Andrew Probert and Rick Sternbach: The New Enterprise

[Cary L. Brown]

I think we're getting closer, if that silhouette we got over on hobbytalk is at all accurate...

The hobbytalk image doesn't look right to me at all. I'm not saying my version is correct or anything, but I think it's more correct than that thing. Though the nacelles may indeed be longer, it's really hard to tell.

FYI, I agree entirely. The HobbyTalk image is totally wrong... the nacelles are HUGELY oversized, and the saucer is hugely undersized. All you have to do is look at ANY of the published images and that's obvious.

I believe that Ancient's "eye for detail" got the shapes down nearly perfect the first time (I suspect that the saucer shape may be a little less like the TOS one that what we see here in his drawing, but it's VERY close). His "scale sense" was slightly off on the first pass or two but with those things "tweaked" I really think he's got the best representation of the "real" ship we've seen so far.

The problem is that the fans who are doing the "sketch designs" actually are making the new ship look BETTER than it really does... trying to replicate other ship designs (or proportions) that they know "look right." The problem I have with the "revised" version is that the overall look ISN'T right. So... most of the versions we've seen (which are supposed to "look right") are actually, therefore, WRONG.

Make sense?

 

[EJD1984]

The problem is that the fans who are doing the "sketch designs" actually are making the new ship look BETTER than it really does... trying to replicate other ship designs (or proportions) that they know "look right." The problem I have with the "revised" version is that the overall look ISN'T right. So... most of the versions we've seen (which are supposed to "look right") are actually, therefore, WRONG.

I somewhat disagree. The two main shots of the Enterprise that we've see are the EW picture, and the one construction shot in the trailer. With both of those images, they appear to be forced perspectives - distorting the proportions of the ship, and we're just trying to resolve the proportions issue by taking the camera "tricks" out of the equation.

Take the construction sequence for example.The port nacelle appears to be substantially larger than the starboard nacelle (which is actually closer to the point of view). The producers seem to be toying with us a bit until we see the movie (and the "big reveal").

All of the "sketching" is just a good intelligent guessing exercise using what limited information we have.

 

[ancient]

Even with camera distortion there are ways to judge the size of things. The saucer and engine hull 'overlap' in the vertical axis, so I'm pretty sure they're close to their correct proportions. I used a chain method, I guess. part 1 is so big compared to part 2 and then part 2 is so big compared to part 3, and part 3 is so big compared to part 4. So part 4 and 1 then have a relation. Then I go back and see if that relation actually looks right. It's fairly rough since it's all eyeballed, but after a few passes I can get part 4 to look about the right size compared to part 1.

Since the nacelles hang way out the back of the ship all by themselves, they are the weak part in the process, which is why I'm not as sure about them. They look right to me, but they're the hardest to scale to the rest of the ship.

...Eh, now I've made it sound all scientific.

 

[EJD1984]

I did a quick forced perspective showing how the even a subtle effect can throw the proportions off.

LINK

 

[ancient]

Man, orthos in angle shots always look funny. Those nacelles are really splayed out looking. As long as one can identify things that are supposed to be straight lines - like saucer gridlines or nacelle centerlines, one can usually take the converging parallel lines into account. It's a little tricky, but not impossible.

 

[EJD1984]

I've had to that somewhat at work on occasion, scale parts from pictures in order to do a rough model of them, then would find my mistakes once the MICD came in (Mechanical Interface Control Drawing). I would most often find that my "guessed mistakes" were a result of distortion/perspective in the pictures.

Ancient - I'm not saying that you're wrong, just adding a different "perspective"

 

[Cicero]

The model (which was the "Death Star Core" miniature with a redressing) was shot with smoke, and had internal lights which were visible. The smoke was added to give a sense of depth and scale, not SPECIFICALLY INTENDED to imply atmosphere. But it was still there.

I knew the Death Star core looked familiar.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I somewhat disagree. The two main shots of the Enterprise that we've see are the EW picture, and the one construction shot in the trailer.

