History

10th March 2002

A few of the animations are back in place, and I've added my most recent effort - a viper patrolling a rocky planet. See the new animation here.

5th March 2002

I resurrected the site today, after a minor technical hiccup! There's still a few bits missing, but I'll put them back as and when I find them...

Another animation to come fairly soon - watch this space!

22nd October 2001

Updated the links section with some worthy additions.

12th October 2001

Further to requests in AFE, I've re-done the Moray animation with a wake.

3rd October 2001

Have a look at my new animation. This time I remodeled a Moray, and animated a watery fly-past. Hope you like it!

2nd August 2001

I converted the Elite Ship net gifs again, this time I did them so that they are proportionally scaled. This means that if you print them all at the same resolution (pixels/mm or whatever), they will retain the scale of the original BBC Elite ships.

The original non-proportional nets were created so that they fit neatly into my browser frame, but I decided to ditch the frame style website. If anyone really wants the old gifs, please email me.

22nd July 2001

I've created 3d nets for the full BBC Elite fleet. Get the scissors and glue out and check out my Elite Ship Nets!

If anyone creates a squadron of Elite ships, please, please email me some photos!

20th July 2001

The first update in 2001! I've been doing other things for a while, but boredom in hotels has driven me back to doing fun things with Elite. Anyway, I've got a few cool things to upload in the coming weeks - just a bit of finishing to do first, so only a minor update today.

The original Thargon joins the rest of the VRML models where it belongs. I don't know how it got missed out, but it's there now.

28th June 2000

I have added a new section of ArcElite ship models. I converted them all by hand and have preserved their original colours, size, geometry and detail. Many thanks to Clive Gringras and Warren Burch, who provided the ArcElite ship source (not to mention within 24 hours of my request).

24th June 2000

I have uploaded a variation on the ship model page, with embedded VRML. The ships are all at the same scale, except the space stations, so you can compare the sizes.

16th June 2000

I know I promised the second part of the Asp animation a while back, but a small problem has arisen. I decided that for this animation I would hide another Elite ship in a gas giant. Anyway, I remodeled another ship, texture mapped it etc. and added some cool particle based volumetric gas effects. Unfortunately, in order to render these effects to make a 12 second animation, it would take my measly P2 350 about a fortnight of non-stop rendering!

Making these animations is somewhat like being a director, in that I do the scene and if it's crap I tweak it until it looks good. This is almost impossible with such a long rendering time. The bottom line is that the animation will be completed eventually, but probably nearer the end of the year. In the meantime I intend to inflict various other Elite-related goodies on you. I thought I'd make my return by pinching Simon Challands' idea and producing this stereogram.

22nd March 2000

The additional Elite-A ship models have been added to the ship model section.

17th March 2000

I have added the abandoned BBC Elite 2 ship models to the ship model section. I have also reinstated the links to the space stations and other non-ship models (although they have always been there).

12th March 2000

The site has gone white! I have completely revamped the site this weekend. I re-coded all the html more or less by hand, and opted for a frame oriented design. There are a few extra intermediary pages with some explanation of my various projects. I scrapped the images from the original manual for the ship models, as I don't really want to rip off any copyrighted stuff - that isn't what this site is about. Anyway, I hope you like the new look!

6th March 2000

I've had to delay the volume calculations (although I will get round to it eventually), as I've been working on a new animation for the last month or so.

Anyway, I remodeled the Asp Mk II with more detail, texture mapped and bump mapped it and animated it coming out of a hyperspace cloud. I spent a lot of time getting it to look the way I wanted it, and even composed a soundtrack.

View the animation here!

5th February 2000

I am currently in the process of testing a program I wrote to calculate the volume of arbitrary closed 3d polygon geometry. I wanted to compare the volumes of the Elite ship hulls to see if the cargo capacity is proportionally scaled. I suspect not, but I guess engines and gadgetry could differ. I'll upload the results as soon as I'm sure the program produces accurate results.

4th February 2000

I decided to move my ship model site onto another freeserve account, with its own domain name - Witch-Space. This site will be dedicated to Elite. It will contain mostly my own work. Whether stripping the ship model data from an emulator image file is really my own work is open to debate.... Anyway, I've updated a few VRML models by adding the line drawn features (aerials, prodders, guns or whatever they are) to the Asp, Cobra 1 + 3 and more importantly the Krait, which looked rubbish without its guns. My latest project was to model the elite badge as seen on the front of the elite 'Space Traders Flight Training Manual', hence the shiny 'Witch-Space' logo. I did an 'Elite' version as well and have converted it to a reduced polygon mesh, also in VRML 2.0 format.

Check out the Elite logo!