What started as the Pathfinder design later to become the Ranger
Its been so long since I used this model, it’s a terrible thing spending weeks or in my case months designing and building models and after the first test renders and a renders I take a little more seriously, the model is forgotten.
I have taken this out of mothballs and with the wonderful Spawn Nebula art by Ali Ries and have set 3 Ranger Class Destroyers deployed on patrol
The model is available for sale royalty free on my Gumroad page
First design I done in a while, an early Pathfinder design or perhaps the original (going back to my other design now called the ranger and posted a while ago, This does not have artificial gravity but in this it has the power to keep a consent thrust at 1-G. Fusion rocket perhaps for long-term acceleration in space.. can land on Earth type gravity wells but no much more, inter-system design, not interstellar, I am playing with some ideas of my own, inspired by the recent discoveries over the last few years, I like to try my had at a story and this design could be featured.. perhaps I am being overly optimistic having this design launch in 2045 AD .. but there is hope that we (humanity) will do these things in the future.
The ship is quite tall and multi levelled,, but a small crew,, perhaps 12 or 20 crew personal, but I am given that some thoughts as the design develops
I updated the engines
The main engines are outboard and they have landing struts connect there, clearing the lower section to (maybe has smaller lander pads but also a large hatch and cargo area, landing craft to explore beyond the LZ and to build long term habitats etc ..
changed the engine struts
Part Four
My friend and calibrator on the project LauraH located 2 images with a character rendered in Carrara 8 added to help establish scale, Carrara 8 was Dan Baran animation program of choice
Thanks for sharing them Laura, the check is in the mail.
Laura informed me of the height of the character.
I forget how tall she is to I think ideal adult in poser is around 5’10” add boots roughly 6 foot
Part Three
For the first part of the film/story we wanted a design where the crew had a lot of places to go and for that we needed corridors, for this I wanted to have more than straight lines, I wanted to have a few curved corridors.
As I was not going to be going any animating as this was Dan Baran aka Fretslayer department apart from providing my PC to help render out scenes, we would spend hours on Skype chatting over the finer points and his needs to help speed up the process, there was a lot of files exchanged to see if the sets I made would hold up with his animating program.
Here is the corridor network I made, it would have been animated in smaller sections as was needed.
These images are still in a Work in Progress status until I can find an animator.
Part 2
The is as far as I got in the design process for the bridge, like most designs took time and while I worked on this, I would also be working and helping to develop the larger story (plot) with Dan and we would spend time with other members of the project, David, Laura, Todd, Robert, Lisa working out a number of ideas and possibilities, while remembering to keep it within the expectations of a small project and not to become too ambitious, which finishes a lot of fan films before they have even started
I really enjoy the creative process at this stage, it’s a lot of fun developing something like this, if only we were paid for it.
Part One
This is the Pathfinder and it has been built for a project I was working on with Dan Baran or Fretslayer who sadly passed away some time ago so this project is for sometime going to stay on the shelf, but I will share the designs we where working on over a year and a half period.
The story we where working on was a mix of 2 concepts, first was mine, called Lightspeed as a working title and Dan’s was called Legacy and both stories would have tied in together to make a greater and more complex story.
Below are the images of the concept design of the ship called the Pathfinder and the bridge
gmd3d Lightwave Designs 
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