Another take on the Original Enterprise...

This shot really conveys the ship's size, somewhat like in TMP. Just sweet!

 

Well, it's like I've always said... it's not the DESIGN that sells the reality. People who want to "demonstrate" that the TOS design "needs updating" always show a shot of a sloppily built AMT model painted with primary colors, after all. But you can do just as crappy of a presentation with ANY design and it'll look... well... crappy.

You can take anything and, with proper care and effort, make it look real... or make it look really bad. It's the presentation that sells the design.

 

The photomanips I could do with such a 3D model.

If only I knew how to do 3D modeling.

 

CLB, you are putting me to shame for not touching my TMP model for too long. Time for me to get back to work (at least now that I've gotten all my car issues resolved and can take the time to actually do something I WANT to do again...).

Excellent work, I will likely be requesting some inputs on my TMP nacelles when I get there in a few weeks (hopefully, a few weeks). Right now, your technical explanations for how these work are not registering with me (comes from being eyeballs deep in a Real World R&D project at work), so I will re-read and see if I can understand before I ask more questions.

CTM

 

Re: What if Abrams hadn't decided to toss out the TOS Enterprise desig

Dude!

I didn't have to quote all these images, but it would be wrong of me NOT to!

Yeah- The Enterprise was too small and way too unsophisticated enough for the movie... Between you and Deg, how could anyone want to see this garbage scow on the big screen? Pfh...

Okay. Now I'll stop being an ass to all those who like the new Enterprise, that's not what this is about.

I love how you've made the warp nacelles in the other images truly become and feel like the real power houses of the Enterprise. They scream power and it really helps justify why they're so far away from the rest of the ship.

That's just my interpretation of how the images make me feel when I look at them.

 

Fantastic looking

 

Just a couple of renders...

I've finished the nacelles now, and thought I'd toss in a couple of rendered shots (lacking internal lighting, and of course with no texturing).

 

Looking very nice indeed. It's always surprised me how the saucer undercut doesn't look nearly as severe when viewed in 3d, yet we know from your cutaways that it takes out nearly half the rim!

 

Holy crap, Cary. Even unlit and untextured, she's still a beauty.

 

Yeah, that's significant on both versions of the ship (TOS and TMP). Even for the later-era ships, they always implemented SOMETHING in that region to emphasize the shape. In the case of the Sovereign-class, it was with color rather than with a deep inset, but the effect is the same.

I think that the the reason this was added to the TOS ship in the first place was probably to give that prominent shadowing. If you don't have that (for instance, if you're looking at the ST'09 ship) and the lighting and angle aren't perfect, the primary hull doesn't really look like a disk, and more resembles a rather blobby balloon. The "undercut" was done for visual effect, not for any technical reason, in other words, IMHO.

 

And now for something note-quite-completely different...

I liked my renders of the Enterprise so much that I thought I'd try my hand at something else using the same approach.

I've mentioned the subject of these renders in this thread before, and anyone who's seen my avatar knows a little bit about this ship already, but this is the FIRST ship that I had to put on hiatus due to system-memory limitations, and with the completion of the Enterprise's nacelles, I decided to "fix" the Vega-class before getting back into the internal tedium of wall-construction.

So.... here she is. The USS Achernar, Vega class, a contemporary design to the Sovereign and Luna classes.

 

Your modelling skills on both these ships are outstandingly good, but the Achernar's design is still atrociously ugly.
But the Big E looks superb. Can't wait to see a textured version of her

 

Well, that's the thing about style... what one person hates, another may love. I, personally, love it, and I've heard from quite a few people who share that opinion. But I don't take it personally if someone doesn't agree. Personal taste and all that. (As mentioned in another thread elsewhere on the BBS.)

Well, texturing is going to be last. For two reasons... first, I can't really do proper texturing within the tool I'm doing my design work in (at least, not to the same level as you can with Maya)... so I have to have all of my structural/physical stuff in place before I start doing that (and that includes all internal stuff I ever plan to implement as part of the base model... chairs, people, etc, can be separate elements, but the entire ship is going to be one big freakin' model).

And second... I'm not really all that knowledgeable or experienced with lighting and texturing, and I have to learn that stuff. My lighting experience knowledge is easier, as it's very "mechanically-oriented" (put a light here, set up its parameters, and it has this effect based upon how the light travels). But texturing... well... it's always a "cheat." It doesn't really reflect anything truly physical. (That's not a slam in any way... obviously, you don't want to model individual particles of dirt on a surface, so instead you use texturing to make it look like that dirt is there without it really being there, just for example).

I have a good "textbook" knowledge of texturing... and for the record, I intend to use bumpmaps, displacement maps (in a few places... mainly grills) and specularity maps much more than I intend to use "decal-like" textures. Still, subtle texturing is extremely effective at selling an image (this is an area where Vektor is really amazing in, IMHO) and I'm not really much of a "painter" per-se. So this will be a challenge, I think.

 

I love the Achernar. It's a nice change of pace to the Ent-E knockoffs.

 

Thanks! That was sort of my point when I set out to make her. Basically, I decided that the "Ent-D" design style was specifically a "Utopia Planetia" style, and that the "Ent-E" design style was from some other shipyard... but that the San Francisco Naval Yards design style (which was predominant during the TOS/TMP era) is still the preferred style of ship design for that shipbuilding facility. It's a matter of style, and I really wanted to do a post-TNG-era ship that had the stylistic leanings of the TOS and TMP eras, while not sacrificing any of the functional updates.

Every feature on the Vega class was put there for a functional purpose... even though I also borrowed from some prior design styles (for instance, the secondary hull spine region is basically an outgrowth of my mental exercise to determine what the heck those seemingly nonsensical components on the Excelsior were!) I've been trying to apply the same logical approach to the TOS Enterprise, but it's a bit harder to work backwards than it is to work forwards, and I've had to just accept "magic" in a few cases on the 1701.

 

Are there pop-down nacelles on the bottom of the saucer? Would this be for saucer-sep?

 

Of course, you realize you are a golden god.

Right?

--Alex

 

awesome stuff in this thread

 

Yep, those are self-contained (ie, with integral power generation) nacelles. They allow the saucer to move at a reasonable warp velocity. Notice that both halves of the ship have everything needed to be a full starship. However, the ship is better able to do anything on the list when combined.

I have a reason for designing it that way... and not just the reason which is obvious (that you don't end up stranded in interstellar space without any chance of receiving assistance). The Achernar is one of the central elements of a story proposal I've developed, post-TNG-era, playing with some interesting themes seldom addressed in the Trekiverse (not a "fall of the Federation" concept in the conventional sense, rather a "corruption of the Federation" concept... albeit one driven by a force which sees itself as benign and working for everyone's best interests - sort of a "rise of fascism under a smilie face" concept).