Baton Rouge class

[Horizon]

In January 1980, a month after Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out, Wallaby Books published “Star Trek: Spaceflight Chronology” by Stan Goldstein and Fred Goldstein and illustrated by the Brilliant Artist of the Space Age, Rick Sternbach.
It says that on the cover, I’m not sucking up.

In the era before the U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701), one of the classes of ships shown was the Baton Rouge class. Mr. Sternbach painted a picture of the U.S.S. Moscow with an engine removed over a planet. This is my recreation of that painting.




As the picture credits state, I made meshes for everything (including the stars and the planet) but used a picture from the NASA Visible Earth series for the clouds. Despite days of trying, I just couldn’t make convincing clouds.

All the meshes were created and the rendering was done in Truespace 6.6. Textures and fractals were made with Paint.Net.

I’ll be creating some more images with this model and creating a few more models to go with it. I’m using Forbin as my good example. I REALLY like the pictures Forbin creates using his models and will probably emulate that style.

I believe it was Vance who created “Star Fleet Starship Recognition Manual: Ships of the Baton Rouge Era” (someone please correct me if I’m wrong). I never did get the last edition of this. It was a work in progress when I lost track of the link provided to it. In here, the U.S.S. Moscow was identified as NCC-1301. NCC-1315 was the first available number for me to purloin for my own purposes.

The beginning of the story I have brewing in my head begins with the U.S.S. Defiant (NCC-1315), commanded by Captain Garth (yes, THAT one) meeting up with the U.S.S. Constellation (NCC-1017) when it was still a Ranger class. Commodore Nogura informs Captain Garth that with Starfleet restructuring after the most recent Babel conference, they are now part of a new task force intended to stop all Klingon incursions into Federation space.

So, the other picture I made (with only one model) was the U.S.S. Defiant on Patrol.




These pictures are hosted on Flickr and the link to the picture set is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/93545925@N00/sets/72157608799109516/


Technically this is still a Work In Progress (WIP), but I work slowly and didn't want to post anything until I had pictures to show. I can see several problems with this mesh (weathering on secondary hull too obvious, mesh errors on bottom of secondary hull, etc.) but I've declared it good enough for now.


What do you think?

 

[Wingsley]

Very interesting! Great work.

I always thought that Baton Rouge painting in the Spaceflight Chronology was a beauty. It had a vaguely TOS feel.

Too bad ENT didn't make their NX-01 like this.

How close is your 3D work to the original artwork in the Spaceflight Chronology?

 

[Unicron]

I've never really been a huge fan of the BR. The design looks too squished to me.

 

[Horizon]

How close is your 3D work to the original artwork in the Spaceflight Chronology?

I originally made a model based solely on the painting. Never did like how that turned out. The only thing that survived was the primary hull.
I tried to stay close to the dimensions in the book, but didn't rely on anything except the width. Since I used that width and was using scan of the top down view and was faithful to that, the fact that my mesh's length is different I'm good with. The draught I had nothing to go on other than, "That looks good."
Here are the dimensions (in meters)
_______Book___Mesh
Length__245___262.8
Beam___153___153.6
Draught_64.6___52.9

I've never really been a huge fan of the BR. The design looks too squished to me.

Yeah, I know what you mean. The way I had always viewed this ship was with a perfectly flat primary hull top and I assumed the same for the bottom. And that looked ugly to me. So, I have the top sloping up (but as a straight line) to the B deck. In the side views it looks better than flat. I'll show orthos sometime soon. Those should be easy to make.

As for the engineering hull... I'm still not entirely happy with it. Using the ideas of others, I went with the extended portion on the front of the hull. I think the shape of the lower part of the engineering hull is all mine (don't recall any others looking like it). It was the shape I was least unhappy with.

 

[Scott Delaney]

Being named after my hometown, the Baton Rouge class has always fascinated me for logically arbitrary reasons. That being said, I can't wait to see the finished product!

 

[Masao]

A few years ago, we pestered poor Mr. Sternbach so much that he dug out and posted an unpublished side view. this has been straightened.

 

[BolianAuthor]

I have to say, I was never that big on this ship, but you have made her look awesome. Nice work.

 

[Horizon]

I can't wait to see the finished product!

Me too. Thankfully no one is likely to question my side view...

A few years ago, we pestered poor Mr. Sternbach so much that he dug out and posted an unpublished side view. this has been straightened.

Oh bugger. At least that explains how the neck works in the painting. I could NOT figure that out. Well, at least I have this on my hard drive now.

Nice work.

Thanks!

 

[Wingsley]

A few years ago, we pestered poor Mr. Sternbach so much that he dug out and posted an unpublished side view. this has been straightened.

So THAT'S where that side-profile came from! What a weird lookin' critter.

Thanks, Masao.

 

[Praetor]

Very nice work!!

 

[Vance]

I never finished "Ships of the Baton Rouge" era because I was really hating how it was turning out - basically not much more than redoing the 'stock' Federation ships of the 2260's with the Baton Rouge components. I'm revisiting that era for Jaynz, though, and looking at a wider variety of designs from SFC to use.. with some tweaking.

As an example.. the Baton Rouge herself...

http://www.pixelsagas.com/gallery/albums/userpics/J_Fed_Baton_Rouge_2227.png

 

[Horizon]

Very nice work!!

Thank you! I appreciate that.

I never finished "Ships of the Baton Rouge" era [snip]. I'm revisiting that era for Jaynz, though, and looking at a wider variety of designs from SFC to use.. with some tweaking.

Well, clearly YOU have seen the unpublished side view. I like the modifications you've made to the original drawings. I notice that we made a couple of the same decisions: the four lights on the front of the primary hull and the twin torpedo hatches on the deck below the bridge (although I haven't provided a view showing that).

I'm undecided what to do here. As much as I'm ambivalent toward my engineering hull, I like it a LOT more than the engineering hull in the unpublished side view. I'm probably going to stew on this a bit more and then make a new model based on these two views just to see how it looks.

While I've been stewing so far, I've re-started a Mann class model. My first attempt at a Mann class was the first model I made. This Baton Rouge is the second. Judging how bad I consider that first model, I learned a lot from the second.

 

[Vance]

Well, clearly YOU have seen the unpublished side view. I like the modifications you've made to the original drawings. I notice that we made a couple of the same decisions: the four lights on the front of the primary hull and the twin torpedo hatches on the deck below the bridge (although I haven't provided a view showing that).

I tried to put in the Trek elements that the original drawing didn't include, and tweaked some of the more... extraneous elements to reign in the design a smidge. The secondary hull is still a bitch to work with, though, and not the best of designs, unfortunately (no offense to Rick, of course). It also has some discrepancies with the official painting of the girl, as well as her appearance in the DC comic run...

So, I guess I'm advising the old addage 'use what works for you'. You've got a lot of leeway so far as the Baton Rouge goes, since there never was a released version of the port/starboard views. I went to be close to Rick's intent, but there are quite a few interpretations which I feel are stronger. (The Federation Models version is a good one to look up.)