Design the Next Enterprise

[Tom Hendricks]

Fuzzy, I was stationed at Eielson AFB from 87-90 and there was a great little comic book store in Fairbanks. I can't recall its name, but getting comics there really helped pass the time during the winter. Do you know if there is still a comic book store in Fairbanks?

[Fuzzy Modem]

Tom Hendricks wrote:

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Fuzzy, I was stationed at Eielson AFB from 87-90 and there was a great little comic book store in Fairbanks. I can't recall its name, but getting comics there really helped pass the time during the winter. Do you know if there is still a comic book store in Fairbanks?

Yeah, "The Comic Shop." I actually sell hard copies of my comic there

I got here three years after you left. Fairbanks has grown a bit since 1993, but it's still good 'ol Fairbanks

[Titan Designer]

Hey fuzzy, to tell the truth I haven't been the biggest fan of your design, but after seeing the MSD display it has warmed me up to the design. I also like the sauce sep on that display as well. Nice work.

[Tom Hendricks]

Fuzzy Modem wrote:

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Yeah, "The Comic Shop." I actually sell hard copies of my comic there

I got here three years after you left. Fairbanks has grown a bit since 1993, but it's still good 'ol Fairbanks

Not to go all nostalgic but, there was this really cool place on the highway between Fairbanks and North Pole, on the side of the road going towards North Pole. It had an arcade, restaurant, I think a skating rink, it was pretty big. Is that still there? I may not be describing it right, I don't really remember everything that was in the building.

[Fuzzy Modem]

Tom Hendricks wrote:

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Not to go all nostalgic but, there was this really cool place on the highway between Fairbanks and North Pole, on the side of the road going towards North Pole. It had an arcade, restaurant, I think a skating rink, it was pretty big. Is that still there? I may not be describing it right, I don't really remember everything that was in the building.

I think you're thinking of the "Poller Roller" which was a roller skating rink rather than an ice rink.

Sadly it is gone. It closed while I was in high school due to naughty kids using it as a base of operations to do naughty things, and their parents subsequently needing a scapegoat.

I kissed my 2nd girlfriend for the 1st time at the Poller Roller

They have a laser tag and go-kart place over on the other side of Badger rd now though. I've taken my daughter there for birthday parties. It's okay.

You don't remember a little shop called "Two Geeks" do you?

[Cary L. Brown]

Fuzzy Modem wrote:

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Thanks man I do have the inside worked out:
http://crossovercomic.com/media/extr...nt-f_lcars.jpg

Ah, thanks... I missed that. Clearly you've thought it through pretty well, yeah. That's always apparent in the designs I actually like, personally. They look good, but they also make sense (albeit with a healthy dollop of "magic" added in, since it IS Star Trek!)

-and there is more material here including the bridge:
http://crossovercomic.com/index.php?...nus&folder=big

Very nice... I'd seen several of those, but somehow overlooked the MSD.

The bridge is... fascinating. Clearly, the idea is that it's sort of a cross between "Stellar Cartography" and a conventional bridge, right? It can have as many "virtual displays" as you want to project into the holographic wrap-around, in whatever configuration you want... or it can "feel like a window" if you like... or it can be totally stealthed, and give you much more of a submarine feel.

It's a unique approach. Totally impractical from a filmmaking standpoint, naturally... but really extremely fun from a "Treknology" standpoint. I like it. And in a VIDEO GAME, I see no major problem with that... though the game staff might resent having to invent a whole new set of code just for your bridge!

The red-purple-blue does turn some people off.

The way I figure it the warp field grille (blue) and the bussard collector cowling (red) are both particle apertures. The blue lets certain particles out, and the red lets certain particles in. So what you are seeing is a single particle aperture with one end polarized.

I see... but it just feels "unnatural" to me.

It's the same way that I respond to the traditional "pure LED red" impulse engines. Trek hasn't always taken primary-color-LED-lighting as its basis. Look, for example, at the deflector dish on the TMP Enterprise... from unlit gray (with a slight bronze tint) to dull reddish-orange to vivid blue, depending on the energy output. And by the way, on the TMP Enterprise, the inside grills were actually PURPLE, not blue... the coloration came from machinists dye, which is purple.

So, if you have a bit of purple in there, you'll actually be far more faithful to the original TMP design, but also have the "primary color" elements of the TNG-era designs as well.

Yeah, most of my design choices are aesthetic, and I try to cover my ass with such Technobabble explanations

And as long as your choices do both... look good AND make sense... this works.

I'm often told that the shapes must be separated, but are you suggesting that the transition be more gradual? More purple?

Yes... again, comic books can be pure-primary-colors, but reality tends to be much more subtle and gradual. The more "primary-color-ish" it is, the less real it seems to be, as a general rule.

For the "cut in areas" I worked from the underside of the E:
http://www.crymod.com/uploads/mediap...terprise-e.jpg
(which is actually a raised torus)
and Spacedock:
http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewto...=11187&start=0
(rather mushroom-like)
-but in retrospect, it's kind of a "harsh/angry" shape, which is okay, but I'd should have shot for "elegant"

Well, I get the purpose... to give you windows that can have vertical walls. It just seems inefficient from a design standpoint, that's all. Most of the time you're in space, you don't really NEED windows... you can't see anything but pitch black outside. And in THESE windows, you really only see the opposing windows on the other side of the gap, with a pitch black abyss below you. (Yes, you'll see stars... but only when the inside lights are off.)

I'm not faulting you... just explaining why I, personally, don't care for that sort of detail. That said, there will be occasions (typically when in orbit over a planet) when these are useful. I certainly put a lot of windows into my "Titan Contest" submission. But the TOS and TMP Enterprises had very few windows, overall... and this is just more practical.

I really like the ship in your avatar, but I don't recognize it

That's the USS Achernar, Vega Class. This was ORIGINALLY intended to be the USS Titan, Luna Class... but Sean's (aka Titan Designer) ship was chosen, and I have no problem with his design (albeit, just like with yours, I had a quibble... in his case, with the impulse engine placement, a problem YOUR ship doesn't seem to have!)

Since my design didn't win the contest, I decided to make it something else. The idea was always to take elements of the Constitution, but made up from Sovereign-era technology. As it grew, I ended up using a few ideas I'd culled from my study of the Excelsior (trying to figure out the purpose of the knobby bits on the back) and from the underside sensor array on the TMP Enterprise's primary hull (which you've also clearly considered). The big "nose" element is actually a massive version of the forward facing bit on the underside of the TMP Enterprise's hull... a massive phased-array scanner.

I won't hijack the thread... but if you're really interested, I'll give you a couple of links to some of my renders.

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/3016/merge4.tif
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/5645/merge5.tif
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/6935/merge6.tif

And to show the basic (albeit at this time incomplete) "internal thinking through"...
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/8...mation4nu8.gif
http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/1...mation5ch0.gif

I've also done some other stuff... a version of the TAS Bonaventure (http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=53039), a version of the "Ring ship Enterprise,"(http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/9...1image2ai1.jpg) and most recently, a version of the TOS ship (http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=89810), all in the same basic style. I used to post my work here... but eventually lost my taste for the site's politics, so while I'll browse here occasionally, I no longer post my work here and believe this might be the first time in 18 months or so that I've posted to the site at all. Then again, "real life" has taken priority for me as well... marriage and all that... so I've barely missed it.

[Fuzzy Modem]

Cary L. Brown wrote:

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>snip< Then again, "real life" has taken priority for me as well... marriage and all that... so I've barely missed it.

Congrats! My own wife has been very tolerant of my eccentricities these past... I guess it's been like 4 months since this contest was announced wasn't it?

I'm a little... overly focused? Ah hell, I'll just say it- "obsessive" about my artwork under normal circumstances. This contest would be consuming my every waking thought if I wasn't making a concerted effort to remember that there are other things in the world that are of at least minor importance, such as the dishes

My only advice to you as a new husband, is keep doing what you're doing. Spaceships are neat, but they can't hold a candle to a good woman

That being said, this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen!: http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/8...mation4nu8.gif and http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/1...mation5ch0.gif

The only thing that irks me about the design is the top forward portion of the engineering section. I'd have gone convex rather than concave where the neck meets the saucer.

