1701 Enterprise TOS build

[Madkoifish]

Well only a short period to work on this so few min to re hinge the body at 80 edges and matched the dome to it. It was mostly my attempt to cheap out on the dome and using a differing poly count that made those facets really obvious but even at 68 you could still see some of the segs in those ribs exp where they tapered down. Yeah I doubt I will ever render anything out that close but if I ever use this in print work it might MIGHT be pushing things.





Not too happy with the blade taper, they are only a single sided poly atm no thickness, and a really lazy metal material. Likely use a dual dome effect on this too to try to get a mixed overall tone and maybe merge in some yellower tones vs the pinkish hue. Cant really tell the OFF state in the few grain filled pre 70s unlit photos. THOUGH I guess all that matters is what it looks like when ON. For the most part i will likely have the domes doped down with some solid material for render time sake.

And yes, those markerlights on the nacelles are temp as I do not think they are the same elements as on the saucer edge. Manufacturing would make sense that they would be as it is less unique elements but eh gotta go by what is on the model.

 

[Madkoifish]

Clearly a bit too much diffusion on the dome. Pinks seem to overbear on it as well but I knew Id likely need to fake some of the brightness levels. ATM this is only those bulbs lighting things nothing else. Stuck mirror materials on those "shards" dunno if it is doing anything. Basing the lights on a few diagrams and seat of the pants crap of screen caps. Clearly I have to compensate for digital light and colour temp of film and how it reacts to light. IE I will have to fudge it about a bit. I do not think the reflected light off the chrome shards is doing anything besides reflective surface reflections IE no bounced light or various angles of reflected light. IE I should have uneven hits of light on the matte surface of the dome. HOWEVER things might not be rendering right as I have not made the caps a open think object. It is a squashed sphere still so the backside is not open. Renders are super slow so I figured I would post what I got then move on. 37min render for the domes on lights on.



YUP properly collapsing and deleting the dome backs off give me the results I had expected of my settings DERP. Had forgotten I did not do this as I replaced the domes earlier on. STILL needs tuning though as the same colours are super strong vs others. Just means ramping the LUM strength up or altering other self light settings. Have to run some tests to see if I those mirror parts will ever do anything. If not I suppose getting rid of them for a anisotropic or faceted material with various reflective directions and just set it to the entire background would at least add some reflections of lit objects at least. I just do not think max is set up to reflect lum or self emission materials based on surfacing. (I could be wrong but meh???) Also irks me my gradients do not show up well so AGAIN more adjustments. hah, sheesh was suppose to get some modeling done but nope fooling and sitting on arse while the pc renders. It would be nice if I could afford another 4770k (or whatever is the current high end of that socket) or a 2011 system and render with that while I model. oh the luxury that would be HAH.


Oh yeah ignore the lack of reflective finish I forgot to unhide the gloss dome. 15min this time round HAH.

 

[Bernard Guignard]

Wow

 

[Madkoifish]

Goofing about with gradients and stuff I think this is it for now. I have a few things I have to decide on such as glossy outer covering or matte etc. It is all a bit grainy right now as settings are ramped down. When i go to do final passes ill ramp them up. Also as said before I will likely blank these out while I model the rest of the ship to avoid adding to the render times.



Also lost my patience and gave up on the gradient ramps for the lights and tossed some white light in the center of the "bulbs". Likely these will need tweaking (the bulb shapes that is) So none of the objects are really final. I still have to finish working on the vanes. Eh still needs work as they look very different when ON the ship heh.

EDIT ADDITION

Ok I think I have decided, I am not liking the reflections on the glossy nacelle parts. So they will get dulled down. Slight alterations of the gradients, maybe a bit too strong as I loose my white hotspots. I think itll req a lot more tuning as I need to adjust the brightness of some of the colours. I also need to better arrange the left bussard instead of rotating the bulbs 180deg. I also have to break those glass bits up so when they do show up they are not such large areas of colour. With that I guess, it is back to modeling.

 

[Madkoifish]

oops guess that post didn't take so here it is as well as added renders.

Those bracket things from last night, forgot to post it this morning.



For the hell of it 11 and 16min renders.





So not as painful as I expected it to be exp as both surfaces are set to 25 samples vs the lower settings. In final renders I would likely ramp this up to 60 or 90. Earlier I was using 6~8. I think I might fool with them a bit more and maybe add a omni gizmo that spins and put a rotating filter on it so that I have at least some imbalance in the domes in stills that can be slider affected. Sadly due to issues I have had with max and sliders it will have to be done last as I have lost files with animation keys or sliders in them while still modeling and surfacing.

