dt X-Boat

Constructed using the 100 ton hull, the express boat is fitted with drives producing jump-4, but no maneuver drive. Fuel tankage is sufficient for one jump. The cramped bridge is complemented by a Model/4 computer. The ship has two staterooms; one is necessary for the single crew member, while the other can carry a passenger. More often, the pilot uses the second room for additional living space. There is a one ton cargo bay which is occasionally used to carry vital cargo such as vaccines or sophisticated repair parts.The ship carries no weapons or hardpoints.

It is equipped with Jump drive-B and a Modified Power Plant-C, and carries sufficient fuel for one Jump-4, and 1 month of operations. Note that the ship when in Jump space can effectivly operate in low power mode thanks to the minimal systems needs and Fusion+ distributed power system. Transfer pumps enable double jumps via detachable drop tanks, which the X-boat service produces in a ’standard‘ 100 ton size to enable quick refueling and jump procedures for the normal X-boat fleet if the tender itself is too busy to dock with the X-boat. The extremely advanced surface communicator is used to tight-beam sensitive encrypted communications to pre-set system ‚listening posts‘ bypassing the need to pass these messages through the X-boat tender crews.

Modeling the X-Boat

So finally I’m going to tackle the X-Boat and Tender for my Traveller ship portfolio. Frankly I didn’t knew in the beginning about how to make an X-Boat look interesting in any way. Maybe I still wonder. But I’m going to model it any way. Even if it’s only blocked out, so I can continue later at any given time.

The first render shows the X-Boat uprigt (as it’s deck layout is vertical) in a Dark Red and Light Grey scheme. The two main outer features are the bridge windows and the double airlock on the starbord side. So thats what you’re going to see.

The second render shows the ship in IISS olive and light grey color scheme.

Im just playing with color variations.

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Starships – 100dt X-Boat and 1000dt X-Boat Tender
Category: 3D-Model,Starship,X-Boat — admin @ 17:52
Jul
28 2013

The ship uses a 100-ton Lifting Body hull, the scout/courier is intended for exploration, survey, and courier duties, with many in service throughout known space. It mounts drives giving it jump-2 and 2-G acceleration. Installed on its bridge is a computer Model/1bis and attack-range sensors. Detached duty versions have an open lounge where survey sensors would typically go.

There are four staterooms and no low berths. The ship has one hardpoint; installed on the hardpoint is one double turret beam laser. There is one ship’s vehicle: an air/raft. Cargo capacity is 3 tons. The hull has scoops, bins, and a purification plant for wilderness refueling.

The Scout, by its nature, is built as a one-person operation: a single crew person can handle all operations, albeit inefficiently. On the other hand, the Scout can carry three non-commercial passengers in relative comfort, or up to seven with double occupancy.

I ought to do this ship. It’s classic, it’s iconic and it’s not really my favourite. But it’s a player’s ship too and there are thousands of these scattered about any given Sector of the Third Imperium. Here’s my humble adaption. THe scale is a bit off. The ship is too large. More Updates will follow.

Front View

And one with the Air/Raft garage open.

That’s it for now

   Vol  No  Label                            MCr  Notes                         
 -----  --  ------------------------------ -----  ------------------------------
   100      Lift body Hull, lifters           17  L, lifters                    
    20      Jump Fuel (2  parsecs)             0  J2, 10t/pc                    
     2      Plant Fuel (one month)             0  one month                     
     1      Fuel Scoops 100t/hr              0.1  100t/hr                       
     1      Fuel Intakes 40t/hr              0.1  40t/hr                        
     1      Vd T2 Beam Laser                   1                                
     8   4  Crew Single Stateroom            0.4  1 crew                        
     1      Crew Common Fresher                1  10 crew                       
     9      Crew Lounge                        0                                
     3      Cargo Hold Basic                   0                                
     1      Fuel Bins 20t/hr                 0.1  20t/hr                        
     4      Air/Raft Enclosed                0.1                                
     2      Vehicle Hangar Overhead            0                                
     1      AR Ant Communicator              1.5                                
     1      AR Ant Scope                     1.5                                
     1      Mail Vault                         0  for express contracts         
     2      Clinic                             1  treats common injuries        
     0      AV=5. 1 Kinetic Shell              0                                
     1      Fuel Purifiers 4t/hr               1  4t/hr                         
     3      AR Ext EMS, imported             2.7                                
     0      Jump Grid                          1                                
     4      Forward Lounge                     0                                
     4      PowerPlant-2 (A)                   4  P 2                           
     2      Maneuver Drive-2 (A)               4  2 G                           
    10      Jump Drive-2 (A)                  10  J 2                           
     1      Landing legs with pads             1                                
     1      Life Support Standard              1  10 person-months              
     1      Computer Model/1bis std            3                                
    14      Spacious Controls                  0                                
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    99                              TOTALS    52

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Starships – 100 ton Suleiman Class Scout/Courier
Category: 3D-Model,Scout,Starship,WIP — admin @ 02:47
Jul
24 2013

Ian Steed – a well known Traveller artist and generally nice guy – allowed me to play with his variant of the Scout/Courier. The base model came in colors (see below) and I will try to give it a personal touch later.

Copyright Ian Steed

Copyright Ian Steed