Just found in a pile of papers.

Eine Skizze, die ich heute in einem Papierstapel fand.

Way back when, there was an article about Starports in Traveller titled „Happy Landings“ by Thomas M. Price, published in White Dwarf magazine. It featured quite a few nice details about the layout of typical starports and also set the perspective of scale to another magnitude. A few days ago, I decided to create these starport types in Blender for potential future use in a 3D animation or just for reference.

Class E Starport

I started with the most simple installation, the Class E starport. This one comes in two variants. One with and one without an adjacent Scout Base. The first and second preview renders show both versions. You can see the circular shape of the scout base in the distance in the second picture.

Class D Starport

Then, based on the models created for the Class E, I started assembling a Class D starport, which also adds a startown to the concept. There also is a scout base shown in the distance. The whole port including it’s startown is circumfenced, as both – starport and startown – are under imperial jurisdiction and thus extrateritorial land on any planet. The port itself is also separated from the startown, to prevent civilians and drunken sailors alike roaming the installation. Being somewhat larger, the Class D port also features more Parking Bays.

Class C Starport

Based on that Class D starport mock-up, the Class C was created, adding more parking bays and pads, as well as a larger startown.

Class B Starport

Again based on the previous effort, this installation already shows size. Featuring two Landing Fields, connected by expansive Taxiways, that also lead to as many as 20 Parking Bays – not counting the Scout Base shown in the distance. The Startown again grew to about twice the size of the next lower Starport Class and the Support installations between the Landing Fields boast numerous Repair Hangars, Warehouses and Storage Facilities. The Size of the circumfenced area is aproximately 6 by 11 kilometres (for comparison: the runway portion of the landing field is aproximately 1 kilometre wide, with a total length of 5 kilometres (including the landing pad on one end).

If time permits me to do so, I will try to assemble a Class A starport next week. More renders will follow, as I plan to improve the materials and texturing. Also in this process I will try to define individual components to be reused without the need of individual editing. I hope to be able to create various starport layouts using these common components later.

Class A Starport

This time the Class A Starport differs slightly from the „Happy Landings“ Article, featuring more Parking Bays and an enclosed Navy Base. The image shows an Installation capable of servicing close to 500 smaller starships (up to 1000 tons) in its 71 parking bays plus a few hundred on the three landing fields.

ToDo

I plan to refine the materials an texture details. The landing field an Runways are to get some basic markings showing the runway and parallel taxiways, as well as the landing pad and the parking positions on the field. The scale of most of the hangars is off. These need to be scaled upwareds by a factor of 2.5 to 5 depending on the model used. The other models are all in the same scale as my Traveller starships.

The Class A Starport devellopment is currently on hold. I will first split the starports into individual files (they are all in the same file currently), to bring down the polycount, as the Class A Starport boasts as many as 60+ Landing Bays, three Landing fields (one being a Navy Base), all the associated support infrastructure and a Startown even larger than adjacent to the Class B Starport.

Textures are either procedural, or based on textures from maxTextures. Except for a few buildings from „Utopia City Blocks“ (by Stonemason). Parts of the Startown are made with Scene City (though some changes were necessary to get the total count of tris from more than 75 million down to something manageable by my computer).

I stumbled over the „Happy Landings“ Article while cruising the web on my regular sites. The „Atomic Rockets“ section of Project Rho featured the Maps used to assemble the models.

Grab it while you can. I just topped up my Traveller eBook library with the available Bundles of Holding and from what you get – at less than 50 bucks – it’s very much worth the investment, I’d say (even though I already own GURPS Traveller 1E and Starports paperback editions).

