3D interiors in Blender

[Rekkert]

Thanks @Jedman67 and @mr.peany!

@Lt. Washburn: Not for the Generations bridge (nor the 'The Search' Defiant bridge, for that matter).

 

[Mechworks]

Good lord, I wish I had money so I could turn you loose on the cavern that is the bridge of my original Star Seeker class ship. Or a few other things.
There are gorgeous.

 

[TimeSpaceGeek]

I remain an eternal fan of your work. Just top tier.

On the

We've been given the go-ahead to start uploading some of our work from The Roddenberry Archive to our personal websites/portfolios, so here's the 2371 USS Defiant bridge, in all its quickly and awkward glory lol

The version on the RA site uses some elements from @Donny (the Enterprise-B chairs and the video monitors), and was rendered on Octane and Unreal Engine, so for this version I reworked all elements on Blender and Inkscape, and rendered these in Cycles; as ever I want my site to be a showcase for open-source software as much as of my own work. Enjoy!

Just brilliant work, as always! Such a huge fan of all your stuff.

The Defiant is my favourite. I was wondering if you'd put any work into, or given any thought to, the later tweaks to the bridge? Before she was destroyed at Chin'toka, of course.

 

[St. Squigolas]

This is a comment on the bridge modification as designed for the film - and not your renderings - which are beautiful.

How the hell is anyone supposed to sit at the Comms station? There's zero leg room. And if there's someone there, how is someone at the end station supposed to get in or out? Hop down the ramp?

It would be interesting to see a version of this with wider side platforms and a narrower center horseshoe area - maybe giving up the guest seats that were only used a couple of times?

 

[Tomalak]

Always made me laugh that they used the same moulding as the rear consoles, with their pull-out seats... And then stuck another chair in front of it.

 

[Firebird]

This is a comment on the bridge modification as designed for the film - and not your renderings - which are beautiful.

How the hell is anyone supposed to sit at the Comms station? There's zero leg room. And if there's someone there, how is someone at the end station supposed to get in or out? Hop down the ramp?

It would be interesting to see a version of this with wider side platforms and a narrower center horseshoe area - maybe giving up the guest seats that were only used a couple of times?

It does look like they managed to figure out the leg room situation on set:

​

And then, there's whatever the hell this extra on the left was doing...

 

[137th Gebirg]

Did everyone on the production forget that those chairs pulled out or did they just simply break & become unusable?

 

[santa biggles]

Did everyone on the production forget that those chairs pulled out or did they just simply break & become unusable?

Remember that we see Data tear off the panels where a pull-out seat would have been to reveal the circuitry bay where he does his fiddling around so they can do the technobabble thing that makes the Bird of Prey cloak.

 

[137th Gebirg]

OH! I totally forgot about that. Probably traumatic amnesia from the scene in question.

 

[St. Squigolas]

Ya know... I don't think I can recall any shot (except maybe in season 1 before they figured stuff out) of someone in the background sitting down at one of those stations. It was always close shot of the senior staff all huddled around somehow.

Did the chairs not looked finished when pulled out or something?

 

[137th Gebirg]

IIRC, there was one scene where Geordi comes up to the bridge, pulls out one of those chairs from the wall and starts typing on the console. For the life of me, though, I can't remember which episode. I think main engineering was compromised and that set of consoles was designed to take over from the bridge, like an auxiliary control area, in just such an emergency.

 

[St. Squigolas]

IIRC, there was one scene where Geordi comes up to the bridge, pulls out one of those chairs from the wall and starts typing on the console. For the life of me, though, I can't remember which episode. I think main engineering was compromised and that set of consoles was designed to take over from the bridge, like an auxiliary control area, in just such an emergency.

Where Silence Has Lease?

 

[137th Gebirg]

Looks like it, yes.

 

[Spaceship Jo]

Ya know... I don't think I can recall any shot (except maybe in season 1 before they figured stuff out) of someone in the background sitting down at one of those stations. It was always close shot of the senior staff all huddled around somehow.

Did the chairs not looked finished when pulled out or something?

People sat in them all the time, but I think it was the process of them pulling out that they either didn't like the look of or was troublesome to film (and possibly cheat). We can't always tell they are sitting in those chairs, but contextually they often must be, unless they are simply squatting quite a bit.

 

[santa biggles]

The scene in "11001001" where Picard and Riker figure out how to access the Bynars' files has them seated at the aft stations. Not sure if there's a good view of a chair being pulled out or not.

 

[Firebird]

Ya know... I don't think I can recall any shot (except maybe in season 1 before they figured stuff out) of someone in the background sitting down at one of those stations. It was always close shot of the senior staff all huddled around somehow.

Did the chairs not looked finished when pulled out or something?

I remember Data using the rear station seats a couple of times in seasons 2 and 3.

 

[santa biggles]

They were using those seats all the way up through "All Good Things."

The future timeline shots are too tight to actually see the chairs, but Data and Geordi are clearly sitting down:

And there's a great shot of Geordi at the Engineering station in the present-day:

 

[Tomalak]

People sit in the chairs all the time, we just rarely see the chair actually being pulled out.

In the first season you could see the track on the floor that they moved along. But I think after the rebuild for season 2 they were simply moved on castors. Maybe it wasn't a smooth motion and didn't look good on camera.

 

[Rekkert]

Yeah, those aft chairs were always there and always used, from what I know they were reliable. The filming crew quickly grew to hate the floor tracks as they didn't look good on camera and could get stuff stuck in them, so @Tomalak's indeed correct there.

The chairs themselves were fully custom-made, with an adjustable backrest kept in place by a seat belt buckle when stored under the console, you can see it in a few shots where they forgot to hide it behind the actor's back. This made it so that on shots where the chairs were removed from under the console, the backrests weren't raised as to avoid showing the seat belt mechanism. But now that you know it's there you can clearly see it in that shot of Geordi from All Good Things @santa biggles posted.

For Generations they just decided to use the same fabric pattern on the new consoles, but not build new chairs due to cost/time. They just grabbed some off-the-shelf stools instead, which had the added benefit of being bolted down and thus preventing people accidentally falling down the narrow platform if they push the chairs too far out.

This does indeed add some inconsistent styling, and looks like it made sitting on those stations a bit awkward as you'd be further away from the keyboard; but the idea was to just add some visual interest with more extras and displays, functionality was secondary to looks. Especially because they already knew the Enterprise-D wasn't going to return for a future film.

 

[JedGelt67]

And then, there's whatever the hell this extra on the left was doing...

Twerking??