It's to prevent "hot linking". Just add a question mark to the right of the field as displayed in the URL field and hit the "enter" key. the image will display pretty as you please. (Odd expression: "pretty as you please". Why not "ugly as I despise"? ) Sincerely, Bill
...Really, the shape of the forward viewing thing might even suggest that there are no portholes of any sort on the shuttle - just fancy black paint on a solid hull. After all, the viewer appears to be nearly vertical, rather tall, and fails to reveal any of the long and pointed nose even when the "camera" is set relatively high. So, a viewscreen rather than a windshield? (That would go nicely with your idea that the craft is of Vulcan descent, considering the number of Vulcan shuttles that lack windshields.) The alternative interpretation is that we see a wraparound windshield corresponding to the external shape - but it is well separated from Sulu's console, perhaps more than a meter ahead of it, and the perspective of the animation isn't picture-perfect... That is, there are side sections to the windshield, but even those are far ahead of Sulu's position and merely allow him a view to lower forward quarters. Timo Saloniemi
I'm not prepared to fool around with the model as it stands now, but I can see myself tackling this again down the road. And at that point I could see myself making the viewport smaller or at least more narrow. Also an actual viewport doesn't negate having a forward view screen. The materiel could actually serve as both much like a highly sophisticated HUD.
A look at the modified antigrav housing affixed underneath. This addresses the obvious lack of an impulse drive which I couldn't add to the design without drastically altering its familiar appearance. And yet it's unobtrusive since it's in a little seen spot and mostly obscured by the rear landing struts (which are forthcoming).
Triangular indentation, forward navigational deflector (gold), aft access hatch, antigrav housing, forward viewport and service access panels in place. Next up are the landing struts and warp nacelles. Beginnings of the warp nacelle.
I'm calling it a night even though I'm in the middle of shaping the aft nacelle cowling with the distinctive corrugated surfacing. Oh, lots of fun... For some it may look odd that I'm only working on half the ship, but it's actually easier to do just the one side then duplicate and reverse and then put the two symmetrically identical halves together. Then I can add what few asymmetrical details afterward..
the first time i built a nacelle i started with a cylinder. lots of repetitive work that way. The second time i needed to make a nacelle, i had just become aware of the copy functions of the rotate tool. -I created a pie slice with just one corrugated "tongue" on the end, rotated copies of it into place to create the end-cap cross-section (remember to use the multiply function as well), cleaned out all the lines inside so there was just one surface, and extruded that surface. -Grouped that temporarily, created a shape with the s-curve, intersected the two, deleted the unwanted parts of the shape, exploded the group, and deleted the back end of the end-cap. The smart way to do it.
I have copies of the construction drawings of the TOS shuttlecraft so I have a pattern for the corrugated surface to work from. I started with the first curvatures, rotated two of those 6 degrees until I had thirty degrees of curvatures, than copied and rotated those twice until I had 90 degrees (or a quarter of the cylinder), copied and rotated that once 90 degrees to make a half cylinder, then finally copied and rotated that 180 degrees to make the whole cylinder. Once I got going it went pretty fast. I left it at that last night and I'm left with cutting the distinctive curved end shape which I'll do this evening after work. The rest of the cylinder was easy since it doesn't have an inboard trench like the Enterprise's nacelles. I simply made a silhouette of half the nacelle lengthwise (minus the aft cowl) and rotated it 360 degrees. Done. Knowing what tools you have and what they can do go a long way. Even so once in awhile you hit something that requires tedious work. Looking ahead the aft landing struts are going to be...interesting.
there is a multiply function with the move and rotate copies. Say my pie section is 10 degrees, so I need 36 total pie sections for a full circle. I rotate my first copy into place and click to place it. Then I type in 35x for the 35 copies including the one i just made and it will rotate them into place for you. Uses the offsets of the first copy to place the following ones, one after another. Works great for creating fan blades inside nacelles too.
Awesome! Thanks! Of course I'm keeping a copy of this pattern for future use. No point having to repeat myself down the road if not necessary. I still want to tackle the other shuttlecraft designs sometime.
Love to see some originals. You know, USS Enterprise can be thought of not as a discrete ship, but a system. Oversized shuttles that (like the originals in TAS) would fill up the shuttlebay (scaled at 947 feet or so)--could be kept at certain starbases when not in use. These shuttles would not all be carried by Enterprise all the time--just assigned to it.
...Or then one might consider the "system" to be a flexible one, where each starbase is stocked with generic hardware plus the black paint necessary for assigning it to a specific starship for a given period of time. Whenever Kirk needed the use of a runabout or an aquashuttle, the nearest starbase would not only tick the right boxes in the transfer forms, but also stencil in the temporary registries and even the requested (nick)names. I'm still mildly disappointed that this particular shuttle got scaled down to generic "onboard" dimensions, when the beautiful work done with making it sleeker and more plausible would also do justice to a "stretched" version. Come to think of it, the shuttle might look quite cute if literally just stretched lengthwise after the work is otherwise complete. Timo Saloniemi
Here's my take on shuttles in Trek... Shuttles should fall into two types; generic and esoteric. The basic shuttle is used in a manner similar to a ship's boat in the navy, for relatively short range tasks like transferring personnel between craft or shore bases. Esoteric shuttles would be like carrying a craft dedicated to a specific task, similar to the navy taking on a deep diving ROV or submersible to do a certain job. If your ship is dedicated to a specific job it would carry such a shuttle all the time, but its very unlikely you'd carry them otherwise. In the Trek universe transporter technology pretty much eliminates the need for the classic ships boat, and so shuttles are used only very rarely. When writing episodes they have to invent a Treknobabble excuse not to use the much more convenient transporter so that they can use a shuttle for its real purpose, which is to isolate characters and put them in danger. You will be hard pressed to think of an episode featuring a shuttle which doesn't end up with it crashed, captured, dead in the water or its occupants taken over. In short, shuttles dont do a lot and aren't used much, so they're not going to carry lots of them. They're certainly not going to carry a wide range of very specific use shuttles. I know that people will bring up the enormous hangar deck on the Ent-D schematics, but you'll notice we never actually saw it in the series and it was never needed in any episode. The Ent-D also differed greatly from previous ships in being much larger and bloated with lots of cabins and rec facilities for families, something that didn't really continue with the Ent-E.
This is a bit problematic vis-รก-vis the TAS episode and the recent movie featuring a veritable shipload of seemingly generic shuttles. The writers are already pretty good at creating story constraints that allow either the shuttle or the transporter to be excluded from consideration during the week's drama. We shouldn't be too worried about having lots of shuttles available, then; as the recent movie shows, large flocks of shuttles certainly have their uses in emergencies! And I don't recall any story where the writers would have needed a shortage of shuttles; they have always been able to invent a total ban on shuttle use when needed, but when one shuttle is available, then the story basically always allows for other shuttles to be used as well. At least I don't recall any plot where Kirk having as many shuttles as Robau would have weakened the drama... I'm still more willing to treat the menagerie of TAS shuttle designs as an example of several special craft being aboard alongside the generic ones - and not as an example of there being several slightly different generic shuttle types, let alone there being a transition from one type to another underway. Although in theory, Kirk could have been carrying a few "older" shuttles in addition to the live-action show's "modern" type. Naturally, the older craft would be clumsier and larger... Namely, of the type that Harry Mudd stole. They'd see very little action usually, but Harry would attempt an escape during a rare moment when they were being given some fresh air on the upper deck. I totally forget whose artwork this one is, but I love the simple and austere interpretation: Looks old-fashioned enough... Timo Saloniemi