Metalball studios on youtube, might be one of your closest bets so far?
Size Comparisons Only
- Thread starter Janewaysson
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Metalball studios on youtube, might be one of your closest bets so far?
There's the old standby that I occasionally still refer to: Jeff Russell's STARSHIP DIMENSIONS (merzo.net)
This is where a LOT of the static ship comparison charts out there came from, actually, but this one is the original. It also used to be dynamic and interactive, but it looks like Jeff might have turned that feature off when he put it into "Archive" mode.
This is where a LOT of the static ship comparison charts out there came from, actually, but this one is the original. It also used to be dynamic and interactive, but it looks like Jeff might have turned that feature off when he put it into "Archive" mode.
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They dynamic & interactive comparison mode only worked with IE5, it doesn't work with newer browser versions.
I wish we would get an official size of the Protostar, all the comparisons I've seen have it a different size.
The issue seems to be they really want it to be a very small ship, but it's full of giant windows and boarding ramps that give it a very definite size relative to people, and that's larger than they'd like it to be relative to other ships. There have always been cases where fans have deduced sizes that seemed to make more sense than the official figure, but I think this is the first one where the ship is so unambiguously a single size on the show, but publicity material disputes that.\
ETA: To provide some hard figures, Serin117 did an analysis last year using the 3D models from the Prodigy video game, and found the official length of 139 meters is way too small (unless Captain Janeway is two feet tall), and scaling to the bridge, the ship is 376 meters long.
On the other hand, that 139 m figure does seem to match the shot in the show where the Protostar was being dwarfed by the Dauntless, or when it was weaving through the fleet in the season finale. I'd rather treat that as an outlier, like the shuttle-sized Defiant in that one shot in "First Contact," and go with matching the sets and characters in the future. Assuming we see any more Protostar-class ships in the future.
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The Protostar seems to have 4 decks from what we can deduce, but given the height size of the crew etc. the ship CAN appear larger overall due to its overall design.
For example, it has nacelle pylons which extend far from the main hull, along with the actual nacelles which add to the overall size.
So, the official figure of under 200m (I think) is not really accurate... it would be closer to the USS Equinox, or larger.
The Defiant being a more compact design is smaller at about 170 odd meters, but its nacelles are fully integrated into the ship itself and has no pylons.
So, its the overall design of the vessel and how components are arranged that matters.
For the protostar, the Nickelodeon reference is 140 meters and 6 decks.. Which .. Maybe??
A Redditor said 312m.. not a chance..
Another said 220m... thats a Ktinga, still to big i think.
Shot of the side windows.. Huge windows..
https://64.media.tumblr.com/8cdd43f.../3727d737d1639fe7bd973684153257fd8a46d047.jpg
MSD? like 7-8 decks..
https://64.media.tumblr.com/be9f3fd.../a19f8a4c12cc01e4c1c733abde3e637fa7085ada.png
Irritates the hell out of me that for the past 20+ years we've been in the digital model age, and with the exception of Enterprise, every other show gets sizing utterly wrong..
A Redditor said 312m.. not a chance..
Another said 220m... thats a Ktinga, still to big i think.
Shot of the side windows.. Huge windows..
https://64.media.tumblr.com/8cdd43f.../3727d737d1639fe7bd973684153257fd8a46d047.jpg
MSD? like 7-8 decks..
https://64.media.tumblr.com/be9f3fd.../a19f8a4c12cc01e4c1c733abde3e637fa7085ada.png
Irritates the hell out of me that for the past 20+ years we've been in the digital model age, and with the exception of Enterprise, every other show gets sizing utterly wrong..
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IIRC, the Okudas tried to make a serviceable attempt at keeping it all straight for a really long time - sizes, names, registries, etc. But, somewhere along the way, the writing and VFX demands got too overwhelming and I think they just kind of gave up. Couldn't keep up with it all.
Computers and keeping digital logs?
I mean, why would it be so difficult to take an average height of a human (for example) and design a ship which has an average height per deck of about 2.5 meters and then work off the rest of the dimensions from there and design the sets that FIT into that frame?
VFX department only needs general references to get the size of the windows/decks in line with the average deck heigh to extrapolate the size of the rest of the ship, so it doesn't need to be 100% precise.
When I'm doing 3d modelling I'm eyeballing stuff most of the time, not working with 100% accurate dimensions (unless the work demands it), but I still eyeball the size of a window to fit what would be doable for a starship deck, and take it from there.
