Beautiful modeling, and I love those 3/4 aft-bottom renders. I always though the refit looked its best from that angle, probably as a result of looking so much at the Starfleet Academy box art when I was a kid. It feels oddly nostalgic. Maybe you two are versions of each other from parallel universes... On an unrelated note, nice goatee you have going on there Donny...
It just proof that we are awesome I've been using the name Viper online for a long time. I think since 2000 maybe? I was actually surprised it was available here. Thanks btw. I tried to be as accurate as possible, but for the purposes of what I want to do with this project, I had to change a few things. I'm going to do a render of her being built a la Star Trek Beyond This ship has no bad angles IMO. It's just such a great design all around. There are a few like this. Excelsior and Sovereign come to mind.
Ok, enough playing I finished UV mapping her today, so I started to work on the texturing workflow. I had already done a few tests from before, but I need to tweak the values so they look right. I also spent some time creating a graph to output the text for the registry in the correct colors. This allows me to quickly change them in the texture files. For instance: Just change the text, export maps from designer, hit render. 10 seconds to do More to come...
I was almost thinking it was me from the future, but then I got an Instagram follow request from @Viper here which confirmed that we are different people completely.
I have the substance files for the bridge and torpedo launcher setup. I'll come back to it once everything is done to tweak it. Ignore the red circles, those are wrong. Need to remake them.
Maybe you can use that color scheme for a Constitution refit that has been re purposed as a freighter?
Yes, I wanted some extra panels there for my construction scene so I can remove some of them and show the structure of the neck. I almost did the panels like the ones in the closeup model they built for the damage scene in ST:III, but it has too much detail. I would have to do the same for the rest of the ship. I used a small distance between them so from far they aren't as noticeable as the others. Hopefully it looks alright and not too jarring once texture is complete
Yeah, I'd considered going the route of making the entire ship like the closeup section in STII, but quickly abandoned that idea when I realized how much work that would be and probably wouldn't look that great from a distance. I actually found images of a project that attempted to do so. Looks like it was never completed, for obvious reasons.
Yeah, I saw the same project. To be honest, I also think it looks a bit too busy. I understand that it might be how it would actually look but, at the same time, it's too much. From far it would look like noise probably.
Agreed. I think it was great they took the pains to make that section more detailed for the big screen though, but just wouldn't look great all over the entire ship.
Yup, I also don't want to spend several months in this project. Other things I want to do. I have an Excelsior in progress as well as a design of my own. The level of detail I chose is already a lot more than what's normally needed for regular renders of these ships.
This guy, from TWOK: ANd here, in this poorly composited shot from TSFS (this makes it appear the saucer extends quite a bit aft from where it meets the neck) And lastly in TUC: Here's the model up close at an auction: Note the plethora of model aircraft decals used to adorn the hull: Compared to the relatively less detailed neck of the 8 foot model:
Yup, that's the one. As discussed, I think it would look too busy for the whole ship. And also too time consuming to do. Anyway, not much progress except tweaking the textures to get a more consistent look. Here's a few renders: I'll try and texture one more piece tonight. Probably impulse engine next. If I have time, neck as well.