Osaka's doodling

Okay, here's where we'll be going next. The idea is the whole thing breaks down into three layers of parts with the projector (the disc in the middle). They all then slide together in the middle, putting TWO layers of plated protection over the projector's more fragile components for when its stowed away.

Like this:

Okay, here goes:

Yep. Turns out the cutter geometry was bad and the schematic was fine.

I now need to go back and gut the cutter meshes and work out what's wrong with them.

Other than that, I remain utterly impressed.

wat

I SAID INTERSECT, NOT UNION. ARGH

Working out what it will and won't do, modelling the beginnings of a robot hand. Turns out the issues I had earlier were all down to topology because I didn't read the documentation (hurr).

If you 3D model at all, you *must* watch this:

Just figuring some stuff out with trial and error.

Basic hand, based on a model of symmetry.








Decided to go with a four finger-model that can be split in half into two three-fingered hands. There is no traditional 'thumb' as such: the hand just splits up. Less sexy but by varying the finger-lengths and letting stuff fold up neatly, I should be able to copy both a conventional hand and the symmetrical hand just with different configurations of this puppy.







Starting to sex it up a bit. Going to need to add the bilateral plating from the symmetrical one which clarified which parts of the hand were which. Also need to study some tendons and look for ways of getting palm plugs into this.

Drummed up a concept of the Aspertyne for Doc. Kind of need it so I have a sense of how the hands will move over the gun, where it'll be held, how bulky/thin the arms can be, etc, etc.








And in open firing mode:







Pretty good for about 45 minutes work.

Really need to work on the placement of the handles though, the rotary mechanism of the barrel, the barrel extension function and the movement in the 'arms' of the shield toward the back which isn't really obvious in this pic. Very loosely based on the composite shield booster from Advance of Zeta. The idea is its held with two hands: One over the trigger assembly, one handle up front, reminiscent of the M56 Smartgun from Aliens. With luck, it should also have the same armature so when its let go, the gun closes up into some compact configuration and floats away back to its hardpoint on the armature sort of like Raytheon's XOS release-mode or the way Overed-Weapons in Armored Core V fold away when they're not in use - the idea being while its connected, the gun has a high power connection to the generator of whatever its connected to - as well as aim assist like the M56. But if close combat is needed? "Throw" the gun to one side: It'll holster itself!

That's right kids: Osaka's cooking up some nasty shit.

Isn't the Aspertyne supposed to be the gun Rebeka uses? Does she use a scaled down version of it or something that looks similar?

Nope. The Aspartyne is an anti-starship artillery piece to be used by the Winter II. Its like six meters long: She couldn't carry that in her wildest dreams. Doc, when you get time, spec it for me, would you? The initial concept is mostly solid. Once you've done that, I'll start work on the final mesh.

She instead uses a snub-nosed naked packet-rifle with some of the cooling and capacitor gear removed and the thing hugely underclocked, which looks pretty similar. She tends to cook the damn thing on a regular basis. It runs on air instead of off a canister, so it takes much longer to charge between shots unless its firing from a mostly standard personal-scale plasma weapon magazine.

I want to make love to it. That is all there really is to say on the matter.

Upon looking at the initial render of the art, I was immediately impressed, which was quite a feat at 5:45AM while suffering from severe indigestion. Everything looks beautiful on it, the quality of the render is gloriously nice on the eyes, and the possibilities of this wonderful piece of product are just as pleasing as the art.

This lovely piece has my blessing, and will be given the love it deserves. Moogle, commence the lovemaking.

Like I said. Spec it up then I can get started on the final. I've got some new tools that'll auto-topologize the model and UV it for me (yay lazy!) so once its all rigged I SHOULD be able to texture it. I know I go on about wanting to texture and never doing it (same as I seemingly never finish anything because so many things are inter-related and I need to know how big one thing will be before I can go work on another) buuuuut...

Yeah. I will be texturing this bish.

Doc. Numbers. Make some.

Been teaching my fiancé how to 3D model recently.

I just popped out to get some stuff to make dinner with.

This is what I returned to.

I think my avatar makes a bit more sense now.

Nepleslia/10

Prototyped shoulders. Working out the gimmicks I want to incorporate and the shapes I can get away with doing it with.

The flaps on the front of the shoulders (the little shield shaped one between the front plate and the arm) needs work: Its going to mean the shoulders (with sensors in the front) can still face forwards when the arms are dead forward.

The long blocks either side are going to be hardpoints on connected arms in the final that hang onto the side-boosters (the part that's like a cherry on the top of the shoulders) which will swing either forward or backward. They'll be used to hold a hand-held weapon -- so the Winter can reach out, holster the weapon to the hardpoint, the thing swings around then passes it another weapon. Like this...


And potentially, like the shoulder cowling on this:





Added some booster fins. They're like field controllers that are usually hidden by flaps and other parts that are involved in the way the engines work and also the shields and any other electromagnetictomfoolery/ussmakeshitup. The idea is for them to look kinda brutalist which I think I'm managing.

Added some fingerlike fins. If I can, I want to see if I can parlé these into some small Tallgeese-inspired engines.




...



The shoulders open to reveal 65 fist-sized anti-powerarmour missiles on each side by default making for a total of 130 in the shoulders alone. Eat that, Heavyarms Custom.



