Starbuck "Replicate some marmalade, Commander - helm control is toast!"
Member # 153
posted
I've thrown together a few "kitbashed" ships using Fabrux's Ship Kit...
I tried to link to the image of my first creation, the USS Haldane, but for some reason it wouldn't work. Might be something to do with the Crosswinds web server... So click here to go see 'em!
Any opinions? Anyone got any other ship kits I can use?
One little note: The USS O'Neill was built with a mixture of Fabrux's kit and one that was forwarded to me in email by a friend, called Shipkit 2K.
------------------ "Replicate some marmalade, Commander - helm control is toast!"
[This message has been edited by Starbuck (edited March 01, 2000).]
posted
I like 'em too, Starbuck, except for one tiny thing... MacArthur wasn't a Marine. Might I suggest "Iwo Jima" as a more suitable name for a Marine Transport Ship?
------------------ Dane
"Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in even greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires: beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the Gospels, it will not go." Goethe
Starbuck "Replicate some marmalade, Commander - helm control is toast!"
Member # 153
posted
Dane: Point taken. Although the name "MacArthur" appears in the second series of Aliens comics (from Dark Horse) as a Colonial Marine transport ship - which is why I decided to use it.
Altair: Internet Explorer appears to support .bmp files okay. As soon as I have a graphics app other than Paint, I intend to start putting these out as JPEGs or GIFs.
------------------ "Replicate some marmalade, Commander - helm control is toast!"
posted
Yeah, if you want horribly butchered images...
------------------ Ross: "Inter arma, enim silent leges." Bashir: "'In the time of war the law falls silent.' Cicero. Have we become a 24th-century Rome, driven by the fact that Caesar can do no wrong?!" -Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges
posted
HERE is a freeware picture viewer/editer/converter. It is only about 470k in size.
Open your BMP files, and then choose 'Save as'. I think the best choise here is JPG/JPEG at quality: 95 (which you can set with the 'Options' button when you save, you only need to adjust it ones).
posted
Not too bad. Better than my first attempts at kitbashing. Most people think kitbashing is easy, anyone can paste parts together. But actually making it look like a real starship isn't as easy as I'm sure Fabrux can agree to. Of course once you get the hang of it, it does.
------------------ "The Borg wouldn't know fun if they assimilated an amusement park" - Torres Federation Starship Datalink - On that annoying Tripod server.
posted
Actually, MSPaint in Windows 95 only saves as bmps.
------------------ "The things hollow--it goes on forever--and--oh my God!--it's full of stars!" -David Bowman's last transmission back to Earth, 2001: A Space Odyssey
And yes, it is very difficult. When I first started kitbashing.. Well, I won't submit you to that horror. They were horrible... *shudders*
Well, I suppose that's to be expected when I got my inspiration from Ptzue Colony...
------------------ Ross: "Inter arma, enim silent leges." Bashir: "'In the time of war the law falls silent.' Cicero. Have we become a 24th-century Rome, driven by the fact that Caesar can do no wrong?!" -Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges
posted
Hey, I have that program! It's actually pretty good. It plays a wide variety of media formats and displays a wide variety of image formats. With QuickTime 4, you also get an mp3 player and .mov player, but I haven't tested them out. I use WinAmp for mp3s.
And what I do is: kitbash in Paint, change the background to black, crop the ship, copy to and paste in IrfanView, reduce the color to 256 colors so I can edit the damn thing later if I want to, and save in gif format.
I agree that saving your kitbash in gif format in Paint will yield horrible results. That's because the parts were all in 16 million colors. You can't reduce color depth in Paint so when you save in gif, it tries to save 16 million colors in that format. Gif only handles a maximum of 256 colors. Result is a ship with all the wrong colors. However if the all the parts were already in 256 colors, you'll be fine.
------------------ 7 alarm clock: "Do not touch me." Dilbert: "Then how do I turn you off?" 7: "Believe me, I am plenty turned off."
Starbuck "Replicate some marmalade, Commander - helm control is toast!"
Member # 153
posted
Cheers for your support, guys... I guess I'll keep at it! That little application is going to help until I get around to finding a freeware or shareware paint app to work in. So, anyone got any stuff I can use as new components?
I'm also in the process of getting my hands on a rendering app, and I'm hoping that additions to my Shipyards page will soon include CGI drawings of original ships, some of my old pencil doodles, and maybe even a decent render or two!
Any of you long-timers got some tips on using this stuff?
------------------ "Replicate some marmalade, Commander - helm control is toast!"
posted
Here's a tip, try making your own parts or merge two different parts to make one new part. For example, I made some nice nacelles by merging Excelsior and Galaxy nacelles together.
------------------ "The Borg wouldn't know fun if they assimilated an amusement park" - Torres Federation Starship Datalink - On that annoying Tripod server.
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