For now though I think I might be taking a break from this for a bit. I keep fooling around vs getting stuck into it and getting any progress done.

 

[aalenfae]

Those are the most beautiful digital TOS glowing domes I have ever seen - not to mention the whole ship looking gorgeous so far.

Can't wait to see you continue work on this.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Wow, I especially like the broken pieces of mirror in there, just like the real thing.

-Ricky

 

[spockboy]

oops guess that post didn't take so here it is as well as added renders.

Those bracket things from last night, forgot to post it this morning.



For the hell of it 11 and 16min renders.





So not as painful as I expected it to be exp as both surfaces are set to 25 samples vs the lower settings. In final renders I would likely ramp this up to 60 or 90. Earlier I was using 6~8. I think I might fool with them a bit more and maybe add a omni gizmo that spins and put a rotating filter on it so that I have at least some imbalance in the domes in stills that can be slider affected. Sadly due to issues I have had with max and sliders it will have to be done last as I have lost files with animation keys or sliders in them while still modeling and surfacing.

For now though I think I might be taking a break from this for a bit. I keep fooling around vs getting stuck into it and getting any progress done.

Beautiful.
Big fan of your work!
Looking forward to seeing it finished.

 

[Madkoifish]

Between coughing fits and sneezing I have found loads of things wrong with the blues in dealing with nacelles and found my ribs are wrong as the smith photos do show a flat area in the valleys so I have to edit those in and re round the bits so the contours flow. Added in those box things found most of the images lack in showing they are contoured to the nacelle. Even some of the 3d models I have refs for show this wrong by using squared boxes stuffed into place. These parts are going to me meh too if I follow the studio model they are rounded into the nacelle but they do not protrude past the nacelle profile in the area of the ribbing. Another one of those strange jobs like those field thingies on the secondary hull Which will have to be done at the very last min. I have left them hard edged cause I have yet to decide if I want to subD them more manually round them off. Latter means much lower poly count but the other will provide a better corner.


ok well subD versions of those things.

 

[Madkoifish]

Those ribby things, whatever they are called. Not exactly like the studio model as the ribs were not even on each unit. That and some had poor putty work so you could see seams etc. I decided to omit those details. Guess tomorrow I have to count the ribs on the end caps and decide how I will approach modeling them. Likely it will be a messy boolean after I build the ribbing up off the existing cyl. Hopefully what i have will mathematically work out if not it means creating a cyl that does. What bothers me is one nacelle endcap seems to be larger than the rest of the nacelle but the other seems flush at the peaks of the ribs. Left and right nacelles respectably. Add in some really messy masking as well.

Yeah big whoop update but I think I have to quit for now.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

Looking good! As you have already discovered, replicating the look of the warp nacelle energy pods/Bussard collectors is not as easy as it looks!

 

[Madkoifish]

It is more of an annoyance of settings and slow renders. Something that tries my patience.

update sorta.
Well here is 160 corrugated ribby cheap ass porch roofing thingies. ( these thing remind me of the crappy roofing on my porch)



Man these ribs take forever to render. . . . . Ill have a viddia up later on how I did them as I was not about to manually select all those edges to round em off I just did a small section and cloned it in a circle welded it all and merged it back into the endcaps. Time now to boolean the shape and clean the pigsty that will result in that. YUCK.

 

[Madkoifish]

The rough shape right now. Made the adjustments to the bits I think make it look more like the photos. I will go on and chamfer edges and then do some stuff to those end caps I plan to maybe boolean a cyl into it to recreate that seam you see in there as either a paint seam or some mechanical part on the ship proper. On the real thing it is just the plug or something that was not properly filled ans sanded flush. The balls I have to see how flush those things are into the hull too as I am really wary of the blueprints now. HAH my AO cheat to fake that 60s style paint grime look is really killing itself on these endcaps. In the full ship render you can see how just capping it off is creating uglies due to how it trimmed in the boolean. I had to use a cut ve subtraction as it just quit on me when I did that. NOTHING NEW. heh. I figure a inset clean up yuck and whatnot should minimise this faceting. I need to adjust my shadow settings too yuck, too fuzzy and too low qual in the sampling.

