Donny's Refit Enterprise Interiors (Version 2.0)

[David cgc]

That's the same role that we later saw Voyager play for UPN and now Discovery for CBS All Access. And Voyager was the only drama series on UPN that lasted more than 4 seasons, and one of only two dramas that made it more than 3 seasons (The Sentinel being the other).

I could've sworn Seven Days made it to four, but I see I was wrong. I guess I was too young to really be paying attention to behind-the-scenes stuff, and IIRC, they retooled that show really often in a way that felt like new-season housekeeping. And I don't think I even saw any of the third season, based on the wiki article.

 

[Maurice]

The motivation for making TMP was that Charles Bluhdorn wouldn't back Barry Diller's PTS plan so the wheels came off the planned network and they had spent all this money on Star Trek II (Phase was dropped very early on) so with the success of Star Wars and CE3K they decided to salvage their investment by jumping on the bandwagon.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

As much as I love this diversion into "What Ifs" with Phase II, I can't wait to see more interior art from @Donny.

 

[Donny]

No worries on the "What Ifs", I've been enjoying them

Anyway, here's a very very WIP shot of the vertical intermix chamber. I have a lot of work to do on the swirl material, but I wanted to get a rough version in tonight before hitting the sack. Excuse the untextured console and rails.
Early Intermix Shaft WIP by DVersiga84, on Flickr

 

[Tomalak]

That's a damn fine start!

You got me thinking about the old Elite Force game, and I managed to find the CDs and get it working again. Walking around those sets was just awesome, even in all of their low-res, late nineties Quake glory.

A game like that set on your refit Enterprise would be the dream!

 

[Donny]

That's a damn fine start!

You got me thinking about the old Elite Force game, and I managed to find the CDs and get it working again. Walking around those sets was just awesome, even in all of their low-res, late nineties Quake glory.

A game like that set on your refit Enterprise would be the dream!

Elite Force is what inspired me to start modeling Trek interiors 19 years ago! I thank that game (and Star Wars: Dark Forces, for originally inspiring me to model anything) for my entire career!

 

[Jesse1066]

One of my favorite details of the refit engine room is that it still has some of the TOS hex mesh, though not as much as the Phase II version.

 

[Tallguy]

Elite Force is what inspired me to start modeling Trek interiors 19 years ago! I thank that game (and Star Wars: Dark Forces, for originally inspiring me to model anything) for my entire career!

There's gotta be somebody from those teams that you could contact and tell that to. That's amazing.

One of my favorite details of the refit engine room is that it still has some of the TOS hex mesh, though not as much as the Phase II version.

It does? Where?

 

[Jesse1066]

It does? Where?

It runs along near the edge of the ceiling on the lower level. Zooming in on it in Donny's latest image, it appears to be exactly the same as in TOS but now in gray.

 

[Lt. Washburn]

There was hex in the support bracket, but not sure if it was the TOS stuff.

Here it is in Minor's painting too:

 

[Tomalak]

Elite Force is what inspired me to start modeling Trek interiors 19 years ago! I thank that game (and Star Wars: Dark Forces, for originally inspiring me to model anything) for my entire career!

No way! Are there any maps you made that are still out there?

 

[Donny]

No way! Are there any maps you made that are still out there?

Sadly, I never released the few projects I had going for EF (a Virtual TOS-Enterprise and a Virtual Enterprise-D)

However, I do have a trilogy of custom-made levels I released for Dark Forces called "Dark Relatiation", which you can still surprisingly download here: http://df-21.net/downloads/missions.php?viewid=1825113922
They're not great, but the second level takes place on a Star Destroyer, and at the end of the third level I attempted to recreate the interior of a YT-1300 freighter. They're very rudimentary, given the tech limitations of the time, but you can see how even back then I had a drive to re-create sets from my favorite sci-fi movies.

