Wow, scale model. You don't mess around.
Design the Next Enterprise
- Thread starter Shikarnov
- Start date
A buddy of mine has a reprap, and he was kind enough to print me out a copy.
I actually just applied for a 5k art grant, and if I get it, I'll buy a rapid prototyper of my own and print her out 11 inches long in transparent plastic, then light her from inside
I'll also get one of these "3D mice" and the ultimate Wacom tablet/screen.
I actually just applied for a 5k art grant, and if I get it, I'll buy a rapid prototyper of my own and print her out 11 inches long in transparent plastic, then light her from inside
I'll also get one of these "3D mice" and the ultimate Wacom tablet/screen.
Yech. That looks very unwieldy. I've been using a Spaceball (later versions made by 3Dconnexion) or one of its descendants since 1997, and I would never go without one. Just judging by that video, I think one of the bigger differences is that you'd never take your fingers off the 3Dconnexion devices, plus they just look easier to hold. Doesn't look like the axsotic device is in production yet anyway.
The only thing I don't like about the nacelles is how the blue goes aaaaaaaaallllllllll the way to the back. I think I'd cap it off around 3/4 of the way back, like the original Enterprise Refit/Ent-A.
The ship is gorgeous. It's feel kind of retro while still being very futuristic.
I made one of my entry too!!!
Christ, people just dont appreciate you when the new kid comes around.
Although, I don't think I ever posted it in this thread? So, here goes.
(Mine's the one that isnt an Akira class)
Nice models. Your design is the one that looks kind of like a P-38 Lightning, right?
Well, its on the right, right?
I've long since painted those models...albeit somewhat poorly....I'll have to take some fresh pics and post em up here.
Yours is soooooooo much nicer than mine. Prior to puttying, mine looked like this.
Slick design too. Noticed it on the contest page. Very elegant, but the nacelles seem a little too Minbari "White Star." I'd have gone a little less organic and a little more mechanical.
Still a solid contender. I hope to see you in the top 25
I was skeptical at first, but I think you may have sold me
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I visit ConceptArt.org quite frequently and even link to it from my own blog. There's a lot of amazing artwork on there and, let's be honest, much of it is far superior to anything I've ever produced. That's okay, though; it just gives me something more to aspire to.
I don't know what your 9 to 5 is now, but unless you really love it, start browsing help wanted ads for graphic designers, desktop publishers, concept artists, etc. Get a foot in the door. Life is too short to waste on work we don't love. Ditch your job. Get a career. And don't worry about taking classes to hone your skill, get the job and you can develop as an artists while getting paid for it
You're preaching to the choir, brother, but Spokane, Washington is not the place to find that kind of work, and relocating somewhere else would be difficult for me right at the moment. Among other things, I have a house that's still half torn apart that I am trying to put back together so I can either refinance it or sell it. Once that's taken care of and I'm a bit less tied down, then I'll see what I can make happen.
I really liked your design. I give it huge props for originality and finding a new way to arrange and interconnect a set of parts that I would have thought had been reconfigured in every possible way a long time ago. I thought I was being pretty clever with my own design by switching up to four nacelles and integrating the primary and secondary hulls the way I did, but one of my first reactions upon seeing certain details of your version was, "Why the heck didn't I think of that!?" For example, the unification of your bussard collectors and your warp grills into a continuous element with a simple color transition to differentiate them.
If I had to criticize anything, it would probably be an overabundance of windows. I would have used a lot less of them and broken them up a lot more. There's also something about the position of the nacelles that doesn't look quite right to my eye, but I haven't really been able to decide what it is or what I would do differently, so you can take that one for what it's worth.
I do both my modeling and rendering in 3ds Max. I've never used Lightwave, though if I were ever going to learn another software package that would probably be the one.
My modeling techniques run the gamut. Years ago when I began working on the Grandeur, most of what I knew how to do was lofts and lathes plus a little bit of mesh editing. Since then I've picked up a wide variety of techniques and learned a lot of tricks for doing many things in easier, quicker and/or more efficient ways. The technique I probably use the most often is subdivision modeling, sometimes called meshsmoothing or box modeling. In fact, I don't believe there's any way I could have built a model as organic as the Grandeur without it.
I don't use it for everything, though. For example, all the most recent work on the Grandeur's nacelle pylons was done with a combination of extruded splines, mesh editing, freeform deform modifiers, boolean operations, and a lot more mesh editing. It's just a matter of using the right tool for the job.
As for texturing, that's a whole different animal and one I'm not really qualified to be teaching anyone else about. I think I have a pretty good handle on the process of actually creating the textures, but UV mapping beyond a fairly basic level of sophistication is something I just haven't taken the time to learn. I still manage to get pretty good results with it when I set my mind to it, at least on relatively simple projects like my old USS Constitution mesh or my redesigned TOS Enterprise, but the prospect of texture mapping the Grandeur is something that frankly gives me nightmares to contemplate. Like everything else, I assume I'll just figure it out when the time comes and slog my way through, but I have a feeling it won't be anything like easy or fun.
More colorful maybe, but also more fantastical. Nothing near as exact as your work.
Lol! Try finding any kind of work as an artist in Fairbanks Alaska. I'm hoping someday I can land a job where I can telecommute.