Some room for error would be there sure, but its not large, its an agreeable margin of error.
So with splitting everything into teams, and each person doing their own task, you can still get stuff that's highly accurate if everyone are working off the same specs.
MSD? like 7-8 decks..
https://64.media.tumblr.com/be9f3fd.../a19f8a4c12cc01e4c1c733abde3e637fa7085ada.png
Irritates the hell out of me that for the past 20+ years we've been in the digital model age, and with the exception of Enterprise, every other show gets sizing utterly wrong..
That MSD looks on the wrong side to me.
The bridge canopy looks way too large in comparison to how small other decks look.
That's why I said it makes more sense if the Protostar has 4 decks, not 7 or 8 (7 or 8 decks is for the Dauntless which is what its MSD pretty much agrees with, and the Protostar was smaller than that),.
I chalk it up to a more aggressive contemporary schedule that just did not allow for the tracking and documentation of such technological minutia in the same way it was possible in the Berman era. I mean, aside from Voyager's alien-of-the-week ships (which were usually just regurgitated older generic model designs that were given a fresh paint job and a bunch of extra greebles), we really never saw anything particularly new. Consequently, it was relatively easy to keep track of such things. Now, with almost one (or, in the case of Picard) many more ships being built literally every week (and SNW is starting to go there a bit as well), they just couldn't keep up. Production and release will always take precedence over the extra overhead of documentation, especially when deadlines are so insanely tight (as demonstrated by PIC S1 finale's copy-paste fleet). Then, long after the dust has settled for a wrap to the season, at some point they might get around to pulling out some of the ship tech stuff and, by then, some details may have been forgotten and outright lost. It sucks... BIGLY... especially for those of us focused on such things, but I'm afraid that's more the standard than the exception.
For the Protostar-class, the official length is 139 meters, and it has 6 decks
I think schedules as well as last minute changes are a big part of the less detailed approach. A producer or director might look an effects shot and say, "Eh, make it 25% bigger." And of course that changes the scale of things, but the expectation is for the VFX to put out the best looking shot, not always the one that makes sense, especially on a deadline.
The standard is to get it done on time, and under budget. Finagling with numbers and creating perfect consistency is not the standard. That's not what these models are for.
We had the ever changing sizes of the Oberth class and the Bird of Prey in the Berman era, DS9 was upscaled and more than doubled in diameter occasionally, noticeable when a galaxy class is docked for example, the Defiant was also very inconsistently scaled. This isn't a new phenomenon, it happened with 90s production schedules too. At the end of the day the shot has to look good and scaling things correctly is not a priority.
I just remembered its modern equivalent (at least in terms of moving things around to get comparisons), Park My Spaceship.
Wow, I never knew of this website! I am obsessed haha. I wish it was updated with more ships.
Off the top of my head, there's the early Lower Decks cutaway of the Cerritos that has far too few decks (and was replaced with an Okuda-made one in season 3), as well as the Dauntless cutaway which has like 7 decks and weird stuff like atomic missiles when the ship is depicted to be the Vengeance to Protostar's Enterprise.
As others have said, directors making last minute changes for cool dramatic shots and the different art teams maybe not co-ordinating perfectly are the reasons.
For the protostar, the Nickelodeon reference is 140 meters and 6 decks.. Which .. Maybe??
A Redditor said 312m.. not a chance..
Another said 220m... thats a Ktinga, still to big i think.
Shot of the side windows.. Huge windows..
https://64.media.tumblr.com/8cdd43f.../3727d737d1639fe7bd973684153257fd8a46d047.jpg
MSD? like 7-8 decks..
https://64.media.tumblr.com/be9f3fd.../a19f8a4c12cc01e4c1c733abde3e637fa7085ada.png
Irritates the hell out of me that for the past 20+ years we've been in the digital model age, and with the exception of Enterprise, every other show gets sizing utterly wrong..
My gut says it's still around the size of the Nova class. So maybe 193 to 215 metres (mind you, I think the K't'Inga is likely too small, and the Excelsior very likely, too)
But yeah, some compromises may have to be made. Forced perspective, and so on. I think we can safely conclude she's smaller than Voyager, anyway. But probably much more than 1/4 of the Dauntless.
I will say though, this site never wants to work.
