My Starship Development:

[Praxius]

Well I've been messing around with a few ideas of a Starship over the last couple of weeks, starting with this:

But felt that starting right off in Illustrator threw off my organic feel of how the ship will be designed..... so I went back a step and started to actually draw out each part by hand first, then work on each part in Illustrator, then when each part is completed in Illustrator as far as it can go (top/side/front/back profiles) I'll bring it into Maya to make it a bit more realisitic.

So far today with my restarting of things, I have come up with the following:

^ Mind you not all that accurate, but helps get the overall feel in place. I imagine this will change several times before there's a finished 3D product.

More to come.

Added:

I also have no name in place yet, let alone any paticular era, although with the new warp style, chances are if it remains to the current style, it'll fit into the Enterprise C/D era.

 

[Praxius]

Update: (Vector Art / Trace)

As you can see, I squared it up a bit.

 

[Patrickivan]

So it's along the same line as a Nebula Class? The nacelles have a very post-TNG feel, while the overall ship looks pre-TNG.

What era are you shooting for here? I like the overall design, I think those nacelles are just throwing me off.

 

[sojourner]

Nice work. Wish I could freedraw. The top image in this one looks like a starfleet issue lightsabre. Love it.

 

[Praxius]

Thanks, I've been drawing to one degree or another since the age of 4..... although it's been a little rusty since the paticular graphic design I do now a days takes up most of my time and afterwards, I'm all creative'd out.

The Era..... well I don't know yet. Not too sure until about 3/4 of the way through. I may adjust colors and layout halfway through because I thought of something else I'd like that I feel is better then the last.

Eventually if I'm lucky, it'll look pretty damn sweet in the end if I do say so myself (so long as I can finish it)

I do have other samples of things I have done, and with any luck, it'll look better then my Miata I did a few years back:

The Starships I did in the past were done for animations, which I have yet to put online anywhere cuz they're a little big..... and crappy cuz they were some of my first models in 3D Studio Max, which I found more limiting then Maya when it came to freedom of design.

 

[Praxius]

Ok Change up on the Saucer section:

I'll be adding windows and all that stuff once I figure out exactly how big I plan this to be.

 

[Praxius]

Nice work. Wish I could freedraw. The top image in this one looks like a starfleet issue lightsabre. Love it.

Actually that's what my supervisor first thought it was.... I guess it's a good thing I squared it up a bit.

 

[sojourner]

Nice work. Wish I could freedraw. The top image in this one looks like a starfleet issue lightsabre. Love it.

Actually that's what my supervisor first thought it was.... I guess it's a good thing I squared it up a bit.

No worries. The association comes more from seeing it out of context. Attached to a ship it would look fine.

conversely, I have seen some lightsabres that would make for nice warp nacelles.

 

[Praxius]

No worries. The association comes more from seeing it out of context. Attached to a ship it would look fine.

conversely, I have seen some lightsabres that would make for nice warp nacelles.

Yeah it's odd how those things can look like all sorts of things.

Here's another update of where everything is being placed so far. As of now I'm starting to like what I see, personally speaking of course. (The side profile is going to be tweaked a bit more to match the top profile's style, as I like the boxy look a bit more then the Enterprise D style.

As you can see I have swayed off the path of a Nebula style starship.

 

[NiteTrek]

As you can see I have swayed off the path of a Nebula style starship.

Not bad....didn't early sketches of Voyager have a triangular main section as opposed to the huge spoon that it ended up as?

 

[Praxius]

Not bad....didn't early sketches of Voyager have a triangular main section as opposed to the huge spoon that it ended up as?

Not too sure, but in my ST:TNG technical manual, near the back they had 4 or so concept ideas of what the next Enterprise or Star Trek Starship was going to look like..... didn't look anything like what they ended up with in DS9 and Voyager.

 

[AnyStar]

very nice, i'm liking the evolution!

 

[Finn]

I've made some nice looking ones. But now, I have to ask, what's the easier way to make ones that aren't a perfect circle.

 

[Praxius]

I've made some nice looking ones. But now, I have to ask, what's the easier way to make ones that aren't a perfect circle.

All I've been doing for the most part right now is freestyling the design.... the best way is to create a circle in the rough layout of what you're looking for, then delete half of it and focus on getting one side the way you like.... once you have a nice look that you're pleased with, mirror it over and see what you get. To say the least for mine, it didn't look anything what I was expecting when I mirrored it.... in fact it looked better.

Speaking of which, it's been a while since I updated this, so here you go:

You may notice there's a shuttle bay in the top rear saucer and another (Main Shuttle Bay) in the front back and below the dual torpedo bays. I've sorta twisted this starship into an offensive battle cruiser with besides it's additional firepower that I'll be adding, it's main feature will be the ability to launch a large fleet of battle shuttles which will be something else I work on after I get this beast down. I'm going for an old fashion style of vessel like an aircraft carrier, but faster and better gunned. Sorta a cross now between a Galaxy Starship and Intrepid.

 

[AnyStar]

ooo! that front view of your primary hull has a very aggressive feel to it, me likes!

 

[Praxius]

Thanks, here's the final update (well for the most part) in regards to the overall ship design. Now comes the finer details and eventually 3D Modeling.

As you might notice, I added three more torpedo bays in the aft as well as two more by the deflector dish for angles the saucer can't get due to location.

 

[Praxius]

Ok so it has a name for now. I was just playing around with escape pod and window placements, but I think that'll be something I do when I start getting into the modeling. You may also notice that I changed the "Warp Wings" as I call them.

 

[Praxius]

Some updates, I decided to start scaling this out to a suitable size and layout the decks a bit and here's what I came up with:

Overall length of the ship is 1,426'-5 5/8" (678.437 m)
Overall Width of the ship is 756'-5 5/8" (230.572 m)
Overall Height of the ship is 265'-5 7/8" (80.920 m)

Scaled at 1/16" = 1' (Images not to scale)

There are currently 16 decks on the saucer section with each being 8' in height (some will varry by a few inches here and there) and sized to an average 6' tall human.

Just looked up the Enterprise D's specs and this ship is just a tad larger in length but shorter in width and height, so that was a pretty good size guess on my part esspecially considering what the ship's design is about.

 

[Praxius]

28 Decks in total.

 

[Praxius]

Ok, so I figured the warp nacelles were a bit larger for the ship, so I reduced their size overall, which reduced the overall width, length and height from what was sated earlier.

Also I have designed rough drafts of shuttcraft for the shuttle bays:

I'm still trying to figure out what I'll do with the large solid blue areas of the ship, which are in between decks.... perhaps giant jeffery's tube-like areas that span the entire length of the ships hulls, since they're directly in the middle of each hull and not quite the height of the other decks, which could also be designed in a Titanic style emergency system where if one of the overall six sections are compromised, they can be sealed off to protect the remainder of the ship.

I can fit 8 large shuttle craft at maximum in the rear shuttle bay, while I will be planning the (primary) forward shuttle bay to hold more.