That's really encouraging. She's not getting much love on the STO forums. They like yours though. You really captured the aesthetic of the game, while at the same time creating something far more stylish than much of what Cryptic has contributed to the universe thus far. I'm certain that if you had submitted a bit earlier you'd have made it to the front pages of most votes/highest rated. It's rather dumb to have ended voting at the end of the submission period, rather than letting it continue up to the start of judging (in 3 days now actually) as it grants a huge advantage to those who submitted early. Not that I'm complaining personally. I'm very grateful to those who voted for me, but I had 7 threads on 5 forums and a youtube video funneling people in to vote, so don't read too much into it. If I had to guess, I'd say it comes down to you, Madden, and Calloway, and of those three, I reeeeealy want yours to win. I like the other two, but Maddens is far too retro, and Calloway's is a bit too brutish. IMO an Enterprise should always have a little bit of grace, even if she's a brawler.
My concept was born from this doodle (on the upper right.) I wanted to imply bat or dragon wings with the nacelle pylons making a V rather than a U, and suddenly the neck shape became redundant, and could be pulled back and connected.
I probably could have executed that a bit better. Many people see the pylons sprouting from the back of the saucer rather than an enclosed neck/pylon structure. Subsequently it doesn't strike them as an "Enterprisey" but instead as a distinctly different class of ship, such as a science vessel like the Grissom. I think this is due to my taking the triangle shape from the rear portion of the soverign's saucer and pulling it back into the nacelle struts. Perhaps I should have started it farther back, and moved the rear curvature of the saucer forward. This would also have separated the nacelles and saucer a bit, for a more traditional silhouette.
I liked that about yours. Feels more like a battleship and less like a cruise ship.
You may be seeing the connection between the nacelles and struts which is highly imperfect.
Must have read that wrong. Ever poke at Maya? I've never tried Max, and I've been wondering lately if I'm using the best software for my purposes. Maya is, after all, geared toward character animation, which I do almost none of. The interface is so second nature at this point though, that it might be quite frustrating to learn another. Not that that's a good reason not to try, but how how intuitive did you find Max as you were getting to know it?
I've also hear Max has a better rendered.
That's very surprising. I use SubDs in Maya sometimes, but only for completely organic shapes. I can't ever get them to form corners, only smooth shapes and blade shapes, so either I'm not getting something, or they work significantly different in Maya than they do in Max.
I've heard booleans work much better in Max than they do in Maya. I used to use them all the time when I was modeling in Rhino and rendering in Maya, but when I perform booleans in Maya, about every third time they break the mesh, and sometimes I won't know until I reopen the file and that object is missing!
I learned how to to one thing for this contest that may prove invaluable. There is a tool in maya that allows you to select the flattest part of the mesh that best fits the planar map. It then takes all angles that differ and equalizes them with that angle, spreading the difference out the sides. I pulled it off perfectly on the top of the saucer, so you'll see little distortion there. However on the rest of the ship, especially the underside of the saucer, you'll see significant distortion. I'm sure I just need to get the knack of it.
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Hey Fuzzy how is your small model of your design coming out?
Vektor I really give you props for your design. It is nice and clean.
This contest really had a lot of cool designs in it. I really am honored that I was able to in the pack with all these really talented people.
Vektor I really give you props for your design. It is nice and clean.
This contest really had a lot of cool designs in it. I really am honored that I was able to in the pack with all these really talented people.
Hey Sean
I got a little distracted my minecraft
The last thing I did was carve out the details using a hobby knife. I still need to make little notches for all of the escape pods, but then she'll be ready for another coat of paint.
Cool post them when you can. It has to be hard modeling at that scale.
Will do
It's a little easier than working with pewter figurines (I used to play Babylon 5 Wars.)The Titan link on your site is broken btw.
Yeah, I am currently in the process of doing spring cleaning on the server an may have deleted it. It is still in my Titan sub gallery on deviant art. In the next few months I will be updating my hammerheadgraphics site since my day job has to outsource the whole graphics department over the next few months, so I am going to have to update my portfolio. So for now if a link to any of my designs are broken they should still be on deviant art, if not let me know and I will load them there or on my blogs.
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Works the same in Maya, you have to add edge loops near your corners. The closer the loops to the edge, the tighter the corner. Once you get how Sub-D works, it'r really pretty simple.
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I wish I could say that I am sort of warming up to your design... Okay maybe I am. A little bit. But when I compare her to her supposed predecessor, I cannot help but feel that she lacks much grace of the Sovereign class. I think that where she really lacks in the aesthetics department is around the area where the saucer and engineering sections blend with one another. The deflector dish area isn't among the prettiest of all designs that I've seen either... Don't get me wrong, you're obviously a very good 3D modeler.
What I feel is really shocking though (which I'm surprise no body has, to my knowledge, brought up) is that most entries seemed to have forgotten a feature that every Federation starship to carry the name Enterprise has had, which is the saucer separation capability. In fact, come to think of it, the only design that I can think of besides mine that apparently has a saucer separation ability besides mine is Titan Designer's (though I've never seen how it is supposed to look like). I seriously hope that Cryptic doesn't forget to require the winning design to be further developed so that the winning design keeps this as well, otherwise I will have a hard time accepting it as canon.
What I feel is really shocking though (which I'm surprise no body has, to my knowledge, brought up) is that most entries seemed to have forgotten a feature that every Federation starship to carry the name Enterprise has had, which is the saucer separation capability. In fact, come to think of it, the only design that I can think of besides mine that apparently has a saucer separation ability besides mine is Titan Designer's (though I've never seen how it is supposed to look like). I seriously hope that Cryptic doesn't forget to require the winning design to be further developed so that the winning design keeps this as well, otherwise I will have a hard time accepting it as canon.
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