Enough glowing praise! Every moment Vektor spends reading glowing praise is just another moment not spent making more images! Look at the BIG picture, people. You want more praise, Senior Vektor? Then you shall have to give us something in exchange for it!
I really enjoy your effort at photo-realism with the lighting. The first is my new desktop image and I think it works best of these three. The second has excellent texture work and conveys the massiveness of the ship pretty well. My primary quibble is the planet background which is unexpectedly noisy. I'm not quite sure about the lighting choice for the impulse engines since it betrays the appearance of realism. The glow almost suggests diffused lighting caused by an atmosphere. The third image, likewise, has a lighting concern with the navigation lights of the saucer. Were they done in post-processing? High marks all around for your best Trek renderings to date and some of the very best Trek images period! Is there any chance of a small animation using this lighting? Was this still done in Lightwave? Edit: I just wanted to say the initial impression was one of shocked delight and amazement. They were so good that I asked myself to look for quibbles in the way art critics may examine a masterpiece.
When it comes right down to it, I don't know what the big deal is about this Enterprise. It's merely exquisite perfection, that's all. In my imagination when I was 10, I knew - I JUST KNEW! - that THIS is what the Big E really looked like, if you could get a real good look at it on a crappy TV set. You've merely rendered what was in my mind's eye all these years!
So remind me why you don't work for ILM or somewhere else in Hollywood? Unbelievable. Just amazing, Vektor.