SpaceshipGenerator: A Blender script to procedurally generate 3D spaceships
github.com
github.com
The design landscape is very subject to catastrophic change. I remember when Quark Express went from being king of the hill to playing second fiddle to InDesign, in what felt like a couple of months. This was the outcome of some very poor customer-antagonising decisions by Quark.
The 2.8 UI redesign was nothing short of a game-changer.
Edit: one recommendation is to avoid books. YouTube and documentation are great.
A tiny 3D modeling tool that also includes this sculpting technique is Art of Illusion: http://artofillusion.org/
3D modeling is a lot of fun and really not that hard to get started in as long as you get past the initial hurdle.
I'd fully recommend it to your nephew.
*a qualification taken at 16 in the UK
For any young person interested in digital clay, this is tops! ZBrush is the market leader in digital sculpting.
Adobe is making many of the same mistakes now. Hubris. Affinity Photo is 90% there, but annoying short in some very basic areas. I own both, but still use Adobe partly at least because of Adobe ecosystem lock-in at my place of work.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7360076
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/quark...
It is interesting to see once dominant software get sidelined. WordStar gave way to WordPerfect which gave way to Word.
It is also a rather closed ecosystem.
Audodesk, in the last 10 years, has systematically tried to wall off all their products so you are obliged to use nothing but.
If you need a proof, try to export a modern DXF file from e.g. AutoCad and import it into e.g. Blender.
I played with a cracked copy of Cinema 4D quite a bit years ago (yeah...I know. But I was just tinkering for fun and it's expensive). Seeing how far Blender has come is great! I will definitely be downloading the current version and doing some new tinkering--but without the questionable software or copyright infringement.
Maybe I should open an issue...
I'd argue a more practical design would be to include centrifugal rings (even number, paired up in opposite rotational directions, so that they offset each others' torque). That way you still get artificial gravity, even while the ship's hanging out in orbit. As a bonus, the habitats might be able to double as reaction wheels (though I don't know if this is exactly feasible; reaction wheels usually spin much faster, IIUC, though maybe bigger wheels don't need such high speeds to control the attitude of a spacecraft).
The Expanse, as mentioned in other comments, showcases both these designs. Most ships fly a brachistochrone trajectory with a mid-point “flip and burn,” but the Mormons’ giant colony ship has a drum.
Because once I get into an orbit I'd generally prefer to stay there :)
I mean, I guess you could just keep spinning around to constantly counteract nudging yourself out of orbit, but that just seems like a centrifugal habitat with extra steps.
On another note, though, today I learned the word "brachistochrone", so thanks!
Or you can just be geostationary at 100 km with the engine on.
Manufacturability, spaceship designs, and space-gun designs are where norms of this sort aren’t very well understood among designers, time to time I’d think “how on Moon are you going to 3D print it” or “this is going to quite spectacularly flip and kaboom in KSP” or “just no way this gun feeds”
Either way, your friend isn't getting anything; in the first case, you end up with one pizza with a double twist; in the second, the piece your friend ought to be getting is a chain link connected to yours.
``'-.,_,.-'``'-.,_,.='``'-.,_,.-'``'-.,_,.='``A good place to start for anybody interested in exploring this sort of thing.
https://www.chrisfossart.com/ https://arthive.com/artists/65054~Peter_Andrew_Jones/works/3... https://www.pinterest.ca/lleephoenix/space-art-angus-mckie/
More varied spaceships and spaceship classes are something I'm looking forward too, maybe the developers can take some inspiration from OP.
Here's a skybox generator: http://wwwtyro.github.io/space-3d/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClUvUh2AoIhJRezjduP3xcQ
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzghqpGuEmk4YdVewxA79GA
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCREsnxg5H2HAj86KVREdGMw
https://www.youtube.com/user/mediagabbitt
https://www.youtube.com/user/Blenderfan93
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2U5mRfclG1Rrr1ztNkpGKA
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-6vHjpfo62aJpQk_n9siUw
Most of those channels show really professional work with great tutorials.
