vertically aligned space/starships
vtjapes
Posts: 4
I've been looking for days but I can't seem to find what I'm looking for. Several would be close visually from the exterior but there is always a "cockpit/bridge" oriented horizontally which doesn't work for my use. I'm needing ships that are oriented so they can function with thrust gravity rather than a ficticious artificial gravith field. Something along the lines of the show Assension or the books/show of the Expanse world. I used to have some of the older sci-fi construction kits but I'm not sure where they are at this point digitally and they are at least 10 years old anyway. Is there a newer equivalent? I've seen several great interior modular sets that I plan to use for interior scenes but the exterior shots aren't coming along as I'd like.
It would also be awesome if "functional" sci-fi type outfits were made to match G3 male and female. I find great female versions or great male versions but none that are matched.
Thanks.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
It's something that bugs me, too, since barring really high sf, bridges should align with acceleration.
Plenty of Vintage "Rocket Ships" but those may be too Retro for your use
There's http://www.daz3d.com/dominator but that may be too military in it's default setup.
That's all I can find here. I'd look at some of the "spaceship construction kits" over at Renderosity and see if there's something there you can use.
How about Alien Terror Drone http://www.daz3d.com/scifi-alien-terror-drone or one of the Alien Invasion! ships http://www.daz3d.com/alien-invasion?
...where?
Too Alien for the first and too small for the second. I'm really enjoying the world of the Expanse in visual especially after reading all the books so far so my mental picture is probably biased towards that direction.
Thanks everyone so far for the input. Hope more is coming.
Not really vertical rockets, but they are free:-
http://www.solcommand.com/
Herminio Nieves at ShaeCG does some nice ships as well, just some need retexturing:-
http://www.sharecg.com/herminio
dmaland does some Sci-Fi as well:-
http://dmaland.deviantart.com/gallery/692466/3D-Meshes-and-Data
http://www.3d-spacemodels.co.uk/
...had to grab the "Black Box"
My search of the shows you mentioned gave no hints as to what you're looking for so can you post some images to give those of us (me) not familiar with the shows you mentioned, a better idea as to what you want?
-MJ
Still no better description or pictures but I'm assuming he means Rocky Jones type rockets that stand on their tail and the interior should be a series of rooms one above the other linked by a spiral staircase down the middle or around the edge. But even I as a 7 year old kid in 1955 caught the fact that Rocky Jones's rocket interiors were NOT vertical, but in fact horizontal. Now, either the three rooms in those rockets were on one level of a huge rocket and they indeed did have artificial gravity, or the rooms swiveled on gymbols in some incomprehensible way.
Off the top of my head, the only thing like that I can think of is the Intrepid over at Content Paradise; and its free.
Havent seen too many vertical, "1-2-3 Blast Off" ships in the poserverse.
-MJ
If the decks are set to use thrust for gravity what happens when they want to slow down?
In most stories, the spaceships will rotate 180 so their main engines face forwards for deceleration. So for example, 1 day at 1G "normal" acceleration - 1 day at zero G cruise - flip ship - 1 day at 1 G deceleration.
One solution, the main engine stops burning and the ship pivots 180 degrees so that the engine is facing forward and then fired, hopefully with the same energy and duration and the initial acceleration. The subjective effect is that once again the crew is pressed against the deck plates. the so-called "turnover" period is one od "micro-gravity".
I recommend this site as a fantastic resource for writing "believable" space travel adventures. I've conversed with its creator, a really laid back fellow. He let me convert and distribute his Nozaki style Martian War Machine as a Poser freebie.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/
Sincerely,
Bill
Yeah, same thing with Tom Corbett, I think. The rooms were theoretically stacked and aligned with the rocket shape, but the characters looked out of the horizontal windows a lot. No forward view. I think the radar/nav room was upstairs and may have had a forward/up view, though.
