Design the Next Enterprise

[Fuzzy Modem]

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...

I unquestionably sacrificed some grace in exchange for what I thought at the time was a more desirable sense of sturdiness. If I had it to do over again I would make her a good deal more slender and feminine.

Don't get me wrong, you're obviously a very good 3D modeler.

I'm really not. I've been meaning to take some more classes, but I'm still bumbling around in Maya like a blind fool... Is it kosher to disparage the blind on the internet? If there are any blind people... listening, I mean no offense

My younger brother knows waaaay more than I do. He's the one who showed me the planer map unwrapping trick. That's what art school buys you I guess.

I'm getting pretty good in Photoshop though Not that I can draw very well, which is why I composite photos and CG to create my webcomic.

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 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.

My saucer separation concept looked like this, though I never fully developed it.

It's important to note that the hull cross sections looks like this from the front //___Separates___\\___Stays___//___Separates___\\ so the saucer drops a bit, then moves forward. There is no battle bridge. The saucer is controlled from a terminal in 10 forward

 

[sojourner]

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 has had, which is the saucer separation capability.

even the reliant.

Or Voyager? Constellation Class? TOS E?

As a matter of canon, only The Ent-D is confirmed to have saucer separation. Having been the only one to have the ability mentioned on screen.

 

[JES]

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 has had, which is the saucer separation capability.

even the reliant.

Aw shoot! I meant to say that every Federation starship with the name Enterprise. I hate it when think of the words mentally, but forget to physically type them! Oh well, lets try this again.

The Sovereign is about as graceful as an M1 Abrams in a nitroglycerin plant.

Right... I don't know what gives you that idea. Oh well, to each ones own... I certainly think she is graceful.

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...

I unquestionably sacrificed some grace in exchange for what I thought at the time was a more desirable sense of sturdiness. If I had it to do over again I would make her a good deal more slender and feminine.

Don't get me wrong, you're obviously a very good 3D modeler.

I'm really not. I've been meaning to take some more classes, but I'm still bumbling around in Maya like a blind fool... Is it kosher to disparage the blind on the internet? If there are any blind people... listening, I mean no offense

My younger brother knows waaaay more than I do. He's the one who showed me the planer map unwrapping trick. That's what art school buys you I guess.

I'm getting pretty good in Photoshop though Not that I can draw very well, which is why I composite photos and CG to create my webcomic.

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 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.

My saucer separation concept looked like this, though I never fully developed it.

It's important to note that the hull cross sections looks like this from the front //___Separates___\\___Stays___//___Separates___\\ so the saucer drops a bit, then moves forward. There is no battle bridge. The saucer is controlled from a terminal in 10 forward

Personally, I did away with anything neck-wise to lend my design better durability. About the only thing that I would be worried about coming off would be the warp nacelles, and the warp pylons. Granted that the neck is pretty thick, and your design would probably suffer a warp core breach sooner than having the both sections sheared off from one another (and not before having her armor and shields depleted). Still, I always reserve respect for how different people design differently, because this is what makes looking at different designs so interesting.

Okay, so maybe you consider yourself relatively new to 3D modeling, but I've looked at hundreds, of different 3D models, and I have to say, I've seen much worse. At least your model is enjoyable to look at.

I'm thrilled to see that you at least gave the saucer separation a lot of consideration. This earns your design a lot more of my respect, because this shows that a lot of thought must of gone into her designing. And that is the least that I can ask for a ship that is supposed to have the name Enterprise. I would just suggest not dropping this part of the concept from the final design.

 

[Fuzzy Modem]

I would just suggest not dropping this part of the concept from the final design.

I should add it to the LCARS schematic I'm working on.

The TOS Enterprise did have canon saucer separation btw. We never saw it, but there is an episode where they discuss separating the saucer and landing it on a planet. As a result, TMP Enterprise has four large panels on the underside of the saucer, behind which are landing gear.

 

[Vektor]

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 has had, which is the saucer separation capability... 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.