The video whenever YT decides to process it.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb7j11XAbB0[/video]




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb7j11XAbB0

 

[Madkoifish]

MICRO updates!
Heh went through cleaned up things chamfered everything did some more alterations on bits, even added the screws to the endcaps though I dunno about those. Used shaw's layout for that but only use the port nacelle as it was the one with the "bits" on it. ATM the screws are just discs if I decide to do them fully I will devise something a bit better than countersunk discs.

 

[Madkoifish]

OK I refuse to give my connie a wheenus, so it gets a bump instead.
I have seen some schematics that claim this is really the pod thing that one guy in that ion storm died in. But in re tos they always showed that side brass looking deal blown out so I dunno. Either way that image Eric posted and a few images I really QUESTION as they look similar to but seem doctored versions of B&W refs I have, and the inability of me to LOCATE anything that shows the phallus clearly outside of that single series of images in collage. I know some say X and X says it was there and that X helped pack her in 74, but in 74 the domes were replaced, missing even the knob in the center of the sensor leading me to figure they had no idea what that part looked like thus was not part of what arrived at the smith. It could be those images have reality behind them but Until I can find evidence of it from other sources I choose to disregard them.

I did add or try to add these brace things. You see them in the early builds of the ship before the dome was frosted and I can just see shadows of them in some shots where the lighting is more overpowered by stage lights. Mostly those rare still photos taken fro promotionals or records.

The bump, atm I am making it that dark gray hull Maybe plain hull the nub on the bump will likely go a glassy orange or red as seen in that screen grab. NOW I know a lot of people make this whole area a frosted lum or other lit material BUT I am going to go for a actual structure here as with film itll get blown out by glare. And the way I do post work it will do the same. Who knows though maybe it was a translucent element on the ship. It is hard to tell at times with the various images out there. I still do have to adjust the lum under the frosted dome material EXP when done side by side like this. I have to admit to attempting something of my own vs cloning the rough images I have for the lit ship. Intent vs results? lol.

 

[Madkoifish]

Some more recent ref images

http://rdj.smugmug.com/Museum-Artifacts/NCC1701-2015-UHC-restoration


SOME MORE gonna edit vs bumping the thread.

EVEN MORE. . . still no OLD crusty B&Ws. . . . . hoping for a secret stash somewhere. HAH I know some exist as that BAT pre and post 91 resto where they rounded the tip off has a B&W image I have never seen outside of that composite. Reminds me I gotta adjust mine.

http://robot1138.com/1701/Mix_NASM_1701_Jan24_2015_001/content/index.html

some update edits to this post

Updated domes still not exactly what I am after but getting there. I still have to redo the one of the shuttle bay but that area is all in need of work anyhow.




Yeah not much of a change huh, hunting refs ate most of the time as well as fiddling with the lum settings.

 

[JTShanks]

Wow, she's a thing of beauty. I always favored the TOS Enterprise the most. (That could be nostalgia talking.)

But I got to say, you do the ol' Girl justice in this piece of work.

 

[Madkoifish]

Attached is something I thought of yesterday after seeing guys attempt to mimic the domes on models. One guy built dummy bulbs to diffuse his leds into and this made me think, DURR wern't the silly bulbs in the connie likely tilted like this as well? They had to have been as when you look at the domes in the show they get that odd shape that would be a Xmas bulb pointed inward. SO, I have tilted mine to give it a go. NOW the real issue is I might have to reset all my gradients I have farked up to get the previous set up to work. I might be altering the bulb colours and layout too.




Yeah some tuning but using emissive/lum materials that is far better. Id still like to dim it some to get that backside darkening but as for the as seen on tv look it works. Clearly need to adjust or remove all together the gradients on the domes themselves as it is unneeded at this point. Only thing I am not liking is the bright white on the tips of the bulbs is reflecting all over onto the spike and creating that warm hotspot in the center. The dark towards the backside is mostly due to other CGI connies I have seen and wanting to mimic that look as I like it.

 

[BK613]

I like the fact that the xmas bulb shapes negate the dark center of your previous tries.
Did have a thought; modelling the spinning turbine thingy is typically done by using the polys on a sphere, which invariably gives a tapering shape approaching the center (IOW, an individual blade is fatter at the end than at the center). Do you think that would have been the case on the physical model? Would the blade have been the same thickness throughout?

 

[MadMan1701A]

That is all kinds of awesome.