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White Star v3.5

This model is my final clone of the White Star by Ron Thornton from Babylon 5. It represents a major change from the last public release. This model has been completely rebuilt, the spline cages are not modified versions of the last public release and the texture maps are entirely newly painted.

The model was built using the cutaway drawings in the Babylon 5 Security Manual by Jim Mortimore, which was infinitely useful in establising correct proportions and angles.

The software I used to create this model was Lightwave 3D 5.5 and Adobe Photoshop 4. The system used was a Windows NT, AMD K6 233 based system with 80Mb of Memory on board.

The differences between v2.5, v3.0 and v3.5 are quite striking, as can be seen here:

VIEW COMPARISON BETWEEN 2.5, 3.0 & 3.5

History:

April 1996: Babylon 5 series 3 begins in UK. First sight of the White Star.

June 1996: Decide to build a clone of the ship. Much pausing of videos and mad sketching before loading up Lightwave Modeler 3.5 on my Amiga.

August 1996: WS_v1.0: Completed initial model and submitted it to the Light ROM CD for inclusion in LR4.

August 1996: Images of White Star v1.0 appears on the main page of the Lightwave resourses site 'Tomahawk'.

October 1996: More information available detailing ship, decide to modify the original spline cage and re-paint texture maps to iron out major inaccuracies.

November 1996: WS_v2.0: Complete version two and send this to the Light ROM CD, which is about to be published.

November 1996: White Star v2.0 appears on Light ROM 4 in the 'Showcase' section.

January 1997: Due to copyright issues, all Sci-Fi clone models are removed from the Light ROM CD.

February 1997: WS_v2.5: White Star v2.0 goes back to the spray shop for some better texture maps.

February 1997: White Star v2.5 goes online and becomes freely available over the internet.

October 1997: New information becomes available in the form of "The Babylon 5 Security Manual" by Jim Mortimore. Horrified by the now glaring errors on WS_v2.5, work begins on a complete rebuild; White Star v3.0.

October 1997: White Star v3.0 is completed. The mesh is now 95% accurate and the texture maps are much better.

October 1997: I send some images of WS_v3.0 to Ron Thornton, the guy who designed and built the real White Star for B5. His comment on WS_v3.0 is "very cool" and he sends back some tips on how to improve it still further. These tips take the form of the ACTUAL TEXTURE MAPS FOR THE REAL WHITE STAR...

October 1997: White Star v3.5 is completed before v3.0 is released to the public. The mesh is slightly altered and the texture maps re-painted (again.) White Star v3.5 is now 99% accurate to the real thing. The texture maps are, of course, 100% accurate copies.

If you produce any animations or stills with this model, please let me know about it via email or otherwise, or even send me a sample of your work.

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Conditions for use:

This model is freeware, but must not be distributed from anywhere but the Alternate Perspective web site without prior permission from me.

Please do not alter the models in any way without first consulting me. The only alteration I will allow at present is for Amiga users to recompile this ZIP archive into an LHA archive.

If you produce any animations or stills with this model, please let me know about it via email or otherwise, or even send me a sample of your work.

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Babylon 5, The White Star and anything Babylon 5 related is the property of Warner Bros.

The White Star was designed by Ron Thornton of Foundation Imaging.

This model remains the property of Kier Darby. I reserve the right to withdraw this model from online status at any time.

This model was created for purely recreational purposes and MUST NOT be used in any project which will incur a financial gain through its use, save fordistribution through floppy disk based PD libraries who may not charge anymore than the cost of the disk and shipping. If you disobey this, you maywell find yourself looking at a rather hefty law suit from Warner Brosor Babylonian Productions Inc. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

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