So, I made this.

[Professor Moriarty]

Ay yi yi. Falling all the way down to page 9? tsk tsk tsk I guess I'd better post something.

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I haven't touched the Enterprise model since I started working on the Constellation, so this week I applied a similar (but green-grayer) coating to the Enterprise that I used to good effect on the Constellation, and I used the moodier lighting setups I've been working on with NCC-1017. C&C as always are appreciated!

 

[scifieric]

OH! That's just BEAUTIFUL!

I love the hexagonal shapes you have on your planetary sensor array! Lovely!

 

[TrekMD]

Beautiful!

 

[Kaiser]

Sweet

 

[Professor Moriarty]

OH! That's just BEAUTIFUL!

I love the hexagonal shapes you have on your planetary sensor array! Lovely!

Thanks. It’s not a texture, BTW. The planetary sensor array actually is a geodesic dome.

Yeah, I may have gone a little overboard on the detailing.

 

[137th Gebirg]

No such thing.

 

[Santaman]

Really awesome work there, lovely details, think you and @scifieric both have created extremely gorgeous Enterprises.
I really like the colours on the ship.

 

[Mage]

That is simply stunning.......

 

[ashleytinger]

That is amazing. Love your work!

 

[scifieric]

Thanks. It’s not a texture, BTW. The planetary sensor array actually is a geodesic dome.

Yeah, I may have gone a little overboard on the detailing.

Holy cow! That is simply AMAZING! So, a thicker grid design, or simply a different texture, or an internal geodesic dome? It looks sensational!

 

[ExtremeSail]

Just read through these ten pages, how have I not seen this thread before?! Incredible work Professor, everything here looks so damn good!

 

[Gepard]

That looks great. Is that an HDRI image behind the windows, or did you build little rooms in there? I'm struggling on a project myself to make convincing ship windows, so any pointers you can give would be helpful.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

Holy cow! That is simply AMAZING! So, a thicker grid design, or simply a different texture, or an internal geodesic dome? It looks sensational!

It’s a tessellated flattened half-sphere that I very carefully edited to merge sets of five and six tris into pentagons and hexagons (believe it or not a geodesic dome isn’t 100% hexagons). Once that was done, I used a LightWave tool that shifts the edges of pentagons and hexagons inward 100 cm. This shifting creates the “ribs” of the dome, which got a slightly less transparent material than the "panels" of the dome.

(Edited to add: My Constellation model has something similar, but with different materials and colors for the panels and ribs. BTW, the colors for the Constellation planetary sensor array are no accident--they're a nice shade of green as a small homage to all of those AMT kits I built circa fifty years ago. Minus the droopy warp nacelles, of course )

 

[Professor Moriarty]

That looks great. Is that an HDRI image behind the windows, or did you build little rooms in there? I'm struggling on a project myself to make convincing ship windows, so any pointers you can give would be helpful.

With one exception, everything you see behind a porthole is a little bitty low-poly room or corridor so that parallax works from any camera angle and so that the animated crewpersons walking by the portholes have someplace to walk. (I took out the animated crewpeople for these test videos; they'll be back for the main event.) The one exception is what's behind the clamshell doors of the hangar deck--that's way too large to go low-poly. There's a medium-detail hangar deck behind the doors when they're open that's used when the camera is outside the ship, and a separate high-detail "virtual set" used when the camera is inside the hangar. The medium-poly hangar deck is in a separate set of layers in LightWave; when the clamshell doors are closed the hangar deck isn't included in the Enterprise model to save memory.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

Enhance...

... zoom in and enhance...

... enhance...

... zoom in and enhance.

Yeeeahh, I may have gone a bit overboard with the interiors behind the portholes.

 

[cardinal biggles]

^I like your engine room! It looks like you've got some elements of the "Breweryprise" from the 2009 movie and the Phase II warp reactor in there.

Also, I noticed that on some of your shots of the dorsal view of the Enterprise there were two rings of raised dots around the saucer. Was there a particular purpose to these?

 

[Gepard]

Enhance...

... zoom in and enhance...

... enhance...

... zoom in and enhance.

Yeeeahh, I may have gone a bit overboard with the interiors behind the portholes.

Jesus Christ dude, what the fuck.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

I like your engine room! It looks like you've got some elements of the "Breweryprise" from the 2009 movie and the Phase II warp reactor in there.

Thanks! The warp reactor is indeed an homage to the Phase II engine room. As for the 2009 Enterprise, that abomination is definitely not what I was aiming for... but now you've gotten in my head, dammit, and I have to admit those pipes going every which way is a bit of an echo of the Budweiserprise. Goddammit.

Oh well, no one but you guys will ever see this. The engine room (which BTW spans five decks) started out pretty simple with just some random shapes and lights, which was fine for 480p back in the late 2000s. But when I restarted this project and was shooting 4K regularly, it was obvious the ship was full of nothing but randomly-shaped blocks so I had to put something back there that would hold up for close-ups. It still won't hold up if the camera actually goes inside, but with the camera outside, a little motion blur, a little post-processed film grain, etc. I think it passes the sniff test.

Also, I noticed that on some of your shots of the dorsal view of the Enterprise there were two rings of raised dots around the saucer. Was there a particular purpose to these?

I think I mentioned this somewhere a few pages/months ago (JFC I just realized I started working on this iteration a year ago) but in my "head canon" the rust ring on the upper primary hull is the location of a series of escape lifeboat hatches. The raised metal bits are the hold-down clamps for the hatches.

Jesus Christ dude, what the fuck.

 

[Tallguy]

As always, my balls out honest critique. First: Wow. Second, you managed that back-lit rim lighting look that TNG and (sadly) TOS-R always went for but gave it some warmth. I'd be curious to hear how you don't think it lives up to what you're going for because it looks like you're nailing it.

OTOH, looking at the animation, the specular (are they still called that in these days of HDRs and PBR textures?) highlights are either too shiny or too big (to my eyes only, of course). They are very DS9. If that's what you're going for, spot on! (Flipping between this thread and Erics gives me a little whiplash.)

Gorgeous art, man. We've been at this for 15 years!

 

[cardinal biggles]

Thanks! The warp reactor is indeed an homage to the Phase II engine room. As for the 2009 Enterprise, that abomination is definitely not what I was aiming for... but now you've gotten in my head, dammit, and I have to admit those pipes going every which way is a bit of an echo of the Budweiserprise. Goddammit.

It wasn't the pipes so much as that big blueish metal tank in front of the warp reactor. Kind of reminded me of these: