Thanks for downloading this archive originally uploaded to Ron Kramer's
OBSTACLE ILLUSION, 1-616-791-2109, Grand Rapids, MI, March, 1994

This archive contains my hand modeled version of a Vorlon Fighter ship
from Paramount's "BABYLON 5" series.  It took me roughly a week or 40
hours to model it in LightWave 2.0.  I viewed the series pilot video 
frame by frame to gage the shape and details of the smaller of the
three types of Vorlon ships.  

I modeled this complex object as a self-teaching tutorial, a challenge
to get by trial and error the same object used in this Emmy award win-
ing movie pilot.

The ship is composed of 9 parts... the main hull (including the 'tent-
acles,' 8 surrounding pods, 4 tentacle supports, and engines.) and the
pedals (4 in the closed position, 4 in the opened position).  The ped-
als, when loaded into LW, will automatically be arranged in their pro-
per positions relative the the main hull and each other.  

Depending on which way you want the pedals to move, either opening or
closing, set both sets of 4 to have as their PARENT the main ship ob-
ject and make one set of 4 pedals 100% DISSOLVED (under the Objects
button menu) while setting up the other set to MORPH into the dissloved
set using a MORPH ENVELOPE for each one of the 4 pedals.  A 3 second
(90 frame) morph is about the speed used to open and close the pedals.
Be sure to use a tension of 1 at the start and end of the morph key
frames.

There are no image maps for surfaces as all are fractal noise generated.

In making the pedals, I probably went overboard on the number of poly-
gons, there being 1350 for each pedal.  The pedals were formed by making
a flat "wire mesh" of 10 meter square polys, extruded 2 meters, with
the internal "waffle" polys deleted, and the resulting skin bend on
2 axis to form a shallow cup or dish.  I wanted small polys in order
to get a smooth outline of the shape.  All this means is that if you
want more than one ship in a scene, ya gotta have LOTS of memory!
My 9 megs is just barely enough even when GET SMALL is loaded for one
ship, 8 pedals, 2 sets of stars, and a nebula (object and image map).

This ship is released as freeware and is NOT an exact duplicate of the
actual Babylon 5 model and NOT the ACTUAL B5 model itself, although be-
ing a perfectionist, I tend to think it looks darn near close!

Any comments, suggestions, or the like can be directed to me at:

Dean A. Scott,
2043 Hillsdale Dr.
Davison, MI 48423

Objects modeled March, 1994