manglegrat Posted June 17, 2020 (edited) The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. A self-contained world five miles long, located in neutral territory. A place of commerce and diplomacy for a quarter of a million humans and aliens. A shining beacon in space . . . all alone in the night. And if you're curious how big this is: Currently she sits at ~6300 parts; ~4kg weight; ~142 studs or 113cm long; 45 studs or 36cm height, ~25 studs or 20cm wide... Check out more on my Flickr! Built in LDD (modded with the additional parts pack - there are no collisions), then imported, fixed-up & rendered in Stud.io. I haven't figured out how to use Stud.io's renderer properly yet, so these shots have really basic lighting, etc. For details, colours & general inspiration, I'm using the awesome renders by this guy and reference images from here. It's surprisingly close to those last reference images! I also bought the 20 year-old Revell model kit recently as further reference IRL. Structurally, the cylinders are mostly based on the Saturn V internals, and it's built in interconnected modules, not along a single central spine, which works great digitally but might not in real life! Oh and there's a studless Lowell sphere at the front, of course. I started sketching this out in LDD 2 years ago then it went cold until about 2 weeks ago, when I picked it up and inspiration hit. Next steps will be to design a multi-point stand - she'll need a lot of support in 1Gs worth of gravity. Then test builds. I'm sure she'll evolve in that process. Before anyone asks, because cloners stole my Agamemnon design there won't be instructions or shared LDD/Stud.io files for this one - pics only! Edited June 18, 2020 by manglegrat Updated pics after making some improvements. :) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Captain_Quinn Posted June 17, 2020 Nice work, mate. Looking forward to seeing pics when you build one in bricks. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manglegrat Posted June 17, 2020 7 hours ago, Captain_Quinn said: Nice work, mate. Looking forward to seeing pics when you build one in bricks. Thanks, Troy! (it's pretty quiet on this thread so far, but it's all kicking off on Reddit) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manglegrat Posted June 18, 2020 (edited) Here's a better pic. Edited June 18, 2020 by manglegrat Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jerry McGlade Posted June 18, 2020 Truly fantastic job! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Captain_Quinn Posted June 18, 2020 7 hours ago, manglegrat said: Here's a better pic. Now THAT is art!! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manglegrat Posted June 18, 2020 3 hours ago, Captain_Quinn said: Now THAT is art!! Yeah... Sometimes I amaze even myself! Thanks! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manglegrat Posted June 18, 2020 9 hours ago, Jerry McGlade said: Truly fantastic job! Thanks! It's still to be proven if it's buildable (and it'll take a while to do that), but it sure looks nice in digital form! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manglegrat Posted June 22, 2020 It would appear from the lack of posts that the zeitgeist has long since moved on from B5, but for those still tuning in, here's a UCS-style sticker I pulled together from the above render plus the Babylon 5 Wiki entry for the station: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manglegrat Posted June 27, 2020 (edited) While I'm waiting for parts to arrive to build this beastie, I updated the design of the 4 "Cobra Launch Bay" support arms for the Command sphere to make them less overwhelming and much more in proportion to the show, showing more of the sphere itself (I don't think you can make them any smaller with current Lego parts without losing a lot of shaping, but those are the trade-offs we make!): V0.2 - Trying smaller Cobra Launch Bay support arms... by David White, on Flickr I also updated the UCS plaque from the same render, but I can never seem to get the filtering, highlights and colouration quite right on the image to make it look truly UCS or print out legibly on my laser printer... Does anyone who's done UCS plaque sticker designs have any tips as to how to filter a pic appropriately?! Edited August 29, 2020 by manglegrat Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Captain_Quinn Posted June 28, 2020 On 6/27/2020 at 3:13 PM, manglegrat said: Does anyone who's done UCS plaque sticker designs have any tips as to how to filter a pic appropriately?! Hmmm. I'd probably try beginning with converting the rendered image to grayscale, then use a combination of layer masks and colour balance. A quick 30s experiment with one of my recent renders in GIMP (opensource equivalent to Photoshop) yielded some pretty close results with that approach. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manglegrat Posted June 29, 2020 (edited) On 6/28/2020 at 1:48 PM, Captain_Quinn said: Hmmm. I'd probably try beginning with converting the rendered image to grayscale, then use a combination of layer masks and colour balance. A quick 30s experiment with one of my recent renders in GIMP (opensource equivalent to Photoshop) yielded some pretty close results with that approach. I've previously been using Pixlr.com and a variety of filters/effects there, to recolour, posterize and add noise, a solid outline, etc. but it's not repeatable and not quite UCS-alike enough for me! Very hit & miss. Not right... However, I tried playing around in Paint.Net along the lines of a sort of tutorial I found online here. I had that already, and the Ink Outline effect seems to be spot on. So, in Paint.Net (documenting here for posterity),I did the following: Open the transparent-background full-colour 4k render image file. Use the magic wand to select the image. Invert the selection (if you don't invert the selection then the background ends up black after the next step). Use the Ink Sketch effect (Effects->Artistic->Ink Sketch) with Ink Outline at 99 and Color at 0. This redoes the image in black & white at the same time as the outlines. View the colour palette. Use the Recolor tool with the light blue 6th or 7th from the right (6th is darker, 7th is lighter - I chose the 6th for the below), in the top row of colours under the colour wheel, with Brush Width 500, Hardness 75%, Tolerance 100% to change all the white to a blue that's UCS-adjacent. Those are the most important steps. After that I used the resulting image in Paint.Net, along with the other sticker components I built previously (some are semi-transparent masks I made earlier so I can layer the station image over/under the other layers), to construct the version below: I like this one a lot more than the previous version! I hope it'll print out well... Oh, and BTW, while I'm still waiting for the part orders, I'm cracking open the internal structure to revisit some aspects of the structural integrity. I designed it in sections that connect together with a few studded connections using SNOT bricks/reversed headlights, but I want to use the "skin" layers to reinforce the joins between sections on either 4 or 8 of the sides, depending on whether the particular sections are 8-sided or 16-sided (I can only join across 4 sections in the 16-sided case). With skin and SNOT-brick connections it should be pretty strong. My goal is for the entire cylinder section to be at least as solid as the Saturn V it's based on. No guarantees about the command sphere and "neck" though... Edited July 21, 2020 by manglegrat Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Captain_Quinn Posted June 29, 2020 That looks HEAPS better, @manglegrat... very nice! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manglegrat Posted July 18, 2020 (edited) Waiting for parts to come in is the hardest part... And then comes counting everything against the partslist to make sure I didn't screw any orders up. And then comes the build... and then we find out just how realistic this digital rendition of B5 truly is! But I've done some prep work for that much-anticipated build stage that should make it a tiny bit easier on me: The Deconstruction of Falling Sta... by David White, on Flickr And here's a render of what the above will look like when it's fully assembled in the brick, with the UCS plaque sticker applied (I used Stud.io's parts designer app to create a custom 8x16 tile): B5 with Stand and UCS Plaque by David White, on Flickr Edited September 25, 2020 by manglegrat Added "as-built" render & 360. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manglegrat Posted August 20, 2020 (edited) The physical build and internal structural redesign (damn you gravity!) is well underway: ...And so it begins! by David White, on Flickr Heid! by David White, on Flickr Cylinder progress... by David White, on Flickr Looks better with its clothes on. by David White, on Flickr And now we have a spine! by David White, on Flickr Adding a tail... by David White, on Flickr Edited September 19, 2020 by manglegrat Added spine pic. Added tail pic. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manglegrat Posted August 22, 2020 (edited) ...aaand for the 2 of you who've been following, here she is in all of her 1.14m in-the-brick glory: B5 Profile by David White, on Flickr B5 Front oblique shot by David White, on Flickr B5 Top shot by David White, on Flickr Just need to print up & apply the plaque sticker and we're finally done! Edited August 27, 2020 by manglegrat Updated pics Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Murdoch17 Posted August 23, 2020 Awesome work! I'm just waiting for someone to make Babylon 4 to scale with your B5. That's my favorite station... even though it was only in in the series for two episodes or so, it was, shall we say, ahead of it's time. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manglegrat Posted August 23, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, Murdoch17 said: Awesome work! I'm just waiting for someone to make Babylon 4 to scale with your B5. That's my favorite station... even though it was only in in the series for two episodes or so, it was, shall we say, ahead of it's time. Thanks, @Murdoch17! Yeah, it was like a thousand years ahead of it's time. But dude, you know how much bigger B4 was? Check this comparison... My B5 is 6500 parts. How many would a B4 at that scale be? The mind boggles... Someone did build a B4/B5 combo to the same scale previously - but their B5 is smaller: Babylon-4-4 by Christian Zaefferer, on Flickr Edited August 23, 2020 by manglegrat Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