You're missing a few others... including a couple of really good (?!?!?) head-on shots in the trailer. But yeah, you're right that the two you mention are key references.

With both of those images, they appear to be forced perspectives - distorting the proportions of the ship, and we're just trying to resolve the proportions issue by taking the camera "tricks" out of the equation.

You're underestimating me by presuming I don't see that or that I'm not aware of the techniques. I am aware of the "virtual camera" being used in the still shot being very much a wide-angle (almost "fisheye") lens, but the ground-based one is far, far less distorted. It merely has an APPROPRIATE degree of parallax for an image set at that scale and distance... it's a very well-executed shot (even if the content is questionable, the presentation is well-done).

You can easily tell how much larger the saucer is in the head-on shots, by the way. With the TOS 1701, the nacelles fall near the outer edges of the saucer when viewed from head-on. With the "JJ" version, they're separated by only a little more than half of the total saucer diameter (these images, by the way, are supposed to be "distant" shots so parallax is, again appropriately, minimized in those shots).

The head-on shots tell us how large the nacelles are (diametrically) to the diameter of the saucer. We're assuming (hopefully correctly!) that the saucer is circular... if it's not, the issue is a bit more unclear. But I can't see it NOT being circular, from what we can see from the ground-construction scene... can you? The head-on shots also give us clear diametrical reference between the dish and the saucer... and we see the dish in the construction shot.

The "Hobbytalk" image totally miffs the saucer diameter. TOTALLY. Ancient's version has it very nearly perfect (ie, within 5% accuracy, I'd say)

Take the construction sequence for example.The port nacelle appears to be substantially larger than the starboard nacelle (which is actually closer to the point of view).

Yes... and if you stand in downtown Chicago right next the old Post office, you might think it was taller than the Sears tower... except that everyone recognizes that things look "larger" closer and "smaller" further away. EVERYONE gets that... we live in a world where everything looks that way. Seeing things WITHOUT parallax only occurs on CAD screens... and always looks "wrong."

FYI, one of my personal "built-in talents" has always been a strong sense of spacial awareness... which has served me very well throughout my own career, and comes into play in this circumstance as well.

Tell you what... someone should do a quick-and-dirty 3D version of Ancient's model (doesn't need all the detail, or any texturing... just the general shapes). And then play with a few different camera setups inside of the rendering engine (ideally, go for standard film-making "cameras" done in-scale to the model). I suspect that you're looking at (in-scale) film-standard lenses being used... especially for the "ground construction" scene (where they were matching the real footage of Pine to the CGI shipyard shot).

That's the ONLY way to really, convincingly demonstrate if one take or another take is right, or wrong.

I still think he's got it right, and the other shots are just attempts to make what (to me) is a very ungainly design look more like one of the various "classic" configurations.

The producers seem to be toying with us a bit until we see the movie (and the "big reveal").

All of the "sketching" is just a good intelligent guessing exercise using what limited information we have.

True, that.

 

[EJD1984]

Take the construction sequence for example.The port nacelle appears to be substantially larger than the starboard nacelle (which is actually closer to the point of view).

Yes... and if you stand in downtown Chicago right next the old Post office, you might think it was taller than the Sears tower... except that everyone recognizes that things look "larger" closer and "smaller" further away.

I think you may have misunderstood which "larger" nacelle I was referring to: The one in the distance appears to have a larger OD than the nacelle "closer" to the camera - part of the possible picture distortion.

Look at the dry dock exit sequence used in TMP, and the extreme proportions distortion as a result. This is done to give the model a sense of immense scale.

I beleive we're getting a varation of this in the shots we've seen so far.

*This is all just speculation on my part.

 

[ancient]

Ok, I did some analysis on the picture to determine the relative sizes of the saucer and nacelles. I know there may be some distortion, but the ship seems to fit into straight planes pretty well.

I use only two points of convergence, since the nacelle and saucer are very close in the z-axis. The red lines converge along the x-axis, 90 degrees off from the blue lines in the y-axis. The green lines point straight 'down' in the z-axis.

