Notice that the ceiling skylight is not in the room...does it fit in the corridor just outside the room? Another area to look into from the outside?
Yes, they are always watching. Although how they ever signed off on the bridge rail that is roughly knee height to those on the upper level, I'll never know... Good catch! Yes, the "skylight" was the major factor limiting the depth of this room. Whatever it is, it is beyond the inner wall of the lounge. I do not believe they are skylights. They wouldn't seem to serve much purpose. I like to think of them as some kind of sensor platform. Perhaps the ship turns it's upper side to a planet while mapping it from orbit. If they are some kind of equipment, I imagine they would need support machinery beneath them. It may well interrupt the corridor at that point. In any case, I purposely avoided the area. Here are some new renders from the outside looking in. The whole original point of this exercise is to have a realistic interior visible though the windows. One issue that I was curious about was to judge the relative brightness of the interior compared with the starlit darkness of space. My pet theory has always been that the Enterprise looks so evenly lit because we are seeing it with a futuristic, highly light sensitive "camera." The hull is mainly lit by the diffuse glow of the surrounding stars, with key lights provided by whichever passing stars are particularly bright or close. The interiors usually look featureless and bright because they are overexposed. I picture a shifting pattern of brighter lighting playing across the ship as it travels through space passing various bright stars. The model I am building will be able to test these ideas and give us a look at how that might appear. It should be a richer visual experience than they could have pulled off in '66; and more ambitious than anything the remastered version attempted. i will also "turn down the exposure" so that we can judge how the hull would look under those conditions when the interiors are not overexposed. These renders are using an untextured exterior hull surface. This is still all a WIP. These first two views are a little overexposed so we get the impression that the light inside the windows is a little dazzling. And in this one, we are closer to the window and our eyes have adjusted. This will look more realistic with the recessed, double window panes installed. Baby steps... M.
This would be perfect for a remastered DAY OF THE DOVE, where the “camera” could go from deck to deck…with TOS fight footage seen in each window…
I can just imagine the camera gliding past the portholes where the audience sees the 400 trapped Enterprise crew, faces and bodies pressed up against the transparent aluminum, packed into the segregated sections like sardines. Think about all of those tribbles visible through the windows in that Short Trek episode “The Trouble With Harvey”, but with red, gold, and blue Starfleet uniforms on. The only problem is, if they did something like this, it would settle once and for all the exact location of the Engine Room. Why would you want to rob legions of nerds the pleasure of endlessly arguing over that subject — a debate that’s been running for almost sixty years now?!
I know it's been quite a while since I added to this thread, but I've made some significant progress in this project and thought I'd share. Work on the Crew Lounge got my juices flowing. One thing leads to another and I found myself wanting to model that other interior space that can be visible from outside the ship: The Hangar Deck. I also wanted an appropriate setting to make some renders of the Shuttlecraft model I had made. As before, my personal criteria demanded that whatever I came up with must fit within a 947' ship. It must also respect exterior elements like window placements. Finally, it must be plausible. That meant I needed to plan out how it would be used and make it workable. For example, how do they bring aboard cargo? How does one access the aft control booths? It was a puzzle that was a lot of fun to assemble. The Hangar Deck is one of the spaces that must be adjusted to fit the ship. The miniature set we saw onscreen does not fit into the hull. Some folks despair and say it can't be done. Some compensate by enlarging the whole ship until it does fit, causing other major problems in the process. Your mileage may vary and the Enterprise of your imagination may differ from what I propose, but I can tell you that a Hangar that looks very much like the onscreen version can be made to fit into the hull. And there are odd little details that align in ways that seem to indicate that this might be close to what Jefferies had in mind. But enough talk; here is the Enterprise of my imagination... Port Hangar Observation Gallery, familiar view looking forward: Looking aft: Looking down onto the Flight Deck: On Hangar Deck. A preflight inspection of the Shuttlecraft: A view of the Shuttlecraft from the Starboard control booth: The Shuttlecraft about to launch: ...and returning:
I love all the details from the sets that you've kept, despite the partial redesign. It presents the TV sets as " as close as possible"
It's certainly very pretty and wonderfully done. I've just come to hate the "real" sized hangar deck. (I'm sure I'll make another one myself some day.) It's as good as the compromise is going to get. Terrific! EDIT EDIT: Your shuttlecraft is to die for!
Absolutely beautiful observation deck, hangar and shuttlecraft design. (I only question the choice of archway and bulkhead shape into the control booth...visually, it appears upside down but I see why because you continued the booth angles into the walkway.)
Thank you all for the kind remarks. Regarding the booth at the end of the observation gallery: I tried a rectangular door in it first and didn't like the look of it. I may revisit it and remove the entire wall, making it an extension of the gallery rather than a separate booth. After all, we never actually saw it from the inside. We can take a pretty free hand in interpreting this detail. Another adjustment I may make is to move the exterior windows further forward. This is the port side of the ship. For my project, I am proceeding from the assumption that we never saw this side and it must be different from the starboard side. My reasons are these: Jefferies depicted the windows in his drawings as not bilaterally symmetrical. Also, we see round portholes on the starboard side where they line up with the gallery; but we see rectangular windows from the inside on the port side in COTK. Initially, I merely placed these square windows in the same location on the port side as the round windows on the starboard side. But this puts one of them inside the end booth and there isn't enough wall space for it there. Additionally, we see both windows in COTK, and neither looks to be inside the booth. I basically leapfrogged the aft window over the forward one in this case; but looking at it now, I think I should move both of them further up. They are closer to the forward end of the gallery in the scene and I have the freedom to make the port exterior side however I want to. M.
Just as an fyi, we do see Enterprise's port side on a few occasions. In "The Alternative Factor" from port-aft view and "Elaan of Troyius" from a close port-aft view and also "Dagger of the Mind" where she passes close to camera and slides off to the distance. FWIW, you could just consider your portholes as covered and hidden from view as well. YMMV
Time for an update. I have moved the port side Observation Gallery viewports further forward to better reflect what we saw in COTK. Here's the familiar perspective on them: Spurred on by a comment from Henoch, I also revisited the doorway into the booth-like projection at the end of the gallery. I opened it up to be one with the gallery, which gave me some room for a break table: And here's a view from that table, looking across the bay: Finally, here's another thing we know happened from time to time, but we never got to see: The Shuttlecraft being lowered down to the storage deck: Now I don't have immediate plans to model that area, so it is currently un-detailed; but this gives you a general idea of how this procedure would look. More to come later. Trek on! M.