Work In Progress - All modeling in LightWave3d Inspiration is drawn from Andy Probert's original sketch of the Ambassador Class which you are all no doubt familiar with, and influenced heavily by Tobias Richter's equally well known 3d interpretation of said sketch, with additional inspiration from WileyCoyote (aka trekmodeler). Think I have all my bases covered there, inspiration-wise. I should add that I'm not aiming to exactly duplicate any one particular version of the Ambassador, and it does feel a little too derivative as it stands right now. If I ever get around to finishing this thing I'll probably go back and create a more unique variant
I hope when they get up to Yesterday's Enterprise in the TNG Blurays that they put in a CGI version of this ship.
Cool, I'm a big fan of this ship. Given the name - USS Sovereign - is this intended to be an interpretation of a post-Galaxy rather than pre-Galaxy ship?
Thanks everyone. Regarding the nacelles, I'm actually stuck on those right now. I've remodeled them completely several times now, and I'm still not really happy with them. They're detracting from the overall streamlined-ness of the concept. I may wind up throwing on some more Galaxy-class looking nacelles on and see how that looks. As far as the name, basically it sounded cool. It is still meant to be older than the Galaxy, essentially only slightly ahead of the canonical Ambassador Class.. but since it does also contain a few Enterprise-E-ish details I figured maybe it was a precursor to the 'USS Sovereign' for which the class was named. Since they'd be separated by about 30 to 40 years so it seems reasonable that you could have more than one "USS Sovereign" in that time. Though I may wind up renaming it before I get around to stenciling in the registry.
Cool. One bit of criticism I have is the main shuttlebay doors. It doesn't look like the bottoms of the panels are on a level plane like they should be, and it's hard to see how they would open up with such different sizes. You might consider leveling out an area right behind it to make it more feasible.
The nacelles are definately the sticking point. The ship definitely looks half way between ambassador and galaxy class so I'd go with galaxy-esque nacelles, maybe with some constitution (WoK) style details to tie it back a bit.
Giving the current nacelles a chance to grow on me Didn't really feel like doing any modeling this weekend
I think you need to lower the intensity of your lights on the ship. Go for more of a glow like the impulse crystal.