All lines of the same color are parallel.


And here is a close-up:


The lines only:


Using the purple lines, I pull the nacelles into the center plane, so I can get an accurate length. Then I draw the green arrows down to mark it. Green lines also mark the center and lower lip of the saucer on the same plane.

Here are the lines, with red lines going towards the vanishing point.



(This is for non-artists, so everyone knows where I got this. People who know all this crap can skip to the last pic.)

Using the age-old properties of rectangles in space, I use the diaginals to equally devide the total length into two halfs:


And again: (Doing these old-school things on a computer is kind of weird.)


And again:


Aaaaand once more:


Now I have a measurement tool "in space" where all the blue lines are spaced evenly along the centeral plane of the ship:


And now, I overlay the measure bar I made with the lengths of the earlier measurements:


And presto! The radius of the saucer is 4.9 units, which makes its diameter 9.8 units. The nacelles are about 9.6 units long.

So:

the ratio: (saucer diam)/(nacelle length) = 9.8/9.6 = 1.020 ---> So the saucer diam is 102% the length of the nacelles.

or if you wish:

the ratio: (nacelle length)/(saucer diam) = 9.6/9.8 = 0.9796 ---> So the length of the nacelles is 98% the saucer diam.

(Please remember that the saucer diam I'm using is the very bottom of the saucer rim, the top of the saucer rim is larger.

Yes, these are very crude measures. Yes, the parallel lines may be slightly curved due to distortion (though no by much), and so on. In any case, my guess is that the nacelles are slightly shorter than the diameter of the saucer and leave it at that. This makes the nacelles in my own drawings slightly shorter than they should be, but only very slightly.

 

[ancient]

Here is my ship with a slightly longer nacelle: Not much of a change, but still good to show:


The darker green shows the original length.

 

[Ronald Held]

I am aware of meshes based on some pictures, but their nacelles do not look like those above.
Is it worth getting the meshes(if in LW) and trying to make 2d photos at certain angles

 

[Tom Servo]

Well Ancient if that is the correct proportion of the ship, I have no problem with the design at all, and quite like it infact.

 

[Shaw]

(Doing these old-school things on a computer is kind of weird.)

Yeah, but it is still the best way to make sure your measurements are correct.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Here is my ship with a slightly longer nacelle: Not much of a change, but still good to show:


The darker green shows the original length.

Terrific work, as always, Ancient...

And guys, remember... the details are kind of "nebulous" still... the main thing we're looking at here is getting the overall sizes and shapes right. I'm not sure that anyone REALLY has the nacelle shapes perfect yet (though I think that the ones Ancient has above are closer, overall, than any of the others I've seen so far in other "fan-reps" out there) We don't really know the cross-section of the neck on a deck-by-deck basis, we don't really know what the primary hull, topside-aft looks like, we don't know anything about the location where we all EXPECT to see a hangar deck... that's all speculative so far. But the overall sizes and shapes... I think that this is pretty @#$*ed close!

 

[Captain Robert April]

As far as the nacelle shape goes, take another long look at that rear view of the ship in the trailer, and you'll see the reasoning behind some of the changes I made.

 

[ancient]

(Doing these old-school things on a computer is kind of weird.)

Yeah, but it is still the best way to make sure your measurements are correct.

Hey, I could probably buy a $5,000 computer program to do the exact same thing...

No, old school is still the best.

Terrific work, as always, Ancient...

And guys, remember... the details are kind of "nebulous" still... the main thing we're looking at here is getting the overall sizes and shapes right. I'm not sure that anyone REALLY has the nacelle shapes perfect yet (though I think that the ones Ancient has above are closer, overall, than any of the others I've seen so far in other "fan-reps" out there) We don't really know the cross-section of the neck on a deck-by-deck basis, we don't really know what the primary hull, topside-aft looks like, we don't know anything about the location where we all EXPECT to see a hangar deck... that's all speculative so far. But the overall sizes and shapes... I think that this is pretty @#$*ed close!

Yes, most of the details are still total guesswork. But