@cardinal biggles: The consoles are smaller than the ones on the Defiant, so the most critical functions are still routed thru the chair controls. @Matthew Raymond: Haha, it's based on the similarly sized viewscreen of the Sutherland, this is a function over form bridge, no luxuries like the big viewscreen on a Galaxy-Class. Besides if it would be larger the people in the back wouldn't be able to see the whole picture due to the columns obstructing the view. I've finished with the modeling of the bridge and started with the UV mapping. Spoiler: Image
I'm really digging those side consoles. They almost feel like they could be put on a hinge or something to swing back when unwanted.
@The Librarian: Thanks! Yeah you're right, they could be mounted that way. I've added textures to the materials now that everything's UV mapped, and started working on the LCARS. Spoiler: Image
I've finished the MSD and moved to several other areas of the aft consoles. I'm basing the arrangement mostly on the Relay Station 47 set, which is the only instance where this console was used with TNG style LCARS (as far as I could tell). Spoiler: Image
First, want to say great work. I hope it's ok if I can suggest some tips. I see that you have the graphics on the surface and for me, it gives it a video game effect. My tip is to make a surface on top of the graphic surface with a thickness and have it a transparent black. The graphics are the show had to transmit through a .25in black/dark gray acrylic In my sample, you can see the graphics on the surface (Buttons) and the graphics behind "Acrylic" Corrections: MSD are the cutaways Also, you do see the TNG graphics again on this set. The U.S.S. Pasture Bridge.
I love the look and feel of the set. I've had an Enterprise C set I mothballed while I was working on my Saladin class sets. Might have to dust it off and make some changes and make it my Saladin bridge. Seriously though, this is great work. Love the little details that set it apart from just the generic 'bridge of the week'. I think you nailed the look of the ceiling too. That's been one I've been trying to figure out from the blueprints I'd found. Awesome job!
Great work, Rekkert May I say, that I don't like the tactical console being a free-standing console pushed against a wall - could you incorporate the consulate into the wall? Just my opinion, obviously, I've never done any 3D modelling of this sort, so it's several years ahead of anything I could do! dJE
This set was used for the set of the week, but it did get seen dressed with TNG displays often enough The upper displays were usually used as lighting but you can look at: the geological lab in Pen Pals, the battle bridge in BOBW, The desk consoles are in decent part 1 as the federation outpost the borg are attacking, as Drafting room 5 in booby trap, occasionally in the brig, and as mentioned before as the pasture bridge.
@JoeRalat: Thank you! And of course, feel free to make suggestions! I see what you mean with the graphics on the surface thing, like in the Pasteur image you linked to, you can see the helm console is not very bright looking because it's at a shallow angle from the camera, correct? I'll be looking at some episodes and try to come up with a material that becomes slightly tinted black when seen at an angle. Right now all the graphics are indeed tinted black a bit to take into account what you just described, but they're all tinted the same proportion, without taking angles into account. As for the MSD, well, not always. The Excelsior MSD is the major example on a hero-ship, it's just a top view of the ship. The Brattain MSD has just the top and side view of the ship, and is indeed what my client wanted reproduced here. Only later in the production timeline, once Doug Drexler started doing them, were all MSD a cutaway graphic. Then again the cutaway were originally not supposed to be MSDs but rather 'Master Situation Monitors', while the 'pool table' style console in Engineering was originally called the MSD, so the whole terminology is a bit loose. You're right about the reuse on the Pasteur by the way, I forgot that one! @ashefivekay: Thanks! Indeed we were talking about that in another forum, if you make a bridge with this kind of console all around, it would look perfect for a TOS or early TMP design. As for the ceiling piece, I used the blueprints on @Redgeneral's Flickr album. @danellis: Thank you! It does look a bit odd but it was the way it was requested to look, just like in the Brattain but with a different stand. @batboy853: Yeah, I wasn't very clear in what I meant, I was talking only of the first row of the desk area, but indeed like Joe and you pointed out, it was indeed used again later. I've finished the row of small monitors and the main engineering screen. I've started work on the lower consoles of the desks but they're still in progress, I have to modify the UV maps slightly there. Spoiler: Image
Now those are some nice work stations. Designed for standing or sitting? Hmm. No chairs, but maybe you just left them out so it looked less cluttered. Might get a crick in my neck working there too long, but they look sweet. Huge screens.