GURPS Traveller Essentials Bundle of Holding contains:

STARTER COLLECTION

• GURPS Traveller 2E
• Starships
• First In
• Deck Plan 5: Sulieman-Class Scout/Courier

BONUS COLLECTION

• Behind the Claw
• Humaniti
• Starports
• Modular Cutter
• Deck Plan 2: Modular Cutter
• Deck Plan 1: Beowulf-Class Free Trader

GURPS Traveller Imperial Survey BoH contains:

STARTER COLLECTION

• Far Trader
• Alien Races 1
• Planetary Survey 3: Granicus
• Deck Plan 3: Empress Marava Far Trader

BONUS COLLECTION

• Alien Races 2
• Alien Races 3
• Alien Races 4
• Planetary Survey 1: Kamsii
• Planetary Survey 2: Denuli
• Planetary Survey 4: Glisten

How it works: The starter collections begin with attractive low prices, which can be topped off by paying more to get the bonus colletion included. The price raises over time depending on previous payments. A quick descision pays off.

A short while ago Noah Ternullo of Pittsburgh, PA based IT Consultancy Digital Arc Systems contacted me with the request to use my models for a movie. I decided to support the venture and provided Noah with one of my models, since it would be cool to see it in a high quality animation.

DAS-TCG+Promo_libtheora

While I personaly didn’t think ot it as a production quality model, Noah was confident that it would suit their needs. I was very eager to see the resulting animation as soon as it would be finished.

This is the craft Digtal Arc Systems wanted to use for their project:.

The previously published model in a 5 point artificial lighting setup…

Here are a few shots of the model in a desert lighting setup and the second image shows the rear section as well, which I hadn’t finished prior to Noah’s request…

Views from above….

The personnel airlock and landing gear…

Marava with airlock open and gear up / airlock open and gear down

Marava with airlock closed and gear down / airlock closed and gear up

As can be seen in the video above, not all features were used or prominently visible, but none the less the video is quite cool.

Link to the Resource Page for the „Lone Lady“(Password Protected)…

I guess it was about time to register my own domain for the site. So when I installed the Jetpack-Plugin for WordPress and registered a dedicated wordpress.com user-account, they offered my to register the same as a full fledged domain: travellerillustrated.com

Nice, but I wanted that domain with my webspace provider of trust and registered it. So from now on we will also be available through http://travellerillustrated.com

Finally a textured model of the 300ton Armored Merchant. The image below shows the vessel in her Rhaan Interstellar Corp (RIC) livery.

Rhaan Interstellar Corp – 300dt Star Class Armored Merchant „Solar Flare“

Star Class Traveller 5 Stats

Star Class Traveller SRD Stats

The standard Air/Raft features a matching paint job with RIC logo, while the 4ton standard Container sports an Imperiallines livery.

Here it is, finally. The 30ton Ship’s Boat got a livery. And not a completely bad one I would say. The 4dt container in the image below is just a quick by-product that might see a bit of improvement in the future.

30ton Ship’s Boat, Copyright 2015: Traveller Illustrated

More to come…

The mission of this site is to eventually model and texture all the common and some less common adventure class starships  (ACS) from Classic Traveller (CT). As of now I have modelled a good batch of craft that need a livery badly.

In order to see which ships or boats need one and to keep track of where I am with this venture I frequently render a group shot or parade of all (significant) models and texture variants. Of course I actually produced more texture variants for some than shown in the render below, but some were simply not to my liking. No need to bother anyone with those.

More to come…

Just a quick model of a tiny craft designed by HG_B over at CotI forums.

10ton Intrasystem Sloop

 And for the livery I think I’m going in the direction of a classic VW T1 bus… ☺

200ton Free Trader

Using a 200-ton, TL10 hull, the Beowulf Class Free Trader is an elementary interstellar merchant ship plying the space lanes carrying cargo and passengers. It mounts jump drive-A, maneuver drive-A, and power plant-A, giving a performance of jump-1 and 1G acceleration. Fuel tankage supports a 1 parsec jump, at 20t per parsec, and one month of operations. Attached to the bridge is a Computer Model/1 std. There are 9 staterooms, an owner’s suite, and 20 low berths. There are two single turrets, but without weapons installed. Cargo capacity is 82 tons. The ship has a streamlined hull, with scoops and intakes for frontier refueling.

The ship has 4 crew, and can carry 6 passengers and 20 low passengers.

