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[happydog23]

The idea I've been working on designing but so far unable to have results I am happy with is simple.... The Death Star.

Making circle rooms is relatively easy, making pyramids is easy but time consuming, making upside down pyramids is slightly harder just more time consuming....

My big issue is making a good looking sphere when it shows up in the different 3D visualizers out there.  I've looked at countless "lego-sphere" builds, but they normally cheat and use pieces sideways.  It always appears to me that the visualizers make squares slightly taller than they are wide which causes spheres to just not look right. 

My plan is to have the lava pumped to the top of the deathstar because it seems dwarfy, and also to have the laser cannon have flowing lava/water so that looking at it straight on you can see a  star shape as if the laser was coming straight at you.  I guess there might be potential to build a clear glass "channel" that lets the lasers go outward from the sphere with applied pressure

My end goal would have most likely an entrance that is at ground level and have the entire fort be inside the deathstar.  Potentially with multi-level hanger bays with TIE fights are such inside them. 



Anyone have any tips on making spheres that look spherical vertically not just horizontally?

Or maybe a better visualizer that might be easier to get spheres in?

[SkyRender]

You can adjust the visualizer's block height display so blocks are the same size on all sides.  That tends to fix the whole "uneven-looking sphere" problem.

[LegoLord]

Aye.  I had that problem when trying to visualize my soap tower with Visual fortress.  Change the settings so that wall height and floor thickness added together are equal to the width, and that'll solve it.  The option shows up when you click "dump from DF."

I also used this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Which I found here:
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=30589.30

Here's the tower I built, if you need to look at some spheres yourself:
http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-7632

[Retro]

Sort-of ninja'd by LegoLord when I was preparing this, but still useful:



The trick for spheres is the one circle over every plane will get you a good spherical shape. Just take this circle (or any of LegoLord's), use the center line as the axis for all three directions, and with every floor you'll know how wide each height has to be. To make the upper levels easy for where you have to do multiple flat blocks in a row, you might as well use floors on the level above rather than walls. Just don't forget to start at the bottom and move up - building downwards =/= possible, strictly speaking.

[Sphalerite]

I have a Python script I wrote to create plans for building spheres.  It plots out every layer, and gives a report of the total amount of material needed and the enclosed volume.  Never ended up building the spherical fortress I had planned, but I still have the code.

[happydog23]

I have a Python script I wrote to create plans for building spheres.  It plots out every layer, and gives a report of the total amount of material needed and the enclosed volume.  Never ended up building the spherical fortress I had planned, but I still have the code.

I think for now I should be ok without your code... I have some plans for a hopefully super effective obsidian farm, and am planning to make the entire Deathstar out of it so materials shouldn't be a problem. 

Also, most the problems I was having were either shown how to fix above, or the images provided gave me a "lightbulb" moment that should relive my problems....

Now the next trick will be to see how well my blueprints come together when a design a smaller "negative" sphere coming out of the main sphere to create the "laser disk" portion.

[IronyOwl]

Now the next trick will be to see how well my blueprints come together when a design a smaller "negative" sphere coming out of the main sphere to create the "laser disk" portion.

The real trouble here is scale. Making the bigger sphere large enough that the smaller one is recognizable as a spherical indentation instead of just a hole will be difficult, especially heightwise.