Certainly not every Federation starship has had saucer separation capability. In fact, the only one we know of for sure from canon sources is the Enterprise-D. We can infer that a few others like the Constitution refit and the Sovereign class also had it, but the NX-01, Voyager and DS9's Defiant sure didn't. The Reliant didn't. The Akira and Steamrunner classes probably didn't. And, judging by their configurations, a lot of the designs already in STO don't have it either.

To quote myself from earlier in this thread:

Honestly, how many times have we actually seen that done? Two or three during the entire run of TNG? I'm sure they thought it was a cool idea back in the day but I never really bought the viability of the concept. What the heck are all those escape pods for, anyway? I say let's just keep the Duras sisters from destroying the ship in the first place and save all the extra complexity and redundancy.

For my part, I deliberately chose to omit the saucer separation capability from my design for the STO contest, and good riddance.

Edit - Having read your follow-up post since I began typing mine, I note your qualification of "Federation ships named Enterprise," but again I point you to the NX-01. Also, I'm not aware that either the Enterprise B or C conclusively had this capability, though they certainly could have.

 

[Fuzzy Modem]

Saucer separation is a gimmick to be sure, but I rather like it

I just added it to my LCARS schematic, as well as the necessary bulk head separation between the two hulls, but I actually flipped the wedge angle, so now it rises up and then moves forward, giving the remaining "head" a nicer shape. It also occurs to me that I'll need auxiliary phaser banks mounted on the newly exposed hull to make up for the loss of firing arcs that remained on the saucer.

 

[BlobVanDam]

Reading your site you model in 3ds Max and render in Lightwave? What modeling techniques are you using? (Poly Extrusion, Nurbs Lofting, Primitive Booleans, etc) and what texturing methods are you using? My UV unwrapping skills are virtually non existent, so I tend to texture everything with pure orthographic planar textures, and I try to model with this in mind to avoid excessive texture stretching on the opposite axis, but really I just need to learn how to unwrap UVs properly, though the process may be different in Max than it is in Maya.

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.

Considering how good your modeling is, that surprises me (or maybe you're just being modest about your definition of "basic level" ). The fact so much of the detail is modeled should make it *slightly* easier.
And I currently have the privilege of texturing Voyager for the second time. Bad enough doing it once

 

[Fuzzy Modem]

I've gone through all 1400 entries manually, so I thought I'd share my favorites and some you may have missed or overlooked. Many good ones don't show up on the site's gallery at all unless you search by name.

#1424
John Brewer

#1409
Nick Stinson

(very classy physical scale model)
#1378
Matt M

#1400
Chris Greazel

#1335
Jason "Vektor" Lee

#1289
Adam Anderson

#1259
Adam Ihle

#1229
Robert Patrikios

#1222
Adam Schimpf

#1208
madeinjapan1955

#1167
Nate Temple

#1161
Andrew Bouska

#1147
Edward Bell

#1113
J.C. Baez

#1109
Michael Putman

#1080
Ol Buzzard

#1053
Jacob Carlson
*Original?

#992
Kevin Murray

#934
Thomas C Wedlake

#892
Paul Walker

#781
Luther O. Barnett Jr.

#927
Graham Shaw

#690
James Straus

#645
David Nasser

#779
This^ is my 11 year old daughter's. She made it entirely herself except for the texture mapping. These are her concept sketches:
http://crossovercomic.com/media/extras/Unrelated/startrek_contest/winters/winterprise_sketch_01.jpg
http://crossovercomic.com/media/extras/Unrelated/startrek_contest/winters/winterprise_sketch_02.jpg
http://crossovercomic.com/media/extras/Unrelated/startrek_contest/winters/winterprise_sketch_03.jpg

And here are her words:

hi I am Winter, fuzzy wuzzy modems daughter.
The abreatum is full of diffrent tipes of plants,so all the alines can breath.

I couldn't be more proud

 

[Dac]

#1053 is a design from Sci Fi Meshes a few years back, and technically should be "exempt" from the contest, although if it IS the original author who has submitted it, i personally have no problem, although it's probably someone else who's seen it and taken it.