I released a level for the Jedi Knight/Mysteries of the Sith engine (the sequels to Dark Forces) called "Liberation of Cloud City" that you can, also surprisingly, download here: https://tacc.massassi.net/levels/description.php?id=205

And I released what work I did make of the Refit Enterprise Interiors as a mod for Mysteries of the Sith here: http://www.jkhub.net/project/show.php?projid=50&section=downloads. Although, be warned, it's not nearly as pretty as what I've been doing the past few years

Dark Forces and Mysteries of the Sith can both be downloaded on Steam if anyone has any inclination of checking them out.

Anyway, I'd begun developing for EF wayyyy later than I should've (the game had already fallen from popularity at that point), so those projects just never got off the ground, as I switched to making stuff in Unreal 3 shortly after, leading me to where I am now with simply making fan art with the Unreal 4 engine.

 

[Norsehound]

No worries on the "What Ifs", I've been enjoying them

Anyway, here's a very very WIP shot of the vertical intermix chamber. I have a lot of work to do on the swirl material, but I wanted to get a rough version in tonight before hitting the sack. Excuse the untextured console and rails.
Early Intermix Shaft WIP by DVersiga84, on Flickr

Moments like these make me wish somehow this could contribute to more TMP-like productions, y'know? I wish things like this were enough to tell of a production set just after Kirk's "Thattaway" (Ex Machina does this well, I know). But I'd like to see more. And Trek won't do that, sending us off into the 25th century or following Picard around (again).

Oh well. Engine room is shaping up great!

 

[FormerLurker]

Donald Bellisario created Tales of the Gold Monkey years before Raiders came out; it was inspired by the 1939 Cary Grant film Only Angels Have Wings. But it languished in development at ABC until Raiders became a hit and prompted them to make it at last.

Was completely unaware of this. To me, as a viewer, it seemed like one of several attempts to spin a TV knockoff of a popular film, something that has happened on a regular basis for decades.

 

[Christopher]

Was completely unaware of this. To me, as a viewer, it seemed like one of several attempts to spin a TV knockoff of a popular film, something that has happened on a regular basis for decades.

Yeah, that was the common assumption about Gold Monkey at the time too, but it wasn't true. Similarly, Battlestar Galactica (which Donald Bellisario also worked on) was seen as a Star Wars knockoff, but it was based at least partly on a concept Glen Larson had been pitching since the '60s (although I suspect that most of its final form owed more to Leslie Stevens than Larson). Sometimes an idea will go unmade for years until a hit movie with a similar premise comes along and prompts a network to make it at last, and then it just looks like a copy.

When you say "several attempts," do you mean of popular films in general? Because I can't think of anything else on TV at the time that was specifically like Indiana Jones. It didn't spawn a wave of period adventure shows, as far as I recall.

 

[Donny]

I'm getting closer on the intermix swirl, but not quite there yet...

 

[ashleytinger]

I would say post-production it like they did but I don't think that'll work for what you're trying to do

 

[Christopher]

I would say post-production it like they did but I don't think that'll work for what you're trying to do

The intermix swirl wasn't done in post-production; it was a live lighting effect created by Sam Nicholson and Brian Longbotham, using an elaborate rear-projection system hidden inside the shaft. Here's an excerpt from an article by Nicholson explaining it: https://www.questia.com/magazine/1P3-1307534341/kinetic-lighting-for-star-trek-the-motion-picture

 

[Tomalak]

Did Voyager's warp core use the same system, or was that something different? It looked like a practical smoke and lighting effect, but I'm not sure.

 

[ashleytinger]

The intermix swirl wasn't done in post-production; it was a live lighting effect created by Sam Nicholson and Brian Longbotham, using an elaborate rear-projection system hidden inside the shaft. Here's an excerpt from an article by Nicholson explaining it: https://www.questia.com/magazine/1P3-1307534341/kinetic-lighting-for-star-trek-the-motion-picture

I was not aware of that. I just remembered reading it was added in post on a BTS post here on the forums. Interesting.