So, I made this.
- Thread starter Professor Moriarty
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Those shots where it passes over the gratings on the nacelle pylons, it kind of looks like there's some sort of energy moving through the conduits. Did you actually animate it that way, or is this the moire pattern of the grating playing tricks on me?
Refresh my memory, please. This is a 1080 foot Enterprise, right?
It’s both! There is an animated “pulsing” that’s meant to evoke a sense of vast energies being transferred, and the grating itself causes some moire effects.
It is now. There’s just no way to fit a reasonably-sized hangar deck back there if the Enterprise is only 947 feet long. Remember how ridiculously yuuuuge the shuttles looked in the shuttle bay in TOS-R? I’m now convinced that it wasn’t because the shuttles were gigantic; they were roughly the correct size, IF you accept that they are supposed to be 24 feet in length (which is said out loud by our dear Captain Kirk) and not 21 feet, which is the length of Gene Winfield’s studio prop Galileo.
So yeah, at least in the ass end of the Enterprise, I’ve scaled the hangar deck assuming that she’s
(24 ÷ 21) × 947 = 1082 feet in length
if for no other reason then to keep the hangar deck from looking hopelessly cramped. (My hangar, by the way, is a straight-walled half-cylinder; it does not taper in diameter from front to back.)
ETA: 24 feet makes a lot more sense for the shuttle as well. It’s still cramped on the inside, and only children and short adults would be able to stand up inside, but at least it would be approximately the right scale. A 21 foot long shuttle would be the size of a minivan on the inside. So if you accept that class F shuttles really are 24 feet long, and if you accept that the hangar deck should look as roomy as it did in 1967 version of “The Galileo Seven” (and not as teensy as it looked in the 2007 TOS-R version of “The Doomsday Machine”), then I don’t see how you can argue for an Enterprise that’s only 947 feet in length—not unless you are prepared to extend the hangar deck half the length of the secondary hull.
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You know I’ve been doing this stuff for a very long time, and have spent many of those hours excavating the interior of a 947’ ship. It’s problematic, to be sure, but I took what the man gave me and tried to make it work. I’ve resisted the 1080’ figure - until seeing your model. It intrigues me. I’ve always loved the idea of that control room above the flight deck, and you certainly can’t do it at 947’. I also like the way that flight deck does look sorta like the one we saw in TOS.
Have you given any thought to what is behind that big door on the forward flight deck bulkhead? Does it lead to cargo, hangar space, engineering?
Also, I agree with the 24’ shuttlecraft length. It is a reasonable compromise between the 3/4 scale set piece and what the interior set would extrapolate to. It also happens to match what was stated onscreen.
On an unrelated note, I like the internals showing through the Bussard and pylon vents. I’d tone them down a little bit just to avoid them being too distracting, but they really add to the feeling of a fleshed out ship.
Have you given any thought to what is behind that big door on the forward flight deck bulkhead? Does it lead to cargo, hangar space, engineering?
Also, I agree with the 24’ shuttlecraft length. It is a reasonable compromise between the 3/4 scale set piece and what the interior set would extrapolate to. It also happens to match what was stated onscreen.
On an unrelated note, I like the internals showing through the Bussard and pylon vents. I’d tone them down a little bit just to avoid them being too distracting, but they really add to the feeling of a fleshed out ship.
Thanks. You can only see the counter-rotating whirly-mabobs behind the "Bussard collectors" (or whatever the eff the power domes are called in TOS) from a certain angle and only very briefly, so don't stress out too much about 'em. 
BTW and FWIW, the inspiration for this feature is the engine room of BSG-75, aka the Battlestar Galactica. That one episode in the final season when we finally got to see what the FTL drive looked like entranced me, and I decided that my Enterprise needed something similar to convey a sense of vast, mysterious kinetic energies being channeled and manipulated.
What's behind the yellow doors? The cargo deck. I plan on showing a glimpse of it when Commodore Decker steals the Winfield.
BTW and FWIW, the inspiration for this feature is the engine room of BSG-75, aka the Battlestar Galactica. That one episode in the final season when we finally got to see what the FTL drive looked like entranced me, and I decided that my Enterprise needed something similar to convey a sense of vast, mysterious kinetic energies being channeled and manipulated.What's behind the yellow doors? The cargo deck. I plan on showing a glimpse of it when Commodore Decker steals the Winfield.
I guess I should also fess up to something: When I say that my Enterprise is now a member of the embiggened genus, I should have clarified that I haven't actually done anything to the Enterprise or her hangar deck yet. If you look carefully as the camera is about to fly into the hangar at the start of the video, you can tell that the forward wall (where the cargo doors are) is well ahead of where the warp nacelle pylons enter the secondary hull. In other words, the pylons intersect the hull just about where the "FUELING STATION" sign is located.
But here's the thing: this is partly because I think my hangar deck is too long right now. I've already tried shortening it (and scaling down the other features in the bay such as the cargo doors, the "control panel" thingamabob briefly seen next to the cargo doors, the observation and control booths, and the "FUELING STATION") to match a notional Enterprise of 1082 feet, and honestly, if you use a short focal length for the camera (e.g., the 22 mm I used in the video), the hangar still looks plenty long. I just didn't have time to get all that done and make my self-imposed deadline to release the video by June 30th (so that I could at least publish it during Gene Winfield's birthday month). So technically, what you've got in this video is
I'll have to post a follow-up at some point later this summer once everything is re-scaled for 1082 feet.
Oh, and speaking of the shuttle pilot...
...he's Matt Decker.
