About that I can say with reasonable confidence, that yes, it was a translucent hemisphere painted with 12 opaque "vanes" that spun , nested under an outer dome of "frosted" orange veering on "peach". At work I couldn't remember how many holiday bulbs were mounted upon the back plate. Both the Master Replicas prebuilt miniature (which I have) and the deluxe Polar Lights 350 scale assembly model replicate this feature rather closely, just using LEDs instead of incandescent bulbs. An slightly smaller dome with opaque vanes painted upon it spins via motor, the light from the LEDs filtering through it and the outer dome covering it. However, unlike the truly random nature of the holiday bulbs, the LEDs for both the MR model and Polar Lights kit are controlled by a circuit board.
I prefer smooth and featureless, it's something I loved about the Enterprise. It gave a mystery of the Starship Class construction, like those 50's alien flying saucers--very smooth looking. Donny, it would best to use your own great eyes to make a judgement; you should create two versions. After, improvise with what you have to get the best look for the Enterprise.
What I'm actually considering is an option the end-user can toggle for grid lines / no grid lines on the secondary hull and nacelles. But, for now at least, I'm going to stick with the model as filmed. Must..finish..painting...
Never hurts to share this video by my bud Bill George, which shows the model being restored at the Smithsonian.
I think that is just a light bulb near the hangar. It's blinking at the beginning of the episode of "Court Martial". I'd go with the latest restoration. As to #4, I don't recall seeing them blink or even visibly lit in the aired episodes. You can check this cool high-res compiled reference shots video Doug Drexler put up a couple of years ago or look at Tallguy's compiled VFX shots. Doug Drexler's Original Series Reference shots on Vimeo
Some of the lights on the model were sometimes attached to blinker gizmos. When they rewired the model some lights that didn't blink before started blinking. @Mark2000 knows which ones they are, I think.
What impresses me is how quickly you can churn this out, with detail and texturing that most people would consider a fully polished final product. I've been struggling over the shape of the torpedo room on my Refit build for pretty much the entire time it's taken you to nearly finish a whole ship :P
Warp nacelles, impulse engines, and hangar doors painted. After watching Doug Drexler's compilation of original Enterprise shots last night, and falling ever more in love with the original studio model, I've decided NOT to add grid lines on the secondary hull and nacelles or add any details at all that weren't on the original. Note the "mesh" around the impulse housing: Now, to add registry decals and refine the windows and other lights. Then I'll be moving onto the "working" nacelle domes. EDIT: Just so you can see the amount of detail I'm putting in the weathering and dirt that was present on the original model, here are some shots (sans lighting) of the pure color information I've painstakingly painted using hand-painted and procedural methods.
That's gorgeous. I MIGHT say fade the grid lines to about half of what they are. I always have my grids as a separate channel. If I fade them enough to where people could argue (for 50 years) about whether they exist at all or not then I figure I have it right. EDIT: The underlying hull material on the other hand is perfection. Yours is the first major Enterprise project I think I've watched since they've done the restoration. Wow.
I read last night that the reason Jefferies caused the grid lines to be so faint in the first place was because Gene begged him against his wishes to add grid lines. He did so very faintly just to appease him but knowing they wouldn't show up on-screen due to their faintness and the limited photography at the time. After reading that, I'm tempted to take them away all together But I'll leave them, albeit a bit fainter. I've got to admit, I doubt I would be getting this close to the mark without the latest Smithsonian restoration and the documenting of it that occurred. The video @Maurice shared last night was pivotal in revealing a few key areas of color or detail I was still fuzzy about. And the fact that this article reveals the color matches they came up with during restoration has been a big help in resting my mind's natural urge to resist painting it green, since I grew up thinking it was an overall medium grey until the last decade or so. And then watching all of the original Enterprise footage last night showed me just how accurate the latest Smithsonian re-creation is. They really nabbed every detail just right. Kudos to that entire team, and thanks, because it's making my life easier
@Donny. You're welcome. And in case you didn't know, Bill is the full bearded guy with the glasses and the tats on his arm.
What a great way to spend my 4th of July vacation doing the thing I love doing best: modeling Classic Trek. It's almost finished! After texturing the nacelle bodies this morning, I knocked out the decals and added blinking functions to the running lights and ion pod light. I even did some light programming to toggle all the lights of the Enterprise "off" if needed. Swapping decals out to say, portray another ship, will be just a matter of creating a new decal texture with the appropriate registry name and number. I was going to refine the windows before moving onto the nacelle caps, but I really REALLY wanted to try my hand at them before heading to bed tonight. Preliminary results are much better than I expected. It's actually a combination of material-work and "practical" lights in the game engine. I haven't programmed the blinking of the "Christmas lights" yet, but will do so tomorrow evening after work. I’m going to make some tweaks to the material as well, as I think I have them a bit too orange right now. Following that, I want to refine the windows a bit so they aren't all one even color and add some depth to them. There's a few other things I need to "tweak" before calling it done, but it's so close now! Because I'm using "practical" lights inside to simulate the "Christmas lights" instead of relying on the lights being part of the texture, there's actual depth to the innards of the nacelle domes.
The spinning nacelle caps are always a tricky part of any recreation, since the original had so many moving parts which can't easily be simulated with mere lights. Given that you have recreated those moving parts, I can't wait to see the results!
Looking really great. Two questions, that you may have answered already. Whenever you show an image, is it already the game engine version, or are you showing high-poly examples as well. Second, is the ship scaled to full-size or model size in these renders?
It's amazing how, 50 years later, the Old Gray Lady still has no bad angles to look at. Perfectly proportioned. You've captured that with astonishing accuracy. Well done!