Hyperion Class Cruiser (Babylon 5)

Earth Alliance Hyperion Class Cruiser (Babylon 5 TV Series)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_class_heavy_cruiser



This is my first model (other than training ones), it was originally 2500+ triangles, so I had to reduce detail in a few parts and also I excercised some "artistic freedom" and changed a few parts so the poly count was below 1500.

Poly Count: 1338
Animation: Destroyer.kfm (Final Frontier)

All three main exhausts have glow but I didn´t manage to make the thrust work (on the outer two).

If you found something out of place or if you have any suggestions please post them, as I´m going to make more B5 models for the Final Frontier Babylon 5 mod.



Download

Special Thanks for The_Coyote's tutorials(Blender) and advise, and also for C.Roland's tutorial ("Import custom model in Civ4")

great first unit

only three small remarks / hints:
1.) you have left some no longer needed informations in nif (blowing up the size to over 211kb, removing them reduces the size to 95kb). everything outside of scene root can be deleted or
2.) try right mouse button on the mesh in nifskope - mesh - smooth normals - something about 70 - 80 degree, should remove some visible edges in the model (you can already set this in Blender - it´s a good method to get round objects with relative low polycount)
3.) for the gun barrels and the antennas it would be enough to use three side instead of four, especially for the one on the lower side of the ship

If you want more weapons effects (or different ones), feel free to ask, this is a quick nifscope job.

Adding new thrusts is also quite easy, but also relative time consuming - or not - had an idea which i never tried so far and the method worked. Attached the nif with the 7 thruster / glow hyperion (also smoothed the model and removed the no longer needed informations). I have also lighten the model in the nif, just in case you wonder.

And welcome on the other side of the "modeling frontier"

edit: attachment removed

Beautiful unit. When do you release the rest of the EA shipclasses?

Nice .
I hope, that i can replace one of the FF ships in my mod with this one .

I have re-uploaded the file with some of The_Coyote's suggestions (gun barrels/sensors, cleaner NIF, smoothness, lighting), also, now all three main exhausts have glow and thrust, but I left the secondary ones with only glow (after all those are maneouvering engines and not thrust engines).

Moreover some texture changes (minimal).

@The_Coyote

Thanks!, it took me a few hours to replicate and understand what you did to the model, but I got it. (I think)

If you want more weapons effects (or different ones), feel free to ask, this is a quick nifscope job.

Click to expand...

Then let me ask you, tho I'm happy with the Hyperion the way it is now, that will certainly be usefull for other ships.

@GeoModder
As soon as I have them, but you can also spect Narn, Centaury, Minbari, and nearly every mayor ship (capital or not) from the series (even some that do not appear), Crusade (Victoria Class, Warlock Class), and some of the movies are also being contemplated.

Premier Valle said:

it took me a few hours to replicate and understand what you did to the model, but I got it. (I think)

Click to expand...

a few hours? -

only to explain why: normally the attachables are visible all the time, the visibility itself is controlled via the NiVisController and setting this Controller to yes or no in the animation files (kf). The controller itself is identified by name in the kf file (therefore copying the placeholders node didn´t made the thrusters working). But the NiVisController makes the entire branch (the node and all subnodes of the node) visibile or invisible, so making the attachables placeholders children of the node with the NiVisController makes them using the same visibility animation like the master node
(i only made the node with the NiVisController a normal tree node and added all attachables placeholders as children to have it look a bit cleaner, but it´s not a must)

Weapons effects:
for this you must edit the nif and the attack kfs
1.) first make a copy of the animations files you want to use (kfm and all kfs)
2.) be sure that you rename one of your nifs to the name of the kf (eg.: if the hyperion uses the destroyer animation, you must have a nif called destroyer.nif in the same folder like the kfm - i would recommend to rename the hyperion.nif to destroyer.nif, to check if all works try to open the kfm with nifskope, if you see a model the needed kfm is in the folder)
3.) you already moved the weapon effects placeholders in the nif, now create copies of the placeholders, give them unique names and set the position (btw you can also scale effects using the scale setting of the placeholder node)
4.) say the game to play an effect on the placeholder node, open the (eg for the ff destroyer animation - Destroyer_MD_StrikeA.kf) strike kf of your copied animation and go to the text keys, search for the different keys (in most cases the attack is around 0.2 - 0.4) and add effects to the new placeholder nodes through adding text keys, see:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6783765&postcount=5

the entries have the following structure:
EFFECTLACEHOLDER_NODE_IN_NIF:EFFECT_NAME_KEY(XML)

Thanks for the notes on the weapons , I'll give them a try.

EDIT
====
Successfully added a 3rd firing effect to the FF Destroyer (it certainly looks meaner)

Thanks for the tip!.

PS:
Next in line is the Narn Th'Nor Cruiser

I just noticed this unit, good job. I need to get around to learning how to make models. (I'll need to make a Command Carrier eventualy). More FF units are always nice.