It doesn't appear the code was ever released either.
If anyone is scamming anyone, it's Kickstarter itself, since all you get for your risk-taking activity, is the finished product of whoever you decide to help, and none of the potential profits associated with it.
Usually speculation is associated with a percentage of profits, and there is none to be had at Kickstarter. All you are doing there, is helping someone potentially finish something they're working on. Further more, Kickstarter does not seem to communicate the speculative nature of what they're doing well enough. IMHO that's the "scammiest" part of their whole business model.
I personally followed Mr. Parnell closely online, and if his work was ever a scam, it's one of the most elaborate and time-consuming out there. I don't think it's cool to judge someone for having an obvious mental breakdown. And I don't even think you're entitled to feel angry at anyone but yourself for risking money on something with so little to gain.
On the other hand, Parnell sure did give to his followers, particularly in fantasticly marvellous visuals and ideas of something that probably should have been made with a team of several talented programmers and artists, instead of just one person. AFAIK he also gave out demos to backers. But if this is how you feel about Josh Parnell, I won't even ask what you think about Chris Roberts... ;)
Also, someone a while back posted procgen for 2D spaceships. Will update when/if I find it.
Not familiar with modeling
BoxelWare revamped the procedural ship/station generation immediately prior to the 1.0 release, and they're fantastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLdmGxLWWfI
Blender is truly remarkable software, and it just keeps getting better and better! I'm loving the 2.83 beta grease pencil updates.
That would so much more depth and replay-ability and make it much much harder to over optimize.
That being said Blender is some heroic software.
[0] https://docs.blender.org/api/current/info_quickstart.html
Edit: good thing I searched the bug tracker. Next step, Selenium for Blender!
Unless something changed recently regarding this.
Also, regarding executing the code from outside, you can run blender headlessly, running the code with it when running blender via terminal. So you could use it as a windowless client if you so wish.
I recently built some pretty complex Blender automation[1], and my experience was that while technically nearly everything that can be done in the UI can be automated, there are problems that fell into two main buckets for me:
1 - There are basically two parts to the Python API - bpy.ops, and everything else. If something is in the "everything else" category, it works pretty well, but not everything can be done through that part of the API. bpy.ops is (AFAICT) the equivalent of using Selenium to automate clicking on web pages instead of actually interacting with the underlying API, and it feels super fragile.
2 - A lot of the API is not documented well, and I frequently ran into situations where there was no information on what I wanted to do, or the information was outdated. The impression I get is that most of the core Blender devs and users are not using the scripting features, or not using them extensively, because answers on StackOverflow and similar to things like "how can I change property X of every material's shader in my project, oh, and by the way, I have 1000 materials in my project" are usually "I guess you'll just have to click through each of those and set it" even though the API supports it if one digs far enough. A lot of the extensions I thought I could use as reference for things like arranging shader nodes in a useful way have been broken ever since 2.8, but there's no indication in the UI of this.
The pane in the scripting view that continuously shows the script equivalent of actions taken in the UI is a big help, and again, Blender is a really, really fantastic tool. But I can definitely understand some frustration with the scripting feature.
[1] https://www.thelostworlds.net/Software/Soul_Reaver_to_Blende... - better docs are coming soon, I promise.
More complex is understanding the Blender model. Best thing to do is go through something like Blender Gurus donut tutorial. It’s intimidating to start with, but once you know the model you can find your way around and then you start getting into more of the techniques.
As a bonus, it has a vim-like interface. So you can do “r x 90” To rotate the selected object 90 degrees about the x axis.
Sadly, I've only just installed Blender so I have no idea how to update the add in. Give me a couple of years to get to grips with it please.
eeereerews has the link to the issue that leads to a link with a corrected version of the script
This comment links to a newer version of the plugin.
looks nice though!