Unfortunately, it is a little bit visible. Much less so with the phaser strips. But overall, it still looks quite outstanding. Very beautiful.
Kinda depends on the viewing angle. I might go back and model those details at some point but I'm pretty happy with how they look for the moment. Well, I'll cop to the refit influences for the nacelles but otherwise I was trying to do something fairly original. I am taking some inspiration from the E-E here and there but not so much on the nacelles.
Ooooh, this is looking very nice. And thank you for posting an actual update to this thread... I was afraid this was another necropost. (I'm looking at you, Praetor! )
Been getting some requests to see what blue bussard collectors would look like. I myself have complained about the garish red/blue color scheme of TNG-era starships making them look like space-going neon bar signs. That's why I've designed the Grandeur's nacelles to be a bit more understated, minimizing the amount of glow visible from any one direction. I just don't care for the blue version. Might be able to improve it with a lighter, more cyan hue, but I'd still prefer the red: Much better.
Hmm... Okay, I have to admit this ain't half bad: This is an Avalon class starship, and blue is one of the colors of royalty, after all. Definitely something to think about. Let's see what The Commander and the rest of the "crew" have to say.
Personally, I'm not too hot on the blue bussards. The red seems to pop a little more - draws attention to the lines of the bussards (to my eye anyways) and it defies the recent scifi design convention of everything in space glows blue. Perhaps you could try a soft amber shade similar to the TOS nacelle caps?
cyan does look good, but the ship all kind of fades into a monotone. red makes more of the details pop. if you're messing with it anyway, turn-signal amber might be nice. but not if they blink, too.
This caught me off guard and I lost it. However, I second experimentation with amber. And perhaps a red-purple. Or a gradient between colors ... white hot, fading to a bluish, fading to red?
Oh yeah, definitely... BUT... Since you're "playing" with color (and since your technique... which I have to admit is pretty damned ingenious... any chance we can see the "geometry behind the screens" just for a reference?) appears to lend itself towards the "different lighting schemes" approach... How about trying a gradient light source, with higher intensity being more "yellow" and lower intensity being more "dull red?") This would give an overall "amber" appearance not dissimilar to the TOS nacelle caps (which remain my favorite, by far) while still remaining distinct. Anything to make it look more like "swirling, incredibly hot materials" rather than "Red L.E.D.s"... which bug the #@$* out of me...
Hmm, maybe make the inside black and the mesh glow red? would in any case look very different to whats normally done. also would be more "armoured" looking.
Bussard innards with color tinted material applied: With spotlight turned on: With diffusing "lens" restored: It should be noted that the spotlights include only the bussard innards for illumination and do not cast shadows. Also, the shape of the light pattern from the spotlight is achieved by way of a grayscale light mask map. I could probably do something similar by asymmetrically scaling (squishing) the spotlight gizmo and rotating it a little to get that oblong shape, but it's easier to control with a mask map. I'm really not too fond of the swirling gas effect for the bussards. I prefer something that looks more like a set of glowing coils or elements, with some depth behind the diffusers. The fact that they aren't merely point sources helps to avoid the LED/light bulb effect, I think.
Well, it depends entirely on the diffusion effect of the Arch & Design material applied to the "lenses." It also comes at a cost; that last image took 4 minutes, 35 seconds to render at 800x600 and about 80% of that time was just for the lens. In wider angles where the bussards are relatively small in terms of total image real estate, it's not such a big deal, but up close they really bog things down.
Hmm, 80% is a lot. Could one get the same effect with a lightbox plane behind the 'coils', keeping in mind that the coils would have to be much thinner, get progressively thicker in the front and the amount would have to be much, much more? You'd need to arrange groups of these thin coils to get the 'banding' effect. You wouldn't need the diffusion effect and it won't have to render shadows. Though perhaps this would lose the 3D effect too much and I don't know if the added geometry doesn't simply slow the render down again. On second thought, I have no idea how one could do it differently. Seems to me like your method is the one that takes the least effort yet gives a great visually interesting image. That's why I called it genius, even if it does take a while to render.
Something different: Would it be possible to make a small render with the warp glow of the nacelles disabled? I'm very interested in how the cyan collector looks without the blue warp grille behind it; perhaps that would make things 'pop' again, as some have said. I have a suspicious feeling that the curves you've added around the grills are visually interesting enough, but I don't know for sure.