I'm jumping around from project to project with C2, and one of my current ones is a new version of the Behemoth, which is still lacking wings. I suppose this could be considered a reinterpretation of the ship since it is not an exact copy of the C1 sprite when viewed from above. Here's the info I posted about it in my sketches thread earler - the sketches thread I'm getting no feedback on to help with the direction of new models... HINT HINT.

High-Capacity Transportation - Behemoth:
The Behemoth is a ship often used to pump colonies, picking up many peasants at a time and taking them to a new home to build it from the ground up. This colonial use often requires the use of a fleet of shuttles taking people from giant transports in orbit down to the surface, but starline companies wanted a way to cut out the shuttles. The issue with landing a big ship, even if it is aerodynamic, is how to support it on landing gear once it's landed. One solution is to just have many sets of gear lining the belly of the ship, but this cuts into cargo space. The solution for the Behemoth was to use combination of smaller landing gear and anti-gravity fields. This allows the Behemoth to land on most planets and support it's own weight, but there is still one problem: anti-gravity fields take energy to keep online and energy lost is profit lost. The solution to help the previous solution: make the Behemoth into a seaworthy starship! When landing on many terran and oceanic planets, the Behemoth, with a hydrodynamic keel, can land in an ocean or sea and forgo the use of any landing gear. This saves energy from anti-gravity use and also allows the Behemoth a convenient place to dock!

- The CopernicanWerks Guide to Intergalactic Starships and Space Stations

Barely on topic : you seem to have a problem with having tons of polys

I don't have C2, so I can't tell if the behemoth actually looks like that.

Um... the one on the left is the current Behemoth. It lives up to its name with about 3600 polygons. Mine is on the right. It only has about 1500 polygons at the moment and the wings won't really add too many once they are on.

My problem with the current one is that the structure of its polygons gives it an inflated look. It could be Star Sonata's balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade when C2 becomes a worldwide hit. As for the Emperor's Behemoth, I might be able to pull off a regal look when I have some textures. I really don't get how the current Behemoth model looks either imposing and/or regal enough to be the Emp 'Moth.

i defo like your version more. just add the wings in though. i think it looks better with wings.

Of course; I've just not modeled them yet. I'm thinking they will still slope down like the original, but not nearly as much; just about to the waterline when the ship is seaborne.

Remember, the nice thing about wings that slope down in C2, is that all the lighting is from the side, so sloped wings catch the light better.

A good point. The wings will still have slope to them, and once I make the texture with bumps and whatnot it should look pretty detailed. The slope with bumpmapping should give them nice definition.

Okay, so using my increasing Maya-ing abilities, I've started over on the Behemoth. The original was over 3000 polys and kinda looks like a parade balloon that's not fully inflated. The second version from the above posts was around 1500 polys, but had odd edge flow that made it difficult to continue editing, not to mention that it catches the light oddly.

The newest version is around 1300 polys with wings, has smooth edge flow and proper use of normals (the softness/hardness of the edges) and catches the light with a combo of sloped and round surfaces with smooth and hard specular regions for that light-catching goodness! Also, I dropped the idea of it being able to land in water and having a boat-like lower hull.

Anywho, I'm awaiting approval from Jeff on the model before texturing it, so it's preview colors for now.

Front view and a comparison with the previous two iterations.

Before you ask, I did make the wings smaller since they are mounted further back on the hull.

EDIT: Added side view.

Your model looks a lot cleaner but I really did like the greater wing-to-body ratio in the original.

Really, now that I look at the C1 version again, the wings are not really smaller from front to back, but they are slightly shorter due to how I shaped the wingtips. I wanted them to be a hard, airfoil shape so that it would catch in the light as you bank.

If you make an epic Assault Behemoth texture, all will be forgiven.

the green support structure shouldnt be the entire bottom. It should follow the outline of the levi, having the hauling space bubble up out of it to make it a behe.