I've been thinking about the shape of the structure which would make it look fine on all kind of surfaces, not only floors and ceilings (other than that I see no reason why we wouldn't want eggs on walls). Also I'd like to make the spawn animation as clear as possible. Tell me what do you think about the shape and which one (there are 2, woah) would you choose and I will develop the concept further.
I like this approach! I prefer the upper version for no apparent reason. Inside the eggpod, there could be a bubble/eggsack growing while the egg recovers after spawning an alien. It would then blast (hidden on the model, particle effect) when a new alien spawns from it. That way it would be more apparent to the builder when the amount of eggs is too low (they are working visibly with no rest). The inside area of the pod should be big enough so a granger could fit inside but on the same time the bounding box should stay small so you can build this in as many spots as possible.
This looks like it could serve as a cozy hatchery for friend dretch. You should talk to gavlig about what is doable with the animation. I think it would be nice if the segments of the egg would fan out a bit to make more room for the growing membrane. That way it would be credible that even a granger can spawn from it. I'm not too fond of the details on the segments sharing the same material as the membrane and I think they are generally a bit too fancy and colorful.
i guess that would be doable. I don't like these yellow "bear paws". As for me, it looked more badass without them. And membrane color... maybe green and as slimy as possible? :)
*and a huge vein coming across membrane... I can see it pulsating and bursting in thousand disgusting drops of granger snot.
A combination of both (the little details of the upper version, the color contrast of the lower) could look good, but one big advantage of the lower version is that the membrane could grow independently of the egg, which would make animation easier. This doesn't work well together with the details of the upper version, since they create the impression that the edges of the membrane are always connected with the edges of the egg body. So you could try adding some details similiar to those on the upper version to the neon membrane that don't create the impression of a fixed connection between membrane and body. However, I feel the current neon membrane would convey the right impression to the modeler and the rest could really be texture optimization.