Problem. I can create an irregularly shaped blast hole easily enough, but what to show down in the rupture and how to make whats left of the hull peeled back from the blast. It's an involved and time consuming job and would have to be done for most every pod. Mind you it needn't be that detailed because we are seeing the ship from a distance except for one pod which the landing party enters (assuming I decide to try creating images set that close to the model).
I love your progress on the pid ship, @Warped9! And I applaud the effort to recreate something from the animated series. As for what you could inside the pods behind the blast holes: How about a screenshot from the show itself, as a sort of matte painting? Sure, this would not work for really close shots, but from the distance and with enough distortion and shadow it could look convincingly like the insides of the ship.
If we are to believe that each pod is essentially one large empty space then this vessel wasn’t very well compartmentalized, particularly if one breach could wreck an entire pod. I think to some extent what we see in the episode is oversimplified. We must remember that this is an immense vessel and likely much more complex than what we see, and even if the crew and builders were maybe twice the size of an average human.
Nice! That might be doable. To that end that could be done when seeing it closer up. From a distance the damage shown could be a lot simpler like a blackened hole.
Giving this a liitle more thought. How can you have a blast that ruptures a very sturdy hull yet leaves no apparent internal damage to the same area?
The story implies that it was done deliberately by the vessel's captain. Maybe there are explosives in the hull of each pod for scuttling purposes?
Okay, but this entity doesn’t require a habitable environment. So what were they hoping to accomplish?
Okay, I’m working on modelling a hull breach to see what it can look like from a distance. It might or might not work, but I want to try this before resorting to simple photoshopping as a substitute for matte painting. If this miniature had been made for TOS there is a limit to how they could have shown the ship damaged (assuming they even bothered to do that). They might have resorted to using a matte painting and trick photography. It’s also possible they could have done something similar to what was done to depict the wrecked Constellation—physically damage the miniature to simulate a wrecked derelict.
The b&w drawing in The Official Guide To The Animated Series offers a better view of this alien ship. You can see the paths the vines follow more clearly. Someday if I choose to try this model again I will import that drawing directly into SketchUp and try building from there. Meanwhile I am adding damage to the pods. It’s slow going as I am doing one pod at a time and working my way from left to right. Presently I have five of the seventeen pods done so far. Looking forward these are other ships I hope to tackle - Robot freighter from “More Tribble, More Troubles” (I dislike the episode, but the freighter is cool) - Cyrano Jones’ scoutship from MTMT - Shuttlecraft from “Mudd’s Passion” (technically I did this already some years ago, but I’d like another crack at it) - Alien ships from “Time Trap” (there are 3 or 4 alien ships in the background that I think could be interesting to flesh out and model. I believe some of those designs show again in “The Jihad”) - Aquashuttle from “The Ambergris Element” (like the MP shuttlecraft I have done this before but would like to revisit this craft) - Kzinti police ship from “Slaver Weapon” - Shuttlecraft from “Slaver Weapon” (I have done this before a number of times, but I still want to get closer to the original look) - Freighter from “The Pirates Of Orion” (I have already done this—as seen at the beginning of this thread—so I don’t think I need to do it again given I am quite satisfied with how it came out) - Orion pirate ship from “The Pirates Of Orion” - Kukulkan’s ship from “How Sharper Than A Serpent’s Tooth” - Karla 5’s ship from “The Counter-Clock Incident” (this is a truly odd design)
Test shot of ruptured pods. Note this isn't as detailed as it could be because I want it closer to what it just could have looked like on TOS assuming they had had an opportunity to build a similar miniature. Given this is supposed to be seen from a distance I think it's quite serviceable. Candidly, though, the proper way to do this would be to make each pod even more distinctive and detailed to make it more realistic--and I might do that one day--but thats not the purpose of this particular model. The intent here is to craft something I can use to create a few never-seen-TOS-scenes as if they were actual TOS screencaps. If you look at the original screen image closely you will notice that some of the pods actually have two ruptures. I intend to try replicating that here. If I were really ambitious I could try to create a model of the one pod the landing party entered to create a few more scenes. In TOS most of that likely could have been a matte painting.
Six pods "damaged" with eleven more to go. In the original screen image a few of the vines were also damaged so I will ponder on how I might show that.
Nine of seventeen pods now done. This is a slow and somewhat tedious process to model a ruptured pod one at time to avoid them looking too much the same.
It looks quite diferent as a "real" model rather than an animated drawing. In TAS the ruptures were shown as red or pink to suggest some lighting was still going on inside. In TOS that would have been impractical for a miniature that would have been used only once. Furthermore If the energy output levels were zero as the Enterprise's scanner readings indicated then I think it's not likely we would have seen much light, if any, coming from inside the pods particularly at a distance. They would have looked dark from a distance and maybe you would see soft lighting much closer such as when the landing party were on the hull of the alien ship. And interestingly in his adaptation of the episode Alan Dean Foster described the ruptured pods being dark when the Enterprise first views the ship on the bridge viewing screen.
Small note--I tried to make sure the pod the Enterprise landing party enters was ruptured in such a way that it could be accessed from the vine the landing party beams onto. You can see it on the right side of the image posted in the previous post above. From this view it looks small, but there is a sizable rip in the pod hull nearly reaching the surface of the vine attached to it. I have also elected to position the ruptures close to how they are depicted on the original onscreen image. That done, though, it doesn't yet look like any of the explosions from the pods would have really affected any of the vines as I have modelled them. None of the vines are in direct line of the direction of blasts from the various pods. However, I could damage some of the vines as if explosions had been set off in some of them--perhaps illustrating a sort of past running battle when the original crew might have been trying to destroy the entity. Oh, btw, twelve of seventeens pods now done.