The ship above is my way to bow my head towards a fellow artist Andrew Boulton who depicted the first „modern“ Free Trader for Traveller and made it to become the Cover Art for newer Traveller products. Sadly Andrew passed away in 2012 leaving a gap in the community of 3D Traveller artists. Thanks to Andrew I got in to Traveller Art in the first place.

Some Stats:

Measures of the ship (bare hull w/o antennas, turrets, etc.) as rendered in the Image above:
Length: 37.5 m (25 squares)
Width: 21.0 m (14 squares)
Height: 9.0 m
Volume: 2813 cubic metres
(200.93 dt, overtonnage less than 1%)

The Brawlin’Beast

Dabbling around with Blender again. Version 2.71 promises a few features I wanted to try for a while, so when I unexpectedly found some spare time yesterday, I fired up Blender and went for it.

Landscaping, Texture Painting, Character Posing and Atmospheric Effects are some of the things I wanted to try. Now I’ve barely scratched the surface of what can be done, but already the first tries start to look promising. Have a peek:

Some Stats

   Vol  No  Label                            MCr  Notes                         
 -----  --  ------------------------------ -----  ------------------------------
   200      Streamlined hull                  14                                
    20      Jump Fuel (1  parsec)              0  1 parsec jump, at 20t per parsec
     2      Plant Fuel (one month)             0  one month                     
     4      PowerPlant-1 (A)                   4  P 1                           
    10      Jump Drive-1 (A)                  10  J 1                           
     2      Maneuver Drive-1 (A)               4  1 G                           
     1      Fuel Scoops                      0.1                                
     1      Fuel Intakes                     0.1                                
     0      AV=10. 1 Kinetic Plate             0                                
     1      Computer Model/1 std             1.5                                
     1      Life Support Standard              1  10 person-months              
     1      Life Support Luxury                1  10 high passengers            
     2      Clinic                             1                                
    12   6  Standard Stateroom               0.6  1 passenger                   
    15   3  Passenger Commons                  0                                
     1   2  Shared Fresher                     1  4 passengers                  
    10   2  Crew Commons                       0                                
    82      Cargo Hold Basic                   0                                
    10  20  Low Berth                          2  1 passenger                   
     6      Owner Suite                      0.4  fresher + safe                
     6   3  Crew Stateroom                   0.3  1 crew                        
   0.5      Crew Shared Fresher              0.5  4 crew                        
     2      Cargo Lock                         0                                
   0.5      Air Lock                         0.1                                
     2   2  AR T1 Empty                      0.4                                
     8      Spacious Bridge                  0.6  2cc 2op 0ws                   
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   200                              TOTALS    43

The „Tin Lizzie“

The Tin Lizzie is an old beaten up Free Trader our „Year’s Endgame“ Group will have to endure. She’s not a beauty anymore, held together by duct tape, borrowed replacement parts and things found at scrap yards or elsewhere.

The Pilot is Harlan Wolfe – an aging ex-scout trying to make ends meet – with a patchwork crew of four humans hardly meeting the requirements for the vessel.

The Tin Lizzie operates on a Vala-HPJ-2A jump drives, now mounts a Billstein SMD/A maneuver drive, and a power General Systems FP/A2 power plant, giving a performance of jump-1 and 1G acceleration. Fuel tankage supports a 1 parsec jump, at 20t per parsec, and one month of operations. Attached to the bridge is a VelociAct SureCalc-1 Computer Model/1 std.

There are 9 standard staterooms, an owner’s suite (used for high passengers), and 17 out of 20 available low berths. There are two single turrets, with a sandcaster and beam laser  in the ventral turret and a dual missile launcher installed in the dorsal turret. Cargo capacity is 82 tons. The ship has a streamlined hull, with scoops and intakes for frontier refueling.

The ship has 4 crew, and can carry 6 passengers and 20 (currently 17) low passengers.

Examples of a New Paint Scheme

Custom naming or color variations of the paint scheme below and a non-exclusive, non-commercial (and free) usage license upon request.

Help Is Near

Strikin’Lucky V1

Strikin‘ Lucky V2

Strikin‘ Lucky V3

Racing Stock

Race Near The Gulf

Classic Brit

More To Come…

…probaby 🙂