I love how she has a taste of Defiant, and her proportions give her a very "medium sized" feel. It would be nice it there were some light behind the windows to show off those amazing interiors.

What software are you using?

Titan Designer wrote:

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Hey fuzzy, to tell the truth I haven't been the biggest fan of your design, but after seeing the MSD display it has warmed me up to the design. I also like the sauce sep on that display as well. Nice work.

Glad you like it It was fun to make. There is an easter egg in there too if you look for it

[Cary L. Brown]

Fuzzy Modem wrote:

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The only thing that irks me about the design is the top forward portion of the engineering section. I'd have gone convex rather than concave where the neck meets the saucer.

I understand... but I actually did that intentionally. This served two purposes... first, it was one of several possible solutions allowing me to have essentially vertical windows in that region while still having a transition. That's the "functional" reason. But maybe even more significant was that I wanted the secondary hull... especially when separated... to evoke the avian. So what you see there is almost like the bones and tendons in the shoulders of a bird of prey when it is diving. Does that make any sense to you?

I love how she has a taste of Defiant, and her proportions give her a very "medium sized" feel. It would be nice it there were some light behind the windows to show off those amazing interiors.

Well, that's the long-term plan, but most all of this has been set aside in favor of a beautiful blond who's managed to distract me pretty effectively for a while! Someday I'm sure I'll finish it.

For the most part, though, I've been avoiding TrekBBS (albeit this forum is always still worth reading, and I visit it semi-regularly), but I when I found your design and saw that you were posting here, I wanted to express my appreciation!

What software are you using?

My work is all done using PTC's parametric design software, called Pro/ENGINEER (although they've recently started a really bizarre "rebranding" thing and it's currently called "Creo Elements /PRO... no change to the software, JUST the name... and we're told another name change is just a few months down the road!). Most of my rendered shots in my various threads are done using a third-party translator/renderer called Polytrans/Nugraf. Besides providing a pretty decent (not-movie-quality) rendering engine, I use this package's direct-translation capability to move direct Pro/E files into my preferred "serious renderer," Maya, and have done a few Maya shots as well. However, I've barely touched Maya in the last year, honestly... and my version is pretty old now (It's the version which was current when "Return of the King" was being made using it, though, so it's not BAD by any stretch!)

[Fuzzy Modem]

Are those cutaways a function of the software, or did you have to model it like that?

[Cary L. Brown]

Fuzzy Modem wrote:

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Are those cutaways a function of the software, or did you have to model it like that?

I had to model everything, naturally... but creating cross-sections is a function of the software. In this case, I created a fixed camera position (so I could render every shot from the same location), created "sections views," and then took of each. I then compiled the individual images (using Quicktime Pro, actually) into an animated GIF.

Not too difficult to do the shot. But I did have to create that manually, and obviously I had to model everything inside explicitly.

[Fuzzy Modem]

I use Maya exclusively these days, but I used to model in Rhino and import.

[Mojomoe]

Hear hear for Rhino!

I did my first contract work in Rhino and Max. Then I got into the games industry, and it's been Maya or nuthin' for years. And saying you like Max round my office is tantamount to technocredsuicide.

Sometimes I still go home and... nurb... just for the nostalgic value, though!

[Fuzzy Modem]

Rhino is such a solid program, and I love how all the most important functions are at the surface level of the UI, unlike Maya which buries everything.

I've found Maya to be noticeably less exact as well, which I imagine comes from being geared toward character animation rather than technical accuracy.

Overall though, the ability to texture while I model is well worth it. One thing Rhino did NOT do well was export, and so texturing was much harder to accomplish on imported Rhino models than it is on native objects.

[admiralelm11]

So, has STO picked a design yet for the Enterprise-F or are they just dragging their asses about it?

[backstept]

we've got a few more weeks to go