Anim8or Community

Well the size really depends on the size of what it's carrying, right? If those are single-seater fighters, then it may not be to much out of proportion.
I like the idea though. Generic space stuff is fighters come out of the hangar bay of the really big ships. I like this idea of a "troop transport" of sorts. Maybe the rectangular shape could be used as a way to compact them into the larger ship's dock? This way they could stack like modular additions to the hangar and save space, and during battle they could all launch and spread out. Too many sci-fi shows have shown the flag ship being blown up and losing all the fighters.

Edited one "wedge" by hand on the top using that cone in my example as a guide for moving the points by hand, then copy-paste-flip-combine to get the other side, then copied that wedge into all the other positions and joined the points. Not too much work, but Boolean would have been way easier. Pic attached..

Well this started as a quick sketch of what I am planning on building in the next few weeks, but I think that with a little work it could look very nice..
So it's a snare drum with an acrylic shell, but not an ordinary one- it is (or will be) made from plate acrylic, cut into wedges and welded together at the seams to make a solid shell. The lugs are offset onto alternating segments. (those are just prototypes I made just to get an idea at the time)

Now about the model. The focus of this render is the snare drum of course; it is missing the snare strainer and the lugs are also incomplete at the time of this rendering. I also didn't set up any lighting so the white drumhead on top appears much darker than it should. Anyways, the other drums and the ride cymbal in the back ground are remnants from a previous attempt at making a drum set, back before I had figured out lathing and the such. It's all floating drums right now. I eventually want to complete the entire kit, including hardware. Maybe even animate it if I have the time (and patience with the camera. I'm horrible at operating it like I want. And also the undo buttons not doing what I think they should in scene mode. If I move an object or rotate it on accident, I WANT IT TO BE UNDONE WHEN I HIT UNDO!!!)

From the improvements side of things, I really wanna see what the bearing edges will look like once I cut them with a router. For non-drummer folk, bearing edges are the top and bottom of the shell where it comes in contact with the drumhead, usually cut to a 45 degree angle on both sides forming a 90 degree angle on top. My situation is unique however, since the shell is not "round" (I say round in quotes on the basis that nothing is truly round in 3D programs, just lots of segments). 45 degree angles cut from "circle" of where the drum contacts the drum head will result in varying heights of cut on the edge. For example, its like sharpening one of those pencils with the six sides- cone shape from the point comes down at a continuous angle, but differences in radius make a wavy-looking cut. Any help modeling this without tons of point editing would be greatly appreciated.

Any other C&C welcome too.

Just wondering- what language is anim8or programmed in?

I have no experience with ASL, but I was experimenting with direct manipulation of the project save files (like with the particle animation tutorial) and after reading this thread about not being able to save the attributes using ASL, I got the idea that maybe a non-ASL script could be run externally to add the materials list to the file section of the materials list, attributes and all. Would this be possible?