Another vote here for the long fantail to visually-balance the saucer. Thanks for posting some wires of your sub-D mesh. I never really mastered that technique myself, so I'm always curious to see how others use it. Nice stuff, Vektor! :thumbsup:
I like the new shuttlebay, it fits well with the style of the ship overall; plus it's a nice kind of inverted "echo" if you will, of the Impulse Engine further up the spine. Keep it!
I've already shortened the fantail somewhat but never fear, it hasn'e gone away entirely. I think once the nacelle struts are reattached there won't be any problem with ballancing the saucer section.
Here's the shorter fantail. I've also added the groove around the rim of the secondary hull. Does anybody know where I could get my hands on a 3d mesh for a Type 11 shuttlecraft? I found one in .MOD format that was created for the game Starfleet Command, but there are no import plugins that will work for any version of Max newer than 3 or 4.
Hey Vektor NightShadow mentioned that he had a couple Type 11 shuttle meshes over in the Grandeur Forum so check that out if you see this first.
^Wowsers! It just keeps on getting better all the time! Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need to go and change my pants! :thumbsup:
A tiny bit of progress to show: Just in case the progress isn't immediately obvious, the old, low-poly placeholder for the primary hull has been replaced with a new hi-res version. It's just the base object so far but it's the last major piece to be filled in. More soon.
A small update to the impulse engines: I'm playing with a couple different techniques for merging the impulse engines into the saucer section and these probably aren't the final versions, especially since they're packed with WAY more polys than they need to be, but I figured they were worth showing.
Hey, Vektor... looking great! I'm particularly pleased that you've made "working" hangar bay doors. This is one of the things that's always bugged me, perhaps more than anything else, with post-Probert Trek design... Excelsior and Ent-E in particular... with door systems that are structurally IMPOSSIBLE (though they look good to a graphics-arts type I suppose). I'm also very pleased to see a workable impulse-engine arrangement. This, as some of you know, is my main "quibble" with the selected Titan design... the impulse engine centerline-of-thrust is so far away from the center of mass of the ship that the thing would literally just spin in place (if this is using the conventionally-accepted newtonian principals and not some "new" reactionless sublight system I s'pose). Anyway, I preferred the earlier (second?) design you did, on a purely stylistic basis (and I hope you'll pick that back up one of these days, albeit under a different name!), but I definitely "approve" of your design style and how well-thought-out your designs seem to be. If only the Paramount guys could do so, consistently... though I do realize that "producer dictates" can be a real factor in this, and a good design can be compromised pretty easily to "make it look better" (sic). Anyway... just wanted to give this a big "thumbs up."
I've done my best to think through the functionality of this ship's design as well as its aesthetics. Thanks for noticing. The impulse engines have actually been some of the most problematic details on this ship, together with the saucer separation scheme. The current versions are not perfect, but I think they are probably the best I'm going to get with this design. As for the physics involved, we know that impulse engines can be used to drive a ship in reverse, so clearly they are something more than simple reaction engines. Not likely, I'm afraid. When this ship is done, my next project will probably be completing the Titan design I started but didn't finish in time for the contest.
I've gotten some significant work done on the secondary hull and the "head" that you only get to see when the saucer is separated. There are a lot of details here that are pertinent to the saucer separation scheme, so it's important to get them right. Pay no attention to the battle bridge module. It's just a copy of the one on top of the saucer and will eventually be replaced by a different version. The segmentation you see around the rim of the "head" will also go away eventually. Almost everything in these renderings is a single Sub-D object, all but the bridge and the docking bay doors, and it has really been straining my quad-poly modeling skills to their limits. I may yet go back and do a few things a little differently just to simplify the mesh and make the final version more efficient. Trying to build too much detail into a Sub-D object for something like this is just counter-productive; better to freeze it at a certain point and add the other stuff later. Tomorrow I'm gonna do some more work on my Vanguard model, but I'll be back for another round of updates on the Grandeur in a couple of days.
I love the battle bridge on the secondary hull. She's just quietly hidden in there. tucked in snug as a bug
Not sure about the impulse engine, I just feel like its sticking out too far. But I do love the desing.
This has got to be the most artistic ship of Starfleet I've ever seen. :thumbsup: Truly worthy of the name Grandeur.