But here's the thing: this is partly because I think my hangar deck is too long right now. I've already tried shortening it (and scaling down the other features in the bay such as the cargo doors, the "control panel" thingamabob briefly seen next to the cargo doors, the observation and control booths, and the "FUELING STATION") to match a notional Enterprise of 1082 feet, and honestly, if you use a short focal length for the camera (e.g., the 22 mm I used in the video), the hangar still looks plenty long. I just didn't have time to get all that done and make my self-imposed deadline to release the video by June 30th (so that I could at least publish it during Gene Winfield's birthday month). So technically, what you've got in this video is
- A 947-foot Enterprise
- A 21-foot-long shuttlecraft, and
- A shuttle pilot who is only 5'3" tall!
I'll have to post a follow-up at some point later this summer once everything is re-scaled for 1082 feet.Oh, and speaking of the shuttle pilot...
...he's Matt Decker.
Spatial distortion shrunk Matt :P
So, an accounting:
The Galileo II (and the Winfield, derived from the same model) are 100% sub-D modeled. I keep the models un-subdivided until it's time to render them (i.e., I didn't "freeze" the mesh in Modeler; I let the OctaneRender plugin do the subdivision at runtime in Layout). Leaving the model undivided made it easy to make changes during modeling and allows me to select a lower subdivision level when rendering if the models are not close to the camera (it doesn't save rendering time but it does save some memory). I'll never do a hard-body model 100% sub-D again, but this project was a learning exercise; I wanted to see what worked, what was difficult, and what would make me tear what's left of my hair out. Now I know.
Unlike the Winfield, the Galileo II is meant to be as screen-accurate as possible. There are only three changes that I deliberately made from what we saw in TOS:
- She's definitely got some miles on her since "The Way to Eden". The Galileo II has SEEN STUFF.
- She has red and green position lights (a.k.a. navigation lights) embedded in the forward outer corners of her port and starboard winglets. The Galileo II is an amphibious creature of space and air that one can presume sometimes flies where there's lots of other aerospace vehicles in the vicinity. And besides, the Enterprise has them so it's not as if the concept of putting nav lights on a flying vehicle was no longer in vogue by the 2260s. The lights do not alter the silhouette of the class F shuttlecraft, so I'm just going to pretend that my Dad's 25" RCA couldn't quite resolve such a small detail (the lights are barely 1-1/2" square).
- The tailgear doesn't have that second brace behind the Y-shaped upper yoke that would make it mechanically impossible to retract, extend, or even move the tailgear assembly. This model is rigged to retract its tailgear (as well as its forward pair of landing pads), but in a concession to canon you don't see the tailgear retract in the video I posted earlier this week.
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The Winfield, as I mentioned the other day, is my have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too model. She has several deviations from the canonical Galileo II:
- Warp engines! The Winfield is unambiguously equipped with warp drive. There are several TOS episodes that imply the Galileo also has warp drive ("Metamorphosis", "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"), but there are also several that are pretty clear she does not ("The Galileo Seven", "The Menagerie"). So I split the difference: the Galileo II may or may not have it, but the Winfield definitely does.
- Forward landing gear with a larger contact surface area than the Galileo/II. The Galileo has landing gear that are kinda like a Boeing 737: exposed to the elements even when retracted. The curvature of the landing pads follow the profile of the cylindrical nacelles in which they're stowed, so they don't have much of a surface contact patch with the ground when the shuttle has landed. On the Winfield, you can see how I modified the forward gear to have side "flaps" that fold out when the gear are extended, giving the pads a nice, flat contact area with the ground.
- Landing lights. Is that what they are on the Galileo/II? Who knows. But they look like a pair of 70/80's rectangular headlights, so the Winfield has got 'em.
- The PUSH button next to the portside hatch is illuminated.
- The name itself. Maybe Winfield is a famous astronomer who hasn't been born yet!
(BTW, the script used for both of the shuttle names were hand-drawn by me; no fonts were harmed in the making of those letters. I'm not thrilled with the capital W in Gene's surname but I went through about half a dozen styles 
before deciding not to obsess on it any further. But I am a bit proud of the fi ligature. ) - The "technical markings"/serial number next to the portside hatch is different. I'll let you suss out what it means
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I agree, just fine. If I may though, @Professor Moriarty the 'W' does seem to hug the 'i' closer than the other letters do their respective neighbors. Maybe that was having an effect on your outcome?Nice work.
(IIRC, the term for managing the spacing between letters is 'kerning.')
It is indeed called kerning and yes, now that you say that I do see it. What’s weird is that I never noticed it while I was drawing the name… it’s only really noticeable to me now that it’s slapped on the hull. 
I think I need to angle the lowercase i away from the W just a bit as well, and it will all flow together more smoothly.
I think I need to angle the lowercase i away from the W just a bit as well, and it will all flow together more smoothly.It is indeed called kerning and yes, now that you say that I do see it. What’s weird is that I never noticed it while I was drawing the name… it’s only really noticeable to me now that it’s slapped on the hull.
The Galileo and Winfield are beautifully crafted @Professor Moriarty
A suggestion regarding the W and i spacing... rather than change the angle, just move the W ahead just a bit and use the f and i as a reference to how much spacing to have between the two letters. (Or just leave it as-is.)
You can argue 947 or 1980 and about what way the bridge faces and all the other canon type debates. But when it gets to the hangar deck you can make it look like it did on screen (huge!) or you can make it "real" (and then you're back to arguing about ship size).
This is definitely a part of the ship where I say "make it look good".
This is definitely a part of the ship where I say "make it look good".
Hopefully I am (making it look good, that is). There’s still work yet to be done besides re-scaling; right now the twin elevated side control booths and the observation deck interiors need to be modeled, and I need to add some detailing on the four side entrances. (I actually had started to model the elevated control booths when I really started noticing the scale problems—one of the reasons I ran out of time and just put opaque dark glass on those features.)
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