I'd have to go back and check, but didn't the D also look more 'modern'/metallic in Picard's dream with Data in season 1? Looks like they've reverted to the softer carpeted look.
IIRC, it's an entirely different VFX team since Season 1. Season 1 also got the model wrong.The made a new model just for the show and it had the wrong details.
The history of Galaxy class CG models is complicated. Off the top of my head, there was the Generations model by ILM, the DS9/Voyager model, the Enterprise "These Are the Voyages" Model... all of which share a heritage as they passed through different studios and modelers hands. There was also a Ships of the Line calendar model, and perhaps most relevantly, the Eaglemoss model.
Eaglemoss (and Star Trek Online) are vitally important to Trek VFX from an archival reason. A lot of that 90s CGI was thought lost until it was recovered for Eaglemoss from long forgotten servers and hard drives as studios shut down, people got laid off, etc. As it stands right now, I believe the most comprehensive archive of 90s Trek - Enterprise CG is on the drives of the Sam Cockings of Trekyards, and the modelers (their names escape me for the moment) of the Eaglemoss Magazine. The thing about Eaglemoss is that they used the 90s-00s meshes as starting points, and gave a lot of that old CGI modern high-fidelity CG. A lot of the DS9/ Battle of Sector 001 ships, for example, were completely unsuitable for modern publication or CG, until Eaglemoss finances "modern gold master" (let's call it) versions of the ships that corrected old problems and answered long lignering questions as to size and function.
With the Galaxy class, because of its importance, this was a particularly laborious process (Trekyards went into it) because of how many versions of the model there has been over the years, and sometimes conflicting details of the physical motion control models from the 1990s. What is "right" when the original models don't all agree?
Long story short, there is a couple VERY high fidelity public-sector model that's seen many years of revisions, and there is the Eaglemoss Galaxy class CG model, which might as well be the "modern gold master" of the design from a CG perspective given the work that's been put into it and how it can trace its direct heritage to the Generations mode. The Picard Season 1 CG model had no heritage it was brand new.
Which leads to the question: what Model is this Enterprise D? Is it a new model made by the studio? Did they use the Eaglemoss model? Do they even have it? The Eaglemoss model would be (by far) the most accurate to the motion control because any new model would undoubtedly introduce errors (eliminating errors in the other models has taken decades). But CGI rights (and interests) are complicated. It's not clear (but it seems unlikely) there is an "official" CGI Galaxy class model anymore, or that the concept of an "official model" of any ship still exists as a concept, as VFX production gets passed around. This could mean that errors creep into legacy, and even existing ship designs, as the years roll on, because CGI of previous productions isn't archived once aired.
I've tried to get a straight answer from David Blass on CGI ownership for some time, and he's been very circumspect about it. It's unclear if Paramount/CBS even has the Eaglemoss models, or the 90s models. Or for that matter many of the Picard models. There seems to be some centralized collection and archiving by Paramount/CBS, but not much and not comprehensive and much of it is on the servers of its VFX contract houses (which go out of business all the time and sell off servers).This is relevant because in the 90s/00s, Berman-era Trek stuck with a few studios for CG- Foundation and Digital Muse for the CGI era of Voyager/DS9, EdenFX for Enterprise, ILM and Digital Domain for most movies - which allowed for continuity between models (which got passed around on producers requests) and limited introduction of errors. It's unclear if this is happening in the Streaming Trek era, but it doesn't sound like it from what I gathered. Especially since a bunch of CG artists just got laid off after completing work on Picard Season 3, we could easily be heading into another lost-meshes-on-private-computers situation again. Especially in the WFH era.
There were "official" models of Enterprise TOS through Enterprise E... the physical model. There is, right now, an official Enterprise F model used on Star Trek: Picard. Unless its preserved, it could easily be lost, because studios are not sentimental about digital archiving, unless they intend to use it again. And a lost Enterprise F model, even as digital, is the same as losing a motion control physical model.
