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New Original Series USS Enterprise

That looks damned nice! I wish I knew how to use Blender.
Great time to learn. Heck, there's even some nut who did a whole tutorial series on how to build the Enterprise on YouTube. (What he said. I hate it when the BBS doesn't show me the last post!)

(Seriously there is so much learning material out there, I'm intensely jealous of newcomers today.)
 
Did a little texturing on the Navigational Deflector / Main Sensor Dish (big dish in front of the Engineering hull) tonight. Last night I came up with my own version of a "glass" shader. It is being used on the bridge dome (upper planetary array), the lower saucer dome (lower planetary array), and the "lit" dome above the shuttle bay. Some may not be aware that the first pilot for Star Trek (The Cage) had no internal lighting at all for the models!

Some people who are paying attention have pointed out some things that I had on this model that technically didn't appear until later. I think I got most of them, but there may be more. If you spot something "wrong", please point it out to me.

I hope to accomplish a little more day-by-day.

Let me know what you think.

88-TextureDish-A.png

88-ShuttleBayDomeLight-A.png

88-CageCompare-A.png

88-DeflectorDishLowerPlanetSensor-A.png

88-DeflectorDishUpperPlanetSensor-A.png

87Fixes-C.png


All done in Blender 3D.

Thank you for looking in!
 
It looks like a genuinely physical miniature. I can’t tell it’s a 3D model just by looking at it. If there is a giveway that it’s not physical I can’t see it.

Odd that MJ would make the dorsal blue like that.

Actually a giveway would be that we know the original had imperfections when constructed amd your model doesn’t have those. But that would be noticeable only to those who would know what to look for.
 
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It looks like a genuinely physical miniature. I can’t tell it’s a 3D model just by looking at it. If there is a giveway that it’s not physical I can’t see it.

Odd that MJ would make the dorsal blue like that.

Actually a giveway would be that we know the original had imperfections when constructed amd your model doesn’t have those. But that would be noticeable only to those who would know what to look for.
Actually, I don't know if Jefferies made it blue. I'm trying to remember what the first color drawings looked like. He may have, but it certainly came from Datin's crew that way. The blue was like a lacquer or a varnish that was painted over the hull color.

It got sanded off for Where No Man Has Gone Before, but a little blue was introduced into that neck.

And of course, for the production version, the FRONT of the neck became a blueish color! LOL! Go figure! Someone really liked that blue color.

*Edit*
Dang, I really meant to say, Thank You! You are very kind!

I actually talked about the decision to NOT include some of the imperfections of the 11 foot model into my version of the model with my wife. It was a definite decision.
 
Including imperfections would matter only if you wanted to model the filming prop as opposed to modelling the ship the prop is meant to represent.
Yeah, I'm probably more modeling the prop. The prop's job was to represent the star ship, but I want that 11 foot model! LOL!

It is an interesting thought.

Thank you!
 
I have a LENGTHY course on how to use Blender 3D (for beginners) to make their own USS Enterprise here:

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Your timing is perfect. Tonight I decided to jump off the sinking USS LightWave. Thursday I'm going to download Blender+Octane, fire up your videos, and dive in. Thanks in advance for the tutorials!
 
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Your timing is perfect. Tonight I decided to jump off the sinking USS LightWave. Thursday I'm going to download Blender+Octane, fire up your videos, and dive in. Thanks in advance for the tutorials!
Oh man, I never thought I'd see the day!

Just beware, my videos are for Blender 2.78 / 2.79. The latest version of Blender is 2.81 and is fairly different! I haven't taken the minor leap yet to learn how to use the new form of Blender.
 
Well... It's a minor leap and it isn't. Prof. M, some of the changes in 2.8 were direct concessions to users of other software so that might work in your favor. (I think some of these concessions were unwarranted, but I'm not going to get into the right mouse button holy war here.)

I'm not sure what I'd do first. But I think I would recommend hitting YouTube for some generic tutorials to show you where stuff is and then go to Eric's series so you can figure out how to translate them. All the tools are still there, but they moved a lot of things around.

There is more educational content for Blender than I have ever seen before. It's amazing.
 
There is more educational content for Blender than I have ever seen before. It's amazing.
I've seen more and more people using Blender for professional work. Once the tool set eclipses other software packages AND remains free, I expect to see it used even more, perhaps becoming THE software package for 3D in entertainment. But, that's just my idle speculation at the moment.
 
It could happen. Look at what happened with CinePaint, for starters. From the handful of contacts I have in the biz, it sounds like the main impediment to widespread adoption of Blender is inertia--DCC artists are trained and have eons of experience in industry stalwarts like Maya. As much as their bosses hate Autodesk and Adobe, there's a lot of human factors lock-in that's going to take a while to shake out.
 
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