BSG Agro Ship / Botanical Cruiser - Finished!

Thanks again guys.

The first plug I made for the domes was formed in medium density foam with the profile checked with a wood template traced from the studio plans.
This foam turned out to be too weak to stand up to my new vac pump and it compressed a bit.


The new, and much stronger plug, redone in high density foam and sealed in polyester resin and sanded smooth - then polished with car wax.



James Creveling

I like that word "tessellated", thanks dbhs, and thanks to all you guys following this build.

First batch of domes are formed without any problems.

Doing some preliminary artwork for the lattice structure has shown me that the domes are not simple upside down bowls as I sculpted my plug to be, but are actually made up of five faceted segments like a gem stone.
Its obvious in these pics of the studio model.


To make the necessary alteration, I'v cut up my plug and inserted thin metal partitions between the pieces.


Using a steel template as a blade, carefully shaving off just the right amount of material by sliding the blade along the metal wall inserts.



The new dome plug sealed in Evercoat.
The gap between the blade and surface shows how much the shape has changed. it doesn't look like much, but it will make a huge difference in the final appearance of the latice structure.

Been working on two of the three different interior environments for the domes.

For the desert/oasis, I formed some sand dunes from medium density foam glued to an acrylic plate. Vac formed in 020 styrene.
Next, a few extra hills were added in the middle-flat area to form the snow and ice environment.


For the oasis, some clear plastic sheet with a rippled texture works well to resemble waves on water.


My desert and snow environments compared with the studio model.

The snow and desert domes in place.




After quite a bit of trial and error, the forest environments are finally done.
I first experimented with every model train type of landscaping I could find and it turns out its all basically latex based materal which would deteriorate and fall apart over time, also, it just wasn't exactly matching how I thought the greenery should appear. It was all too "toy" looking. What I needed was something that would literally last forever with no maintenance and match as close as possible to the look of the CG studio model so I figured why not actually use the studio model itself. First I sampled a small bit of the greenery from an image of one of the domes and then clone stamped it to get enough image to work with, printed it on heavy paper, then lasered out tree canopy shapes and backed that with thin styrene. These were then affixed to the vac formed "ground" plates that were airbrushed and hand painted to match what's seen on the studio model.
The landscapes look a little open and sparce here but that's because once the lattice work is applied, the view into the domes will be restricted to mostly a top down view so the tree canopy shapes have been congregated in the center to give the best appearance.

I got bored making all the forest domes look the same so I decided to turn one of them into a walking park with lighted lamp posts.

A way-over simplified explanation of how Im doing the lattice structure to cover the clear domes..


First, with graphic tape, I recreated a segment of the lattice pattern on a styrene dome.


Cut from the dome, the segment was then cut along the horizontal lines so the compound curved shape would lay flat. This piece was scanned into corelDRAW so now its digital and can be imported to the laser.


Its all cut from .040 thick Vellum.



Using some ridiculously expensive super glue specifically for clear plastic, I layed up the five thin stanchions that sperate the segments


and fit the lattice sheet