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AndyP's Trek building thread

Got another update for today, further refinements to the conference table. Struggling to get it just right still. But it does look fine for close-ups for where the crew would sit.

First of all, I like the table, actually. Fits the vibe of the rest of the room, is sleek, functional, and not over-designed. What problems do you feel it has?

Guess this is why I should not design furniture.
No! Stop that kind of talk. It limits the possibilities of growth in an artistic endeavor. Sure, you may not be a strong furniture designer yet, but that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't design furniture for your own renders. Its through struggle and iteration that we become stronger at a thing. Keep going, keep practicing.

Unless of course you really just don't enjoy the process and have no desire or passion to design furniture for your projects. ;)
 
@Donny Thanks! To me it feels like it might be too thin, but when I increase the thickness it feels too thick. I might just be over thinking it because I keep staring at it. Also since it's an original design I have no real world counterpart to compare it to. For now planning on leaving it as is, but I plan on adding a small control panel at the captains seat.
 
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@Firebird I definitely look to The Orville for design ideas. Aside from the bridge, the rest of the sets would fit in perfectly with an updated 24th century design aesthetic. Not that there's anything wrong with the bridge, it does contain trek elements.
 
First of all, I like the table, actually. Fits the vibe of the rest of the room, is sleek, functional, and not over-designed. What problems do you feel it has?


No! Stop that kind of talk. It limits the possibilities of growth in an artistic endeavor. Sure, you may not be a strong furniture designer yet, but that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't design furniture for your own renders. Its through struggle and iteration that we become stronger at a thing. Keep going, keep practicing.

Unless of course you really just don't enjoy the process and have no desire or passion to design furniture for your projects. ;)
@Donny you are a Good Guy. :adore:
 
@Santaman thanks!

Minor update, added a pot filled with bamboo sticks to the room to add additional décor. Modeled one section of bamboo and then just duplicated it up along the z local x axis, rotated it, then duplicated it again repeat, then when I had a height that I wanted, I joined the duplicated objects together to create 1 pole, but did this a few times to add some variation. I also realized after the fact that most bamboo poles were thinner than how I made mine, so I adjusted the scale at the object level. This would mean that it would have distorted the scale on some of the segments, however I can live with it as it adds some variance to the shapes and sizes of the segments used.

I'm not calling the room done, but also I am at the point where I am not sure what to do next, aside from a control panel on the table. Further items such as coffee cups or padds will be added to the room when I get back into an animation phase.

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I think these would also be great during treaty negotiations as for when the delegates get tired of talking and want to hit each other over the head... I kid. :razz:

This will probably be the last update for the week as my roommate and I are going to Wizard World this weekend. (Wizard World being 1 of 2 of the Chicago Comic Cons) We are going in TNG Season 1 uniforms, but I need to add an elastic waist to my Roommate's uniform still. I also need to make some sort of tricorder holster for his, as the 3d printed one's I ordered on ebay never arrived. I'm bummed though because we got tickets for tomorrow, and the Schedule which was difficult to find says that Shatner appears Sunday. Would have loved to see that panel. Saturday is Q&A's with the various cast members of Arrow.
 
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@Donny good idea, should be an easy thing to fix, i'll take a look at it on Monday. There are a few different ways I can approach it.

@Santaman I thought about putting a table with some beverages, I think it'll be in the Captain's Ready Room. The stripper pole would fit better in Engineering. The lights from the warp core would make for a fun night club.

@Firebird I think it would be one way around the CBS Fan Film rules? (Joking of course. But it's still true?)
 
I think a table with beverages is a good idea, I guess that you at least need coffee to stay awake if there's a long staff meeting where they have pie charts and drone on about efficiency and other stuff.
Stripper poles in the engineroom.. hmm.. well yes, the lighting would be good there.. :angel:
 
Oh boy. This week flew by. It's already 9:30pm Friday night.

Wizard world was a lot of fun, however I realized late last week that we were going to miss Shatner because I bought tickets on the wrong day. The convention was small, and there were not a lot of panels. Mostly Arrow cast, meet and greets.

