I have been wanting to accurize my plans and upgrade them to a full 3d version for quite a while now. this is going to be a 3d SS-kitbash, hopefully down to the tiniest detail also, before i get into it, i must thank fellow member Search4 for providing such incredible reference material! I'm getting it started with the ligh-boxes
Wow, my hat's off to you, sir... you're a masochist of the first order! Didn't the Star Trek: The Motion Picture studio miniature of the drydock have something like 10,000 pieces or some ridiculous number?!
i doubt the number is near that high, most of the greeble-work was the 2 bix boxes making the roof of the structure, and there were simply 8 or 10 plates of parts made up and duplicated over and over. making a digital copy is actually not that difficult because of just that reason, even the panels along the sides are just clones of each other. the hardest part is going to get all the lighting right, i hope to be able to get it lit for rendering with no external light sources!
What program do you use? In LightWave 9.6, I'm able to get a pretty good soft glow from the lightboxes in drydock scenes using three large one-sided area lights pointed inward. Back when I was young and stupid, I tried doing something similar with an area light for each individual panel. Some days later, when it hadn't finished rendering, I decided cheating was the better part of getting something finished.
Area lights give a better effect, but you're not kidding about the render times. I tend to go for the spinning lights trick to give the soft shadows most of the time, but with this type of 'large' set with lots of small areas being lit it's not really an option.
I'm in Max9. that panel above is made using a flat sheet behind the grey parts, as just a self-illuminating object. honestly i'm very weak at 3d lighting still.
Truthfully, I never got why the S.C.O.E never upgraded the TMP Box-Docks to include minimal self-defences (impulse engines, thrusters, phaser blisters, microtorpedo launchers.) Something! I'd love to see a TNG-era (manual override?) "battle bridge" for just such an occasion. For all the eras of Utopia Planetia box-docks, (post-Dominion War). Just enough to buy time for partially completed ships to get out of harm's way, or stand a chance of using their own weapons while under cover of the box-dock's shields.
I misunderstood... I thought you were building a physical model! In any event, the studio miniature was a complicated beastie: http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/sentimental-journey/
i never really saw the need for engines or defenses on the dock, especially not one orbiting the homeworld! especially since impulse engines are still FTL systems, i dont see a dock needing that!? the only thrust needs i can envision are for simple orbit correction. I see the Dry Dock as more of a warehouse than a spacecraft. nothing more than: storage, a few lunch or breakrooms, a lighting rig, and a series of industrial transporters and tractor beams. however, there is the fact that the model didnt have a top to it, could have been anything up there on top of the thing... and the studio model not only was a beastie, but it IS again make sure you check out these links, Search4's website, you can check out his other props and models too. http://www.ncc1701.us/18.html and he sent me an incredible collection of images, which he was also nice enough to allow me to share with fellow modelers! pictures of everything from its auction state (generations version) to the TMP restoration process, to finished version!!! gallery is here: http://www.modelermagic.com/?p=18643
WOW! Incredible pictures, indeed! Edited to add: Is it just me or is there something off about the shape of the command module on the refit Enterprise in these images? The module on the 1979 studio miniature wasn't nearly as severly sloped upwards as the model in these images. Edited to add Mk II: Uhhh, never mind... I missed the comments about how this model is the original Phase II Enterprise model, converted to look as close as possible to the 1979 refit model. Reading comprehension--it's A Good Thing
upon quiet reflection, 10,000 doesnt seem like such an outrageous number... ims sure some of you will remember these pics
They guy that actually owns the prop posts here. He restored it from its appearence in Generations to its TMP original state. Maybe you can get him to send you some photos. Here's his user profile. http://trekbbs.com/member.php?u=9877 Here's his site. http://www.ncc1701.us/18.html
i have not gotten into the 3d version any more yet, i'm finishing off the schematics first. i'm still hesitant to release a 2d planset version. i dont want to post a lot of pictures of the plans untill i decide where i stand on that issue. when i scale my original 1:350 plans up to SS size i'm surprised at how close most of it matches up. most components are only 1/2-2/3" off. the big superstructure's of course were where the biggest offsets were. my new design is about 2" taller, and my originals are about 5.5" too short lenthwise on each end. i even completely left out one of the hangar bay type things on my originals !!! i'm still working on all the greebles and tiling, but the overall structural work is finished already .
i just started going through countless kit-scans today so i can start replicating the greebles. my wallet is already glad this is NOT a physical build... right off the bat the first ID i made is from the enormously expensive Entex Porche kit of Millenium Falcon fame...
there are some days i just dont know if this stuff is worth the headaches... i have discovered that my working design drawing is going to need major re-working. all the dimensions were based off of the copper tubing used for both the big frames and the little sections used for the connector assemblies. but the rest was based on a stated dimension that i thought was the size of one of the big tube squares... turns out i was wrong my working drawings sized my light-boxes at 7" square, but as i've started assembling the kitbash parts for the big structures, the openings for the lights on them come out to 9" ARGH!!! after another hour or two of staring at pictures, and "smushing" things around i found a little wiggle room, the crosspanels on the top have about 1/2" on each end to play with. where on the external boxes there is a lip to fit into the frame. i discovered there is a second lip added for the superstructure's light boxes. it still means my original boxes are about 1.5" too small and once i start looking around it's going to mean my tube-frame's are going to be incorrect, which meant the entire length of my superstructure is going to be incorrect, which means headaches in an ongoing fractal pattern! did i say ARGH yet???