egosheep

Not 100% perfect but I made a mockup in LDD to show how it's put together:

What program are you doing these final renders in? Looks awesome!

Looks great... I love the Nautilus! Maybe hinge the sides and do a full interior.

I'm still working on it! I've just been busy with real life, etc. I wasn't happy with the shape of the body when using single rows of 2x2x3 slopes so I changed it to double rows of 2x2x2 slopes. This gives a better shape and more accurate look, like more riveted panels. I also threw out the old design of the teeth and replaced it with something a little smoother. I'm trying to make the design something that will be strong in real life, so I have done a lot of reworking the inside skeleton. A lot of the redesign work has put the actual build on hold. This is the new interior cross section for the biggest part of the ship, which will contain the Salon. It's been hard to come up with something that looks art nouveau and victorian on the inside, while being structurally sound. I have most of the pieces needed for the skeleton, so the first step will be printing out a Nautilus blueprint scaled 1 foot to 1 stud. This way I can lay out the central skeleton right on the paper plan to make sure it's as good as can be, then start the build from there.

Thanks for the nice comments! I agree that the lighting in LDD looks horrid, but I thought the space background was more suitable than the plain gray one. I tried to import it to LDRAW but it lost a bunch of parts in the process. I'll update this thread when I get some real building done. Not sure what base color I will go with... either white or light gray, depending on which has the most parts available in that color.

Ok I finally got everything resized, here are the photos! Here is the cockpit so far. I plan to add in the stasis pods later.

With Prometheus coming out this summer, I have recently been geeking out on Alien-related topics. I have always loved the concept of shuttles in science fiction, so it's no surprise that my favorite ship in the Alienverse is the Narcissus. I have recently tackled it in LDD, just building a plan and proof-of-concept as I'm sorely low on bricks. There are a lot of very interesting angles on this ship and getting it all to fit together has been a fun challenge to say the least! I started on the center cross section and moved from there. I'm now about 90% done, with some tail end details left to do, as well as a lot of greebling and finishing out a full interior. Here's a little far-off teaser of it floating in space. I'll work on it some more tonight and I'll post some close-ups tonight or tomorrow.

Now on ebay, no reserve: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190558078249

For sale: 30 Stormtroopers(28 are dotted-mouth variety), blasters included. 3 black pauldron Sandtroopers(dotted-mouth) 22 Snowtroopers 9 ATAT drivers 11 Hoth Officers All the figures are mint/unplayed with. I'd like to get something comparable to BL prices. I'll be putting these on ebay in a few days, but I thought I would put them here first. Send me an offer, however I do not want to break up the individual lots.

Thanks Guss! I will try to post some instructions, but I would like to build it in real bricks first. I'm going to totally redo it when I build it for real, and make the framework straight from a scaled plan, so it should be more realistic. After that I will make a new LXF file and post it. I can say that it probably has a lot more parts than a few sandcrawlers. The exterior hull alone has almost 5K pieces. I have been working on brainstorming ideas for possible interiors. Here is a rendering of the salon(someone else's work), showing the interior with the window separated and offset: All the interior piping that surrounds the salon is a real challenge in lego.

That gladiator helmet will make a great steampunk/captain Nemo style diver's helmet!!

No, he said: "they envisioned it as a competitive ‘space race’ between astronauts in white and cosmonauts in red." Cosmonauts were Russian.

This reminds me of X-COM, in a good way... especially the interiors of the big ship.

Wow, awesome job with this! That's just a mammoth ship. Congratulations on completing such a huge project. My only criticism is that it seems maybe too large(larger than minifig scale)... the cockpits on the Dragon in the movie were set forward, sticking off of the front of the ship.

Thanks for the advice about peroxide. I recently got a huge lot of 1X2 white bricks off BL, and a few are discolored. I can't wait to try this!

My old love was always making Space MOC's, but since coming out of my dark ages I have been interested in a lot of themes/ideas, like modern architecture and steampunk stuff, post apocalypse, etc. All it takes is an inspiring MOC to turn my head to a different theme.

Opening an lxf file in winrar is no problem. I'll post one of my lxf files here later when I get home. As I said, it has the same error with a fresh lxf file downloaded from here. Thanks for your help!

I would, but I don't think the lxf is the problem. The program won't open any lxf... even good ones I have downloaded from the forum. It has the same error on lxf's uploaded yesterday and 4 months ago. I'll try to delete everything and reinstall... perplexing.

I did. Maybe I just need to reinstall it... I'll try that first. Ok, reinstalled and I'm getting the same error. When I open the lxf file, it says: Error in UnzipFiles sub: Method 'NameSpace' of object 'IShellDispatch4' failed then it's followed by: Error 53: The file "c:/etcetcetc/test.lxf" is not a LXF-file. any ideas?

I can't get LDD Manager to open my lxf files after the new 4.1 update... anyone else having this issue?

That's incredible... the water just had me transfixed! I love the little details, like the intermittent yellow flashing lights. Really makes it feel abandoned and realistic.

I love these! The second one reminds me of the giant airship that the air-pirates had on TailSpin. The fact that it's motorized just takes it over the top.

Thanks, and thanks for those part #'s! I agree about the greebling. Hard to add greebles to the sides when it's all slopes! I will try to add in some of the vents/ports/etc in the real build. I also added the two anchors in LDD but it's hard to see. I'm going to do it in mostly reddish brown because I think that will match the rusty color the ship has. But due to necessity there will be other shades thrown in, so it should be a motley mix by the time it's finished. The monochrome look of the LDD renders is definitely crappy!

Thanks, TooMuchCaffeine! I would like to have some way to access the interiors, but I definitely want to build the entire ship. The problem is that the structure in many ways depends on the whole thing being together. I will try to figure something out, but at the same time, I may just have a fully realized salon, with maybe some lighting so you can look in through the salon windows. Not a lot of playability, but there's some charm in the "ship in the bottle" approach. This is how almost all Nautilus models are, as well... those that have interiors at all. The LDD ship is just a proof of concept. The physical build will be much better, I'm sure, as I will lay out it's support structures on a physical, scaled Nautilus blueprint. I'm using a 1 stud= 1' scale, so the finished model should be around 170 studs or 53.5". I'm also working now on some techniques of offsetting hull sections in very, very slight increments... this may help me to make the hull more realistic. I've started the first of many BL orders. In the meantime I'll be studying the Nautilus interiors and trying to figure out how to do them/scale them in lego. Nemo's pipe organ with all the crazy brass pipes will be an interesting challenge!

Thanks for the feedback, guys! One possible snag.. this piece: Reddish Brown Hinge Plate 1 x 2 Locking with 1 Finger On End Appears to be quite rare, only appearing in 3 sets. There are only 9 of them total on BL. The counterpart with 2 fingers is common. If anyone can help source any of these, please let me know. The whole build is centered around hinges, and the closest color, brown, is also scarce. Dark red is common, so maybe that will work... don't have any DR and RB to compare at the moment. LDD manager is not working for me now, so I'm doing a manual parts count. Fun...