But my roommate and I had fun going in costume.

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Monday I updated the bamboo poles, I varied the length and rotations of each segment on the pole. Then I varied where the pole would have been "cut" I tried to do a few different sizes anywhere between .5" radius all the way up to 1" radius. What I am considering doing is using blender's physics engine to drop the poles into the pot so that it looks idk more realistic as if someone dropped the sticks into the pot, just to give it that extra detail, we'll see if I do that.

At this point I am happy with the room, but may add more details to the room later on. For now, no bar table, but I might add one later as I plan on making one for the captains ready room.

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I have a few more rooms to go until I have a complete set (ready room, Sr Officers Quarters, Jr Officer Quarters, Science lab, transporter room) however I've been getting more and more anxious to revisit my bridge. (I also intend to revisit engineering.)

The bridge set that I used in my Animation short, I built about 4 years back. It is starting to show its age. I've also come a long way with my modeling skills since I first built it. When I started doing my short, I gave it a graphical overall, but when it came to rendering, having as many textures as I did (including 5 textures per character) quickly ate up the 10gb vram on my 3080.

I am planning on going back and updating the set, piece by piece. This will not be a burn to the ground and start over, but I see something, I fix something sort of thing. I've already updated the side stations, the station dividers, wall padding (minus the MSD section) and ceiling (minus the round aluminum light fixtures)

The side stations I completely rebuilt using the dimensions found here. @Donny I wanted to ask if during your build of the Ent-E bridge if you found these measurements to be correct? Additionally I lined up the measurements of this engineering panel (here and here) compared to the one's I made, and it seemed to fit.

I've also updated the LCARS. My goal is to cut down the number of different animated screens per station, and then put filler generic graphics on other displays. I am also trying to find a good balance between what we saw on screen and what changes I have made (such as the Nemesis inspired wide screen displays.) Eventually I will be adding station titles, or possibly the barcode style ones as seen on Voyager. The aluminum detailing all uses one texture, I packed each variation into a different color channel.

On the ceiling I have updated the main lighting to the materials I learned about from @Rekkert along with putting the grating texture on the side stations

The railings will likely stay the same, unless I find references to the original rail posts that were used on the TMP, then TFF, TUC, ENT-B, bridge. I swear there was a good picture posted from an auction image somewhere on the forums but for the life of me I cannot find them today.

Going to do my best to post before and after pictures as time goes on.

Before:
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Now:
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The side stations I completely rebuilt using the dimensions found here. @Donny I wanted to ask if during your build of the Ent-E bridge if you found these measurements to be correct? Additionally I lined up the measurements of this engineering panel (here and here) compared to the one's I made, and it seemed to fit.

If I recall correctly, I think I generally found them to be correct, yes.
 
@Wednesday Addams Thanks! The uniforms themselves I got off of ebay, but sewed in a waistband, the tricorders were modified playmates tricorders from the 90's. The boots I got off of ASOS, and the pips and combadge were off of Amazon. I took it one step further and bought a carrying case similar to what is seen on the various shows, so that we looked even more in character.

@Donny Awesome! Thanks.

@Santaman unfortunately I was the redshirt, but I went as a commander so hopefully I survived!

Todays update:

I finished updating the ceiling, I added the recessed lighting, as well as some rib detailing that is on the set. In each of the light fixtures I put an area lamp. I choose area lamp because spot lamps did not really show any light on the edges of the wall unless the spot angle was super high like 120°.

Additionally today I made some generic LCARS displays, where I used channel packing to create 3 different boring non-animated displays using 1 image, with the swept in the alpha channel. From there I used color ramps to color the displays. I tried to keep the boring displays to the lower level of each station. Hopefully it is not super noticeable that there are 3 displays repeated multiple times, but it's not like they did not do that in TNG multiple times ever.

I also sliced and diced up my what I am calling filler LCARS so that there is variation between stations.

So far I am very happy with the modifications I've made to this set, and I feel like I am just getting started.

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