NX Refit
- Thread starter SCE2Aux
- Start date
Thanks guys 
There are also shorter range sensor clusters in a few locations around the rim of the saucer, and one at the bottom of the engineering hull.
It's a tightbeam comms laser and long range sensor dishes: those dishes are also at the front of the saucer section too (they're either side of the thin deflector array), but I wanted the ship to have aft sensor coverage as well.
There are also shorter range sensor clusters in a few locations around the rim of the saucer, and one at the bottom of the engineering hull.
Thanks guys
It's a tightbeam comms laser and long range sensor dishes: those dishes are also at the front of the saucer section too (they're either side of the thin deflector array), but I wanted the ship to have aft sensor coverage as well.
There are also shorter range sensor clusters in a few locations around the rim of the saucer, and one at the bottom of the engineering hull.
Thanks! Those are some amazing details.
I can’t get over how insanely gorgeous this turned out! I feel like I’ve said the same thing at each step of this, but looking at the finished thing now I really am blown away by how beautiful it turned out. You really outdid yourself with this one. Those beauty shots in your latest post are some of the most interesting starship renderings I've seen in like forever. I love staring at this design and get lost in all the details, trying to imagine how parts of it would open up or how one element flows into the other. I really wish this would have been the ship we saw on the show. Doug Drexler’s original TV model is a legend at this point, but I’d take your version over his every day of the week.
incredible work very detailed keep it up
Haha, good eye! Yes, the interiors are a combination of largely era-incorrect star trek images and, umm... old kitchen interior renders of mine that have been hacked and skewed into place.
Edit - you know, thinking about it, I think I'll use some screen captures from Enterprise instead - the camera is going to get pretty close in some of my final images, and I don't want to see incongruous stuff through the portholes. The kitchens stay though, because it's funny
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So this is the ship with all the final detailing that I wish to include at this point - feels good to be at the finish line! I'll be having some fun with this ship model and adding more beauty shots over the next week or so to this thread, then I'll have to have a think on what to do next
What amazes the most.... She's basically the smallest of all the classes that ever had a ship named Enterprise, yet with all the details you added, you made this class look positively huge! And, let's be honest, if we saw one for real right now, we would be gobsmacked by how big it is.
But this is the first time the NX has actually looked big to me.
But this is the first time the NX has actually looked big to me.
Thanks guys
I'm going to park this project for a bit whilst I concentrate on learning some new things, and also so I don't burn out on it: It's taken about 4 months to get to this point, which is an improvement on the USS Albacore's 9ish, so that bodes well. I'm pretty happy with the finished model, and I'd like to try to make more interesting imagery with it in the future. Something akin to that asteroid base scene with my DY-500, or maybe a nebula.
But for now I'll post these images showing the finished ship:
I'm going to park this project for a bit whilst I concentrate on learning some new things, and also so I don't burn out on it: It's taken about 4 months to get to this point, which is an improvement on the USS Albacore's 9ish, so that bodes well. I'm pretty happy with the finished model, and I'd like to try to make more interesting imagery with it in the future. Something akin to that asteroid base scene with my DY-500, or maybe a nebula.
But for now I'll post these images showing the finished ship:
Some serious industrial design chops involved in achieving this look. I've always liked the NX Refit, and I would have loved to see it featured in a 5th season of Enterprise, but seeing this reboot is even better.
If I could task anyone with rebooting any canon Star Trek ship design, well... you would be very, very busy.
If I could task anyone with rebooting any canon Star Trek ship design, well... you would be very, very busy.
Glad you liked the way it turned out!
Conversely ocean-going ships frequently exceed an NX in length:
Iowa Class: 262m
Nimitz Class: 332m
Seaside Giant: 458m
All are easily longer than an NX, but I would still be more impressed by a 225m object that could fly. I think it was pretty smart of Doug Drexler to constrain the NX dimensions to something that we can appreciate and perceive in real-life terms. Because if you start getting into km scale objects, they become totally abstract, and one can therefore no longer perceive if something is big or not.
This got me looking up some real life comparisons and it undercored for me how perception is important when appreciating the size of vehicles. NX Class ships come in at around 225m, which is pretty huge when it comes to flying objects. Real-life aircraft like the Antonov AN-225 are 84m in length, 88m in width, and that thing was a monster. Spacex Starship upper stage is about 50m, which also seems absolutely huge to me. But an NX would dwarf either of those craft if it actually existed.
Conversely ocean-going ships frequently exceed an NX in length:
Iowa Class: 262m
Nimitz Class: 332m
Seaside Giant: 458m
All are easily longer than an NX, but I would still be more impressed by a 225m object that could fly. I think it was pretty smart of Doug Drexler to constrain the NX dimensions to something that we can appreciate and perceive in real-life terms. Because if you start getting into km scale objects, they become totally abstract, and one can therefore no longer perceive if something is big or not.
Very much agreed!! Which is why, even though I very much love the Enterprise-F from STO/Picard, the Enterprise-G being a smaller ship is something I felt was a very good idea. The huge ships we've come to see in Star Trek are getting a bit too much at times.
I think this perception of size also depends on whether you grew up with the massive rigid airships pre-WW1...
Ships like the USS Macon were 239m in length so it would've been a heck of a sight to see back then.
That is true. I've seen the airship hangar at Moffat, and the remains of a base in Miami (it's a railroad museum now, but one corner of the old hangar is still there, and it's startling when you imagine how large the whole building must have been). There's another blimp hangar outside Berlin that was converted into an indoor tropical resort.
And, of course, the one outside L.A. that was used as the Starfleet Academy shuttleport in ST09.
Honestly I always thought the NX class was still too big for Earth’s first true starship. While much shorter, she’s not far off the volume of the Constitution-class due to all those convex rounded shapes… in fact due to the NX nacelles being much smaller than the Constitution nacelles the NX actually has a larger habitable volume! And that’s before the secondary hull refit! The NX should have been much more cramped and submarine-like. Probably would have made the sets harder to film in though.