BTW, thanks for your inclusion of my design, although out of the selection Vektor's is still in a league of its own. That design has to win, it's logically and aesthetically the best.

And btw, your daughter's one has more craftsmanship and logic put into it than most of the designs on there, she should be proud

 

[Fuzzy Modem]

#1053 is a design from Sci Fi Meshes a few years back, and technically should be "exempt" from the contest, although if it IS the original author who has submitted it, i personally have no problem, although it's probably someone else who's seen it and taken it.

Thought that might be the case when I saw the "skykirk" logo at the bottom. I'm still gonna leave it in the list 'cause I really like it. Hopefully it's the original (very talented) artist who submitted, and not a jerk.

BTW, thanks for your inclusion of my design,

You earned it I've included a lot of sovereign clones that I thought were well executed, but your design has a personality of it's own, and that's a hard thing to capture. I do wish the image were a bit brighter. I'm loosing details in the shadows, but the screen on my work computer is kinda crappy sooo, yeah.

although out of the selection Vektor's is still in a league of its own. That design has to win, it's logically and aesthetically the best.

She certainly fits the part. I'm dying to see her in a firefight

And btw, your daughter's one has more craftsmanship and logic put into it than most of the designs on there, she should be proud

She is I'm really hoping she makes it into the top 25.

 

[sojourner]

Isn't 1208 from Sci Fi Meshes as well?

Also, how did you get the site to show all the entries? did you do a search on each entry number?

 

[Fuzzy Modem]

Isn't 1208 from Sci Fi Meshes as well?

I don't think so. I wanna say I've seen his wips somewhere, though I can't recall where...

[edit 2] Tineye found it on DA. It's about 8 months old, and was submitter by the original artist.
[edit 3] AHA! You've probably seen it here.

Also, how did you get the site to show all the entries? did you do a search on each entry number?

I typed in each of the 1,433 entry numbers by hand one at a time.

I've participated in three of these "crowdsourcing" contests now and I tell ya, there is good money to be made by anyone who can program a halfway decent submission, voting and viewing system, as apparently one does not exist yet.

This one was based on code left over from Atari's "Design a Car" contest for "Test Drive Unlimited," which was apparently just as broken.

 

[sojourner]

^weird, because when I type in say "1208" in the search field it comes back with nothing found. It only seems to be searching the names for me, not the entry numbers.

 

[Fuzzy Modem]

^weird, because when I type in say "1208" in the search field it comes back with nothing found. It only seems to be searching the names for me, not the entry numbers.

You can't search for numbers

Go here: http://www.startrekonline.com/enterprise/gallery?share=1433

Have a look, then delete the 3 from "...ry?share=1443" and replace it with a 2. Hit enter. Repeat one thousand four hundred twenty one times. Some entries will be missing due to disqualification, and there are many duplicates as a result of bad code that posted existing entries instead of new ones if the file name was the same. I'd say there are fewer than 1000 legit entries which is surprisingly few for what in my mind is the ultimate opportunity for aspiring concept artists.

Does anyone know why CBS wouldn't allow Cryptic to advertise the contest? When the contest was a few days late starting we got this explanation from a mod:

they are awaiting some final CBS approvals as this is going to get plastered all over the web including other Star Trek sites.

Obviously is was never even mentioned on any other Trek sites, including STO (outside the forums) so they must never have received approval, which I find exceptionally odd. Perhaps they felt it wasn't necessary from a cost/benefit perspective, and were counting on the fans to spread the word, but it would have been free to post a news article on startrek.com, startrekonline.com, startrekmovie.com, and others. The only coverage is on third party sites in regards to the pre-contest announcement a month earlier.

Contrast this with the EVE Online "Design a Starship Contest" which had banner adds for the contest (not the game) on PA and Ctrl Alt Del among a plethora of other places, and subsequently had a much larger pool of high quality designs to choose from.

