Another day, another TMP era ship. Been working on this for the past couple of weeks. Had been on a bit of a slump, but I found recently that I always enjoy the beginning of projects so figured I'd start a new one. Hopefully this makes me go back to some of the others that I have in progress as well. Main shapes are all mostly done. Might need some refinement before I start detailing. Having fun with the greebles at the moment
Looking gorgeous! Always had a soft spot for that design. It's so neat that they came up with something that was less a mere rearrangement of Enterprise-A elements.
I love the Oberth - it's my favourite starship, and it looks stunning just like this! I'm looking forward to more updates from you
Thanks all! LOL, as I was doing that thing I noticed the wheels and figure it was a good opportunity to do something a bit more scifi looking Speaking of updating things, one thing I forgot to mention is that I'm trying to build this in a scale that works with my other models so I had to do some compromises. The original ILM size chart sets it out to be 120m. But that's just stupidly small making the ship basically unusable. Some articles talk about 150m, but that still makes the saucer internal volume too small. EAS suggests 220m as a good way to make everything fit and I tried that but it made the ship way too big when compared to the USS Enterprise. So, after some tinkering, I went with 180m as the length. It makes the ship a bit larger, but still much smaller than the Constitution. It also means I was able to use the same window sizes as I did on my other ships and still have it look good. Plus, the 3 saucer doors can now work as a small shuttle bays, fitting a full shuttle in the door with room to spare.
What reference are you using for proportions? When I was modeling this, it was pretty impossible to find a "gospel truth" on the shape and proportions of its major components.
I'm actually using 2 different sets of blueprints to get the general proportions. Both are available at cygnus. That said, after I did a lot of checking with the reference photos of the original studio model. For instance, all blueprints I've seen and all fan made CG models get the saucer completely wrong. It's much flatter than the blueprints make it out to be.
I know that you are trying to match the look of 'deflector crystals' seen elsewhere but giving those circles that baby blue hue just emphasizes the C3PO robot face look. But awesome job, regardless.
I'm not really married to the glow. Others suggested it, but given the original doesn't, might turn it off.
Now didn’t TNG put an airlock on the bridge of one of these? I guess it is like the window in THE SHINING
Gorgeous model! i am so jjelly... Question for everyone: anybody have the complete measurements off the Grissom/Oberth studio models or the Valiant test model? Should i make a thread dedicate to answering this question? This is the problem i am having! Using the chart @ EAS, i made a copy and counted pixels. https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/excelsior/probert-sizechart.jpg probert-sizechart FSV Grissom scaling ref is 198 x 51 pixels. Scaling down i get 180 x 46, 150 x 38, 148 x 38, 120 x 30. Scaling up i get 200 x 51, 220 x 56, 221 x 56, 240 x 61, and 300 x 77. Additionally, from FASA we have; https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Oberth_class Length: 120 meters[3] Height: 34 meters[4] https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Gagarin_class_(23rd_century) Length: 148 meters Width: 103 meters Height: 59 meters https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Sagan_class Sagan-class Affiliation: Federation Starfleet Type: class V research vessel Service period 24th century Dimensions Length: 180 meters Width: 105 meters Height: 62 meters
Been a bit busy the past few days. Some progress today though. Got the nacelle lines cut. Also built some doors for the shuttle bay