Of course, in a real ship you would be under zero acceleration much of the time (or, at least, during turnaround for decceleration) and experience no G-forces at all. But assuming 1G acceleration most of the time, I wonder how disorienting it would be to have round rooms similar to the Trek bridge, with a forward viewer that shows a view that is actually different from what you are physically facing.
I think what @vtjapes has in mind is a system where the ship has a single main engine at the 'rear', aligned with the main axis of the hull, and smaller maneuvering engines perpendicular to the hull. While the ship is under acceleration, people inside experience 'gravity' equivalent to the thrust of the main engine (i.e. if the engine is producing 1G of acceleration, then they'll feel as if they were under Earth-normal gravity). To decelerate the ship, you use the maneuvering engines to pivot the ship around its center of mass, so that the main engine is now pointing toward the direction in which the ship is moving: the ship is effectively flying backwards. Firing the main engine at this point will slow the ship, and, again, give the illusion of gravity.
Spaceship models for sale at DAZ and elsewhere don't tend to reflect this kind of arrangement (Petipet's Dominator might be an exception). Instead, they follow the model seen in many TV shows and movies, where the spaceship is laid out a bit like an airplane and there's assumed to be some kind of 'artificial gravity' that not only keeps the crew's feet on the floor but protects them from the effects of acceleration and deceleration. Exactly what amazingly advanced technology produces this magical artificial gravity is never really explained, but it's convenient for the filmmakers because it simplifies set construction and filming. (Teleportation is another future technology invented as a convenience for the filmmakers: no need to 'get in the shuttle, sit in the shuttle, fly down to the planet, get out of the shuttle' every time you need to get somewhere).
To be honest, the vertical axis model (rocket at the back) isn't very much more realistic than the horizontal axis model (artificial gravity), barring major changes in thrust technology. At least for the foreseeable future, spaceships are unlikely to be able to produce 1G of thrust continuously for long periods of time; actual accelerations, and thus perceived gravity, are likely to be tiny. So there's a third model, which involves simulating gravity through rotation: either you have a spinning cylinder or, more practically, a torus that rotates around the main hull. Here are some pictures of spacecraft built on this model:
http://russcolwell.deviantart.com/art/AINPP-20091434
http://macrebisz.deviantart.com/art/Kronos-1-WIP-2-566409251
http://smpritchard.deviantart.com/art/Let-s-Go-to-Saturn-311935454
Incomprehensible gymbols.
Just explain everything with really powerful psychics. >.>
I actually really love the expanse-style ships. Magnetic boots and starting to slow down halfway through a journey so that you're at a reasonable docking speed by the time you arrive... it'd be a lot of fun to see a ship w/ interior built like that.
I rather liked the concept of the personal starships in Azimov's "Foundation" trilogy. Basically, self driven motorhomes. Just pull up a holographic map, point at a star, fix a drink and sit with your guests and discuss philosophy or galactic politics or whatever while your living room whizzes you to your destination in a few hours or days. Vibration free, momentum free. Cool!
A couple of vertical rockets but no interiors:
https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/free-c4d-model-retro-rocket/687319
http://www.sharecg.com/v/74864/browse/5/3d-model/v2-rocket
http://www.daz3d.com/toon-rocket-and-moonscape
This is exactly what I was talking about.
how is the ship layed out? Like a skyscraper, with the lower floors nearer to the engines? So that when the ship is propulsed forward, gravity is applied so that the floor is indeed 'the floor'. The main bridge wouldn't have forward facing windows like most models show (which is based on modern airplanes). Some cases you don't actually have windows with the exception of a few small portholes at the airlocks. Windows could be a hazard in space.
The generation ship on Ascension
On The Expanse series they accelerate for half the journey, flip using maneuvering thrusters (similar to ocean vessles bow thrusters) and the decelerate the last half so they reach their destination at near zero motion.
I thought I could find a video somewhere since it happens in several episodes but I;ve had no luck. There are several models that are close if it just wasn't for the bridge having the windows forward facing.