@JRTStarlight: Thanks! They're designed for standing, though indeed you'll need some pain relievers for your neck after working there for a shift, with the displays above, below, and in front of you. I wanted to take a break from the consoles so I moved to the top and side displays for a bit. Spoiler: Image
@Rekkert, love what you are doing, as always. I have just one little suggestions, that maybe goes in the direction of what @JoeRalat is saying upthread, and that is that I think the Okudagrams would look even more like the real thing if one could vaguely see the lights behind the graphics. In theseries it was often very obvious where the lights were sitting behind the plexiglas, with the edges always being somewhat darker than the center. I threw your last render into Photoshop and tried to illustrate what I mean. (For demonstration I might have overdone it somewhat, though. ) What do you think? Spoiler
@M: Thanks! Well, there's a fine line between reproducing what we saw on screen exactly as it was (aka, as a TV set) and reproducing how it should've looked if the things we were told were screens were actual screens. I mostly try to stay true to the sets, but also to keep in mind the intention, how it would 'really' look like. I might add a little Fresnel effect on the panels to simulate it a bit, but I definitively won't go as far as to add the clear light fixtures behind the plexiglas, because I don't treat it as plexiglas, I treat it as a screen. I actually like the image you modified, and it looks more realistic as a photo of a set, but I'm not going for that. However, after hearing (well, reading) both your comment and @JoeRalat's earlier comment, I went down a rabbit hole and ended up changing everything, but in a different way. TL;DR: A lot of materials and lighting changes on Blender, everything looks far more realistic now. One of the disadvantages of being self taught is that sometimes I miss something that for everybody else in the industry is very obvious. In this case, I wasn't using Fresnel (aka how light bounces off stuff at a higher intensity when seen at a shallow angle) on my materials, and just when I was about to just add it in, I read that the next version of Blender will include a new type of material called principled material. These new materials not only automatically include Fresnel calculations in them, but also are PBR (physically based rendering) materials. In layman terms they behave a lot more realistically on any environment without having to 'cheat' by adding lights or stuff like that. Anyway, this new material (which funnily enough was developed by Disney for Wreck it Ralph, and then added to Blender by community members) is already available in the test branch of Blender, so I moved over to that. I changed all my non emitting materials to principled, and everything is nicer now. But wait, there's more! The new version of Blender also adds some denoising filters for low resolution renders (the type I use for my 'in progress' shots), making them look a more clear and better lit. This won't affect my final renders as they have a lot more render samples and already look crisp without any cheating filter, but for the everyday render, it's an amazing addition. And I also came across a new color management encoder which drastically increases the dynamic range of the renders, making for far more realistic illumination without burning out objects near the light source. So, a lot of changes, here's a before shot on Blender 2.78: Spoiler: Image And here's the same shot on the 2.79 test build: Spoiler: Image As you can see, object materials now look a lot more realistic, as can be seen most notably on the reflections added on the Conn/Ops stations and the captain's consoles, as well as on the fabric of the chairs. I had to tweak every single light source and I'll keep experimenting with the new material type but I'm pretty happy with the result so far. What do you guys think? Does it look better to you as well, or is it just my delusional mind after spending 4 hours tweaking values on material nodes?
Part of me is screaming, "That bridge isn't wheelchair accessible!" The other part of me is saying, "It's the future. They have friggin' hoverchairs!" Still, you might want to add contrast to the steps. Perhaps add some kind of lighting to the vertical surfaces on the steps. Seems like there would be a lot of tripping and ankle twisting in the middle of a battle. When you switch to red alert, and the room gets darker, some stair lighting might be a good idea. Handrails might be useful as well. Also, perhaps add some color contrast to the walls to break up all that grey. Perhaps change the columns to a darker color, like the color you have around the view screen. That might also look nice on those columns.
Are you using self illuminating materials for those lights? It does look a bit washed out on the testbuild, you might want to switch to a warmer color.
@Matthew Raymond: Hahaha, believe it or not I also worry about bridges who have no access to people with mobility needs, but only the Ent-D is safe in that regard. Well, after some talks, the reaction and experimenting a bit more, I've went back to using the old materials and color management. I'm still using 2.79 as it has some very useful bug fixes, and I did apply Fresnel to most materials anyway, so they do look a bit better, but far more like they did before, and the lights don't appear to be washing over everything anymore. Spoiler: Image Other than that, I've finished the aft consoles, so the LCARS are almost completely done. Spoiler: Image And I realized I didn't post it before, so here's the MSD graphic: Spoiler: Image
Again good work! I going to break down the area that I am talking about. You have the large displays at the top, the video monitors and then the two rows of buttons. 1.) The large displays. If you look at your video monitor displays, you have an even space of black on the top, bottom, left and right. You need that for the large displays, you just have it on the left and right. If you look at "TNG Season 6 "Descent" you can see what I am talking about. 2.) The triangle graphic on the large displays, I would remove it, and keep the top & bottom bars or remove the bars and do the split graphics (Like the video monitors) Again look at "Descent" 3.) Shuttle-bay graphic (Large Display) I would replace that with the top and side view schematic and on the other side, do the front and rear view. I wouldn't have a graphic below that. Just make it an access hatch. but if you need a graphic, I would move the shuttle-bay graphic down and on the other side do a side view of the shuttle-bay graphic. 4.) The schematic, I see that you have 5 small numbers a light purple, I would add a light purple to a few of the larger callouts. Now the line from the callout to the destination is getting lost in the schematic. The graphics on the show, you can see two lines. You would need to add a black line below the purple line and make it thicker than the purple line. That will create a separation of the line and the schematic. Again good work!
I think the bridge looks awesome as it is. I'd love to be able to walk through there in reality, sit down on the captain's chair and press a few buttons.
@JoeRalat: Thanks! I'll answer point by point: 1: Yeah I talked about this with the commissioner, but we chose to leave the golden bars in place, to have the same graphical style as the center console with the MSD. There's still some blank space at the top and bottom. 2: I wasn't sure about adding those triangle graphics, but after trying both versions on the Engineering graphic, I preffer to leave it in, even if there's no canon precedent for that. I'm using the canon style, but the graphics are brand new after all. 3: I agree with this and I originally wanted to do it this way, more similar to the Enterprise-C, but the location of the graphics was picked by the commissioner, and he specifically wanted the MSD/Schematic at the center. 4: I understand what you say about the black line around the schematic, and I had used them before, but being based on the Brattain MSD I didn't include them, as the original graphic didn't have them as well. @M: Thanks! Yeah I don't have the time but I really want to get them into a game engine someday. I've done the last LCARS graphics for the aft side of the bridge, as well as on the racks at the side of the viewscreen: Spoiler: Image
Still looking great. My only quibble at this point with the parts that are done is that ceiling dome. Maybe it's just me, but it feels like it really dominates the upper part of the picture anytime its in the frame.