Ah, the 2250s . . . such controversy. My goal here was to do a no-thrills, no-frills simple design set in the aforementioned time frame that would fit into the Jefferies' aesthetic, and to avoid embellishing it with my own let-me-see-if-I-can-make-it-more-realistic ideas. I used Charles Casimiro's blueprints for guidance. While not exactly a Hero Ship, this concept will serve nicely as a utility vessel. The saucer diameter is just shy of 90 meters. Saucer is meant to separate to serve as lifeboat/ landing craft, and the bottom surface is meant to be entry heat shield with ejectable lower sensor dome. Still kind of iffy on this idea. The hangar doors that will accommodate a TOS Shuttlecraft. I had wanted to use an upper hatch and elevator, but radial bulkheads every 22.5 degrees meant a small hatch at the saucer hatch. So I opted for aircraft-hangar-like doors away from engines. I might add a opposite cargo door on the starboard side. Caustics and fresnel is causing something funky with the bussard cage. I'll have to amend that. The impulse engines are stand-ins, nothing more than glowing circles. All I have left to do is to add some details. And yes, I know it looks like at least three kinds of ships someone can't wait to point out, but it is what it is. Class, name, registry number? Haven't thought about it.
I think you definitely achieved what you set out to do. Definitely feels like a Jefferies design and it looks like a neat little ship. nice work!
Jefferies never did lit up impulse grills. Maybe he would have in a later time period, but in 1964, the model wasn't lit at all, and when they refurbished it in 1966, there was no suggestion of lights in the impulse engine area, just the warp nacelles. Other than that, I think you design works great. I look forward to seeing it with markings. --Alex
Silly. That's a starship, not a blender. Purty neat-looking, but I kinda wanted to see what a blender would look like in 2250.
I'll light up the impulse engines to showcase art, but in a scene where they are not firing, they'll be dark.
This looks good! And I like the idea of the jettisoned saucer-section hurtling through an atmosphere, flames roaring over the heat-shield ventral surface.
Not a whole lot of modeling done over the last two days. Turns out it was the translucent shader giving me the weird result on the bussard cage. I had two running into mix shaders, and replaced them. I ended up mixing a subsurface scatter with a white diffuse, mixing that with a glass shader, and mixing all that with a refraction shader. I could probably tweak it for more frostiness. Added: a boxy, conduit-like detail under the nacelles, inspired by such features on the missile display at the local Air Force Air Museum, round details on the engineering hull above the phaser pods, and lamps over the doors. And I extended the nacelle spires. Those nacelles are begging me for some blue glowing bits, but I'm going to be resolute in my discipline not to. At least not until I'm done and playing around with alternate ideas.
I've decided on calling it the Sirocco class utility vessel servicing starbases, outposts, and communication and navigation buoys and arrays, as well as salvage operations, with registrations blocks in the middle 900s and low 1100s (to comport with The Starfleet Museum). Compositing and Color Management attempt at film appearance.
Necessity, lack of anywhere else to put one, and I don't like the single dangling dish from the lower dome (or anywhere else). And it turns out I'm not the first to do it, but I hadn't known that when I decided on it. http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/showthread.php?82359-ST-2250s-concept-(Blender)
The pylon to nacelle fillets are quite some trouble. Probably take another go at before it all said and done.
I'm using colors from both the Smithsonian Enterprise restoration project, and from spockboy's color graphic at this thread. And, of course, different environment lighting changes the perception of that color (as well as your monitor. My laptop is cooler than the larger monitor I some plug in). For all lamps in the scene, I've started using a Blackbody input for color temperature, and quadratic fall-off for better realism. Improved the nav lights, added tractor beam emitters, and made a rough-in of an Inspection Pod whose design I'm still iffy about. Looks too "new". Using dual spot lamps to create an effect of what I think might be more realistic. I couldn't devise a node set-up for a single lamp to use a texture image as a gradient for the "flashlight" effect, which may not be accurate anyway. Given the amount of strength (which Blender insists is in wattage) I had to use, the fictional light source is more in the category of a search light, than a spot light.
Thanks. I saw recently saw a design of yours I really liked. Don't remember if it had a name but it looked like an turned over garden hand spade with a soda can pull ring nacelles. Description doesn't do justice for a kick-ass design.