Smooth as in a blank area? Yeah. Looking at Tallguy's excellent catalogue this smooth look made many appearances over S1-3. I think the only feature that made a one episode appearance was the rectangular extensions on the end of the nacelles in "The Cage".
I dunno. If the Enterprise was uniformaly the same width then it could work but that's not the case with the primary hull being wider than the engineering hull.
Happy New Year everyone I hope you're all staying safe and being merry. I had not planned on looking at the interior of the Enterprise for a while but am posting this one up because I needed some possible dimensions for windows and hatches. So I hope this might help someone else that was curious. So here we go. Rough dimensions for the exterior windows in the "Mark of Gideon" observation room/viewing port scene: ~335mm from interior to glass, 117mm thick glass and another 65mm thick outer shutter. Window is overall 1.32m wide and 825mm tall. For comparison, the exterior window frame in "The Conscience of the King" measured 900mm x 900mm and ~127mm from interior to presumably where the glass is. If similar then there would be an interior shutter, some thick glass and then an outer shutter.
This detail about how thick the outer hull of the ship appears on the show is especially useful for me, thanks for nailing down the numbers! It did always strike me as odd that the hull depth in COK was much shallower than the one in MOG
You're welcome, Mytran I was looking at the outer shutter and revised it once I realized that it looks curved. This would make it blend a lot easier with the outer hull. Also, it could be interpreted to be thicker (leading to an alternate version) since there is only one angle that was shown. Outer shutter revised to ~62mm thick and the alternate version at ~118mm thick. I noticed the oddity with TCOTK observation room windows as well. Perhaps the inner hull is thinner there (because it's there for observing shuttle operations?) where as the viewing port from MOG is connected to a populated part of the ship that has a much stronger inner hull?
I"m curious how you do your camera matching since you don't have the original camera lens info. Very impressive.
Thanks, PixelMagic That's a good question. Yeah, lacking the camera lens info and position in 3D space makes it a bit of a puzzle! It is a lot of trial-and-error. For example, this match with the Mark of Gideon room went something like this: 1. Draw out perspective lines to find the vanishing point in this image. 2. Place a stand-in figure that is Shatner's height and in roughly the same pose in Lightwave. 3. Place camera roughly shoulder height pointed at figure. 4. Use Lightwave's basic camera match (match perspective) to line up on the vanishing point. 5. Create the walls and curve them roughly to match. 6. Here I noticed that I could see the floor in the background so I reduced the vertical field of view and adjusted camera pitch and height while still looking to retain the perspective. I eventually settled on 70mm with adjusted pitch and height. 7. I then matched against these earlier images (1, 2) of the two coming up to the viewport. Since these two images are of the camera panning and slightly pitching it was quick to match. 8. Now I had 3 angles to work with and I refined and corrected the interior until it was consistent across all three matches. Sometimes for objects with known dimensions I'll use an old plugin, Worley's Camera Match, to do the matching. There was a nice plugin that I miss called Fi's Camera Match but unfortunately it was never maintained and didn't work on the 64bit versions of Lightwave. There are still some scenes I stay away from due to lack of good reference points.
Don't assume the inner surface Kirk touches is the hull, rather, it is a bulkhead or wall. It's thickness to include space behind it for power lines and plumbing could run up to the "outer window" layer, and not hull thickness.
That's certainly a possibility, but I know I'd feel safer with more than 12 inches of bulkhead between me and the dark reaches of outer space!
FWIW, I'm treating the inner surface that Kirk touches in MOG as the interior bulkhead for the interior hull. 400mm out is the exterior of the interior hull (this includes the 117mm thick glass). The inner shutter slides up and is on the inside of the interior hull. The interior hull plating would be about 40mm thick, matching the inner shutter. Beyond that is the 62-118mm outer shutters which in my mind would slide behind the outer hull which would have be a matching 62-118mm thick. I could imagine these shutters also sliding forward to be flush with the outer hull when closed. The TCOTK room would presumably be similar but not have as thick of an interior hull gap. From the inner surface to the the 117mm thick glass is 127mm. An inner shutter may or may not be present. The inner hull thickness would be about 40mm thick. Beyond the glass would be a similar outer shutter and outer hull. Since the outer shutters are not in view even after they are opened in MOG then TCOTK could also have those parts out of view as well. The outer shutter and outer hull could then have 62-118mm thick outer shutters and a 62-118mm thick outer hull.
LOL - I think we just are so used to not seeing the plates that we subconsciously omit them. At least that's why I miss them
Reading through this entire thread has been amazing. I agree with what everyone wrote back in 2010 - your work is the best I've seen on this subject, then and now. Did you ever get past the above WIP regarding the engineering/secondary hull? I would love to see what thinking and progress you made on this. It is truly remarkable.
I have long wondered what the nacelle domes would look like lighted yet also with the dome spikes still in place.
Thanks! I had made some progress but put it aside for a while. Right now I'm working on getting the hull and port placement correct for my version of the Enterprise that has all the features seen from Season 1 thru 3 with the exception of the indented endcaps from "The Cage". I'll eventually return back to the interior once I get the exterior to a point I'm satisfied with. Me too I'm quite happy that it all fits and could work mechanically.
I have this idea of the spikes having electrical arcs like globes--except narrowing in rings towards the spike.
I'm rather stuck on the engineering hull. I had based my most recent version on the Petri Blomvquist Modeler's Guide version on CultTVman's website but there are some issues with screen matching that I have not figured out yet. I'm finishing up on my Class-J in a different thread but I'm certain I'll have to re-build the engineering hull by camera-matching it to some high-resolution reference photos from the NASM restoration.