Yes, this can all be done form the hips. In the final, I want the intermediaries to be connected to some spinal arm that can fold down so if the pilot wants to use the arms in the chest unobstructed, they can.



Which naturally translates into dakka.


Welp. I need to start sketching what I want the end geometry to look like before I throw anything into Mesh Fusion.

Someone said the arms look underpowered so I bulked up the balljoints and added a set of pistons. Pistons mean business, yo.

UPDATE:



Still figuring it out buuut the spine down the back of the bicep is going to be like the coil of a spring - connected with cables and such, so the fore-arm can be launched on cable. In addition, that 'extra hand' on the fore-arm cover can also be wire-launched from the real fore-arm.

UPDATE:




Flap test-rig also works nicely (if I move the arm, the flap angle adjusts automatically).

UPDATE:
Rotator cuff works nicely. Means I can slap something on a hardpoint and adjust its position based on what the hands are doing. Also means the position of the armour in physical offset can be varied as needed.









Need to work out how I'll be animating the wire. I think an anchored spline would work really well for the job but I still need to show the 'spine' on the back of the bicep being connected some how...

UPDATE:



Added some boosters in the flaps as per Doc's request. Should allow rapid deceleration, balance correction and if the ones in the back are used properly, sharp precise 45/90/180 degree turns that could aid something like a blade swing using the whole body for inertia.


UPDATE:
I figure this is boring as shit for those of you not into mecha but its really starting to look badass =3=

The loading bays are quite shallow so I wanted to see what I could get away with.








Looks either like a shaped penetrator or like a second-stage sabot - body fragmenting to launch the barb on the front into an armoured target. I dunno. I'll have to ask Doc about missiles and scurry down some specs. Working title: 9X

I figure the primary yield is the sabot on the tip and the secondary yield is around the rim: the checkered parts being an armour piercing flechette that can be fired around or over a target with an aimable programmable fragmentation pattern - making life for power-armour and personnel crew utter hell.


UPDATE:



This one's an anti-shipping missile/guided bomb carried by the frame (four or so maximum, six at a push). I figure it loads onto those fins hanging off the hips and the fins (like the 9X) fold away. The eye on the front is for tracking and I think it'd be either intelligent like the 9X or just damn slow, lumbering and badass.

UPDATE:
Working title: Stilletto or Cyclops. Haven't decided which. I'll be impressed if any of you get the reference.







Huge, isn't it?

The idea is its developed from an anti-starship torpedo and repurposed to be used not at range from a huge launcher but up close in strafing runs once a starship's fighter/armour cover is lured away in precision strikes against engines and critical subsystems to disable them -- so then a starship can follow up with an intense return-strike against the target vessel which can no longer aptly defend itself or evade the strike in the light-second/light minute range that it normally would.

While this doesn't normally make sense in the SARP because of first-strike antistarship weapons like aether shock systems make most bombing runs very difficult to execute, I'm anticipating a scenario in which weapons of such high aren't available or flat out won't function due to aetheric interference (which would reduce the range of small aether weapons and completely disable larger ones) or when bombers can be fielded using something like an FTL catapult to put them very close to the target starship, giving the starship less time to issue intercept or response.

In this way, a single starship then gets the capacity to flank an enemy starship from multiple directions. It'd also make setting up a blockade in an FTL-deadzone's exit and entrance incredibly easy and make it harder for anyone to power-grab around the edges of such a deadzone.

UPDATE:



Apparently it needed to be bigger, the shapes tightened up a bit and the back EM rudders needed adjusting for reverse sweep. Neato.

This is a reminder Osaka asked me to put here after a conversation on the topic on IRC.

• A sabot is a device to fit a projectile which is smaller than the bore of the barrel of the weapon it's being fired from, conventionally they are discarded after launch. The ARM-9x resembles an ATGM more than a projectile with a sabot around it.
• The projectile with "the sharp tip" is called the Kinetic Penetrator, and is typically designed to piece armor and wreck anything it hits on the way through the tank, sometimes coming out the other side.
• The ARM-9x warhead looks very small for its size. Recommend using it in volleys for most warheads types.
• The Stiletto torpedo looks too organically shaped to fit well into a conventional tube launcher, but you have stated your intention to make it an external payload.

Thanks, Jimmy. Huge help.

UPDATE:
And in response to Oli (someone on Facebook) who asked how a person fits inside one...


See the hand on the right? It goes inside those boob looking things that open up into the slender small girly looking arms on the bunnygirl looking one you saw earlier and the controls for the pilot at right before its elbow.






It isn't super gigantic, either.

UPDATE:
Here's the shorter posture:


UPDATE:
And how the knees work (sorta like a cat or a dog, to absorb big landing impacts)




UPDATE:
Also, seems the missile/bombs mount to the external pylons on the hip fins nicely if the subspace rudders/fins fold in. But the fins doesn't seem to want to rig properly due to gimbal issues. I'll have to think on this. I really love the curves though. The sleek lines and the bulk.

Shame there's probably no way to repurpose them as positron boosters prior to launch to get closer to an enemy ship or something like an afterburner: It'd look so badass.





UPDATE:













T-shaped branched weapons pylon seems to do the job nicely.



UPDATE:




Accented the Mercurial placeholders. Will have to update their design when I do the final models. I really love that look though.

I definitely see some Zone of the Ender elements to this design. Look nice and very well done.