Great work on that model! I always loved Rick Sternbach's beautiful design and your model makes it look even better. I'd love to have some really large desktop wallpapers of it!
Big image alert. Thought I'd post some orthos. These are probably begging for close scrutiny, but be kind!
Well, I left a little hint about seeing orthos over at drexfiles, and voila. I must say, these are about as correct geometrically as the shooting miniature, so a big thumbs up. Now the only thing left to do is to try and squeeze the Delta Flyer and a few speedboat shuttles in the aft bay.
I tried posting the link over there, but for some reason it wasn't working for me. Glad you found your way here anyway, because I mainly rendered the orthos for you to see that my ship is rollercoaster free!
No roller coasters in here, you bet. I like the general coloration of the hull, though I wince a teeny bit at the surface dings. Yeah, I know the ship's been through hell, so I'm not that picky. I would make one suggestion on the warp grille lighting in terms of color "temperature," being more of a Pantone 286 or so. The glow seems ever so slightly aqua and washed out. I know it's tough to say exactly what to do given the wide range of CG apps; I would make the brightness fall off faster, into a slightly more saturated pure blue. Hell, this sounds like a decorator saying "move that couch 1/4" to the left," doesn't it?
Question: Why is the CGI version of the Bow view always shows that the ventral phasers dip down at the front ends? 2nd: Aren't the Impulse vents (front) actual yellow not red on the model?
The dings do look a bit exaggerated in the orthos, probably because it's using more direct lighting. It doesn't look so overdone in my usual renders. I definitely wanted to give a bit more of a sense of roughing it, but I didn't want it too extreme (plus it helps to break up the flat CG look on the bare panels). I'm not very happy with the warp glow myself, but it was just a quick Photoshop job so it didn't look bare. When I make my video, I'll be doing some more complex post effects for that. I like the strong blue look, but I also like the cranked HDR look too, so I'm not sure which way I'll go on that one yet. The overall tint of the ship was also a rough Photoshop job for now, so in the final video it should look closer to my comparison pics a few posts up. The colour values were all taken from the original model paint specs, and then I tweak them in post, unlike the official CG model which just altered the textures to look more grey and desaturated. So a lot about the final colouring is still wide open to tweaking, so I won't be moving the couch just yet.
The CG version was horribly inaccurate for the horizontal lines on the hull (including phaser strips), due to the way the textures were mapped on. Mine is all geometry, so mine doesn't have that issue. As for the impulse vents, I'm fairly sure they're red, although I recall that's one area I didn't have a lot of good reference for. It's definitely red on the CG model, although that doesn't necessarily mean anything sorry I had to double post, but I'm on an iPod, and posting is hard enough as it is!
Ah....that explains it. But heres what I'm talking about with the front vent color if you look closely. http://www.startrekdesktopwallpaper...ving_orbit_freecomputerdesktopwallpaper_p.jpg http://techspecs.startrek.acalltoduty.com/images/intrepid/voyager-top.jpg But it may have been like this only for these promotional shots. I only see the red fronts on the CGI model
Well, I can tell you that the designer had spec'd the impulse intakes and exhaust nozzles to glow orange. He tells me everything. Rick
Even from these shots it's hard to tell definitively, so in cases like this I defer to the CG model as a last resort. In most shots I saw of the physical model, you couldn't make out the glow at all because of either the video quality, or the camera angle, unfortunately. It's predominantly shot from underneath where you can't see the glows. And this is proof of exactly why I don't trust the CG model unless absolutely necessary. Thanks for bringing it up, because I never noticed it in physical model shots. I'm not sure I can trust a second hand source, but I'll take your word for it. For the sake of accuracy, do you have a rough colour reference for the shade of orange?
Hmmm...reference for orange...where would I find something orange...Pantone 021C? Roscolux #23 studio gel? Shuttle external tank? Hi-liter pen? If only there was something just sitting around the house, like a piece of fruit...
I think we pretty well established the colors of most hardware and phenomena during TNG season 1, though sometimes the specs weren't rigorously followed. As long as they got it close enough, we were okay, especially with the wild variations in color reproduction in televisions back in the day. I never relied on TV alone to tell me what color something was; I really needed 35mm slides of miniatures (and later digital snaps) to keep in the archives. BTW, I'm curious; you mentioned that the warp grille glow was 'shopped in. Do you have the capability to do glow objects?
How do you define glow objects? In my 3D program, I have a light source which makes the blue area lit up, but that doesn't create the actual soft light glow around the area, only the brightness of whatever is inside the nacelle. In post (either with Photoshop, or After Effects if it's animated), I can create the glow however I want though. I can render off a separate pass in my 3D program for just the blue area, and apply that however I want in After Effects. That will most likely involve some soft blurring, and playing around with the blend modes. There's no reason at all I couldn't follow the exact same process that the original show did, if I wanted to.