1701-A in Unreal Engine

[Mark Hennessy-Barrett]

I got excited by some of the new materials stuff in UE5.3, and the very first thing on my list was the pearlescent paint on the Motion Picture Enterprise.

I got my hands on Chris Khun's superb -A mesh and textures and lit into them over the last couple of days. I'm kind of happy with how it's going. Kinda crazy seeing this real-time in the viewport.

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[Professor Moriarty]

I hate to admit it but I know almost nothing about modeling and texturing for Unreal, but at first glance Kuhn’s mesh certainly looks screen-accurate. The biggest giveaway (besides the pearlescent paint on the saucer which I know you’re still working on) are the glowy bits (especially the impulse engines)…. they look kind of “flat” for lack of a better adjective (both in terms of color, emission strength, and physical appearance). Likewise, the greebles port and starboard of the hangar doors don’t seem to have any dimensionality to them, and that’s why I mentioned my unfamiliarity with modeling for Unreal—would a feature like this actually be modeled, or achieved through textures?

This is looking great and I can’t wait to see your next updates. I’m not sure I’ve seen any other Unreal models under construction in this forum (definitely not any of the Enterprise) so any details on your process would be very much appreciated.