Most of the ships are not round rockets either. Usually some polygon like octagonal so that repairs are easier with flat plates rather than shaping curves. Ascension was round I believe with an elevator/wrapping stair down the center and stacked decks. Lower on the ship where life support and slums of the "city" since everything flows downhill. Interiors are easy to approximate with available modular materials.
I'll keep looking for better examples.
Also the thrust engine is explained in the books so they do have a "psedo science" reason.
Oh and a torus model would be great as well.
Dont know about the interior, but there are several interior sets based on this kinda concept. At Renderosity, try searching for:
BlueStreeStudio's Alien City, Survelliance HUB, & Cryogenic Chamber
Cybertenko Derelict Spaceshup: Junction
for multi-tiered sets to repurpose as your multi-level interior spacecraft. However, you can use whatever sets you wish and "define" them as being diff levels to your ship without them "physically" being so.
Good Luck!
-MJ
...in an SF story I was working on the Command Deck (Bridge) of ships built by one of the cultures was buried within the hull to take advantage of the craft's armour and had a secondary armour belt around it (even more so on military vessels). This was the "nerve centre of the ship and thus seen as something that should be made least vulnerable to damage or destruction as possible. With advanced redundant imaging and display systems (on the ships in my story it was a 3D virtual environment for the command pilot, nav, and weapons specialists), one really doesn't need "windows" or a "windscreen". This culture's ships were also fairly compact owing to a high degree of automation as even in a highly advanced society, "space" in space is at a premium so no megatonne dreadnoughts (the largest military vessel, the "Tempest" class [Consortium code name] would be considered a medium cruiser class vessel in in space naval terms).
True these ships are of a horizontal configuration presupposing a grav plate system as well as also involved some "exotic" technology like a form of DNI (direct neural interface - which is actually in it's "infancy" today with eye controlled targeting systems) where specially trained officers are "linked in" to the ships control systems (with appropriate feedback buffers), so manual instrumentality was only present as a last resort backup.
The concept of putting the bridge in the front or high up in some form of superstructure is a holdover from present day aircraft and surface naval vessels and really makes little sense on a spacecraft larger than a shuttle or other transfer vessel.
One of the better ways to take out the command of, and cripple a Corellian Star Destroyer was to dump a couple torpedoes or kamakaze an X/Y wing into the bridge on the superstructure (the latter which actually happened in Return of the Jedi).
if you want to go big there is
Allied Fleets Manufacturing Facility- Poser OBJ 3DS MAX
at rendo. with a bit of kit bashing to remove the two big pods. it may suit
In the 1960s, NASA put a lot of work into things like velcro footwear so that people could walk normally in low-G conditions (see the stewardess in '2001'). It is interesting that, as we see with people working in the ISS, this turns out to be rarely necessary; they are happy to just fly around weightless.
But, everyday is a "bad hair" day.
...indeed.
I wonder if there will be windows everywhere; they are not safe, and traveling at the speeds really needed, pointless perhaps. But folks need to look out, so perhaps there would be special places.
Travelling at 87% of the speed of light to Proxima Centuri (nearest star -- 4 light years away) would compress time (as experienced by the traveller) to 50% so it would still take him 2 years of looking at essentially the same stars in the same positions as from Earth, so passenger windows are pretty pointless. Even at 99.5% of the speed of light, time would be compressed to 10%, so he'd be experiencing a 5 month journey (21 weeks) looking at the same boring view except for possibly the first and last day. Much like a ship voyage across the Atlantic 200 years ago, except even less interesting. But..., if you could soup up your rocket to travel at 100% of the speed of light, the time compression would have you arrive at the star instantaneously.
So, even then, a window would be kind of pointless. 
I wouldn't invest in a spaceship window company. 
However, for the slower ships, if you're looking for a good interstellar investment, I'd suggest video monitors, food concessions, liquor licenses, and pay toilets. 