Part of me thinks I should be glad to have been one of the few who found out about the contest, and therefore was up against less competition, but really I'd rather there had been more contestants. I love seeing what people came up with.

I also wonder how many potential contestants were turned off by the poor quality of the contest site.

[edit]...and from a deep, dark corner of my psyche a terrible idea festers. Perhaps this contest was considered a mistake by CBS and the winning design will never see the light of day. If you read the fine print in the rules, they reserve the right to pull the plug at any time for any reason. How scary is that?

 

[Belisarius]

On the issue of programming a decent submission system...I'm really not sure what to make of the way the site's handled the "voting" and "highest rated" categories. For example...my submission (#613) is ranked 28th in the current highest votes category, but 8th in the highest rated category. How does that work? Seems like there should be a lot more entries ahead of mine in the latter.




~Belisarius
---------------------------
"All life is struggle, from first breath to last."
- Anonymous

 

[Fuzzy Modem]

On the issue of programming a decent submission system...I'm really not sure what to make of the way the site's handled the "voting" and "highest rated" categories. For example...my submission (#613) is ranked 28th in the current highest votes category, but 8th in the highest rated category. How does that work? Seems like there should be a lot more entries ahead of mine in the latter.




~Belisarius
---------------------------
"All life is struggle, from first breath to last."
- Anonymous

My math skills aren't great, but I'd think they'd want to do "rating x votes ÷ days ago submitted" to get an accurate idea of popularity.

As it is, a design with one 5 star vote is "Higher Rated" that another with a hundred 5 stars and one 4 star.

Nice design btw I overlooked that one. She looks like a 50/50 split between the D and the E, though the downward angled nacelle struts give her a bit more individual personality, and she's got a more aggressive posture than any of her predecessors. I like the class name too.

 

[Belisarius]

My math skills aren't great, but I'd think they'd want to do "rating x votes ÷ days ago submitted" to get an accurate idea of popularity.

As it is, a design with one 5 star vote is "Higher Rated" than another with a hundred 5 stars and one 4 star.

Nice design btw I overlooked that one. She looks like a 50/50 split between the D and the E, though the downward angled nacelle struts give her a bit more individual personality, and she's got a more aggressive posture than any of her predecessors. I like the class name too.

Yeah...math isn't my strong suit. S'why I got into writing.

Thanks for the generous comments. I wish I could've submitted a more polished version of the design. Alas...time, image size, and my peculiar design process worked against me.


~Belisarius
---------------------------
"All life is struggle, from first breath to last."
- Anonymous

 

[Fuzzy Modem]

I wish I could've submitted a more polished version of the design. Alas...time, image size, and my peculiar design process worked against me.

Wow! She looks great at that resolution!

All she lacks is specularity and shading/shadows, but even without them she's a top notch design, I'm not surprised she's done so well in the rankings.

[edit] There are some edges along the back and bottom that look almost barbed, and in the smaller version I didn't like them, but seeing her full size they've really grown on me. A spikey Enterprise is almost an inherent contradiction, but you've pulled it off

 

[Belisarius]

[edit] There are some edges along the back and bottom that look almost barbed, and in the smaller version I didn't like them, but seeing her full size they've really grown on me. A spikey Enterprise is almost an inherent contradiction, but you've pulled it off

You're probably just seeing the limitations of MSPaint. Her hull is actually as smooth as an android's bottom.




~Belisarius
---------------------------
"All life is struggle, from first breath to last."
- Anonymous

 

[Kaiser]

I wish I could've submitted a more polished version of the design. Alas...time, image size, and my peculiar design process worked against me.

Wow! She looks great at that resolution!

All she lacks is specularity and shading/shadows, but even without them she's a top notch design, I'm not surprised she's done so well in the rankings.

[edit] There are some edges along the back and bottom that look almost barbed, and in the smaller version I didn't like them, but seeing her full size they've really grown on me. A spikey Enterprise is almost an inherent contradiction, but you've pulled it off

I concur