Updates on the Venture. Started on the side view. Made some progress on the top view. Still slow going overall. http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z159/Jimijames_jon/galaxyclass3.png
I guess it's true, great minds think alike. That's a really interesting design. It has a sort of speed boat feel, making it look like it's going fast, even sitting still.
I love the Excalibur on STO art--but its look in the game dissappoints. A study in how the refit turns into the Excalibur might be interesting.
I'm working on some new updates for the Venture. In the meantime, here's an upgraded Intrepid Class that I started...and would like to finish one day. The idea was to try and visually balance the appearance of the ship by created a more integrated connection between the engineering hull and the saucer, as well as extending the length of the nacelles. Other upgrades would have likely proceeded along the same lines as the Venture, nothing too extreme, but rather more detail and newer components.
Looks good aside from the thing sticking out of the deflector and onto the bottom of the saucer. I think something more like the Sovereign class, where there are two pieces on the outer part of the deflector housing that link to the saucer, might work better here.
Thanks Kaiser. That was the general idea, though rather than rebuild a large section of the engineering hull, I figured it would be easier to create a smaller flaring that could be attached the existing hull; which would serve much of the same purpose. Needless to say, when I get back to it, it will likely be revised some.
I've decided to split up the different views. The combined graphic was getting too difficult to work with. So here is the updated top view.
Not digging some of the clusters of windows and escape pods. The outer slice of the midsection of the saucer really looks odd, as do all the windows on deck 2 and the escape pods between shuttlebay 1 and the impulse engines. I think the windows would be better if they were restricted to the two inner sections of the saucer. Not sure what can be done with the pods aside from shuffling them around in those sections of the hull.
Many of the windows and escape pods still need some tweaking in terms of positions to line them up better with the curvature of the saucer. That being said, much of the general placement comes directly from the sources I'm using: http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars...enterprise.php Here's the larger version I'm actually using: http://www.starbaseadran.co.uk/plans/galaxy-class-001.jpg That being said, it didn't make sense to me to cluster so many of the escape pods so close together along those few select decks of the saucer. In a situation where every second may count, it would be helpful to have at least one escape pod on every deck. So I've tried to spread them out a bit more...though I suppose there is an argument to be made for placing as many of them together as possible in order to make coordinated evacuation efforts as easy as possible. Either way, I'll work on it. On an unrelated note, I've also extended the length of the nacelles a bit. Their length now extends further both forward and aft, making the ship a few meters longer. I'm not sure exactly by how much...this thing isn't exactly precise.
Your going to colorize this yes? I think once you do that it will make the escape pods stand out a lot less. Hehe, just noticed, the last image you linked, while the top view, the file name is galaxyclassbottom2.png
There actually isn't a gradient in effect. It's just when the image is scaled down like that, much of the detail is lost and it gives the effect of a gradient. Here is the escape pod, blown up so you can see the detail. This is copied straight from the top view of Venture without any changes. So if the image of the Venture were big enough, this is exactly how the pods would appear. When the drawing is finally done, I'll do some full size sets that will be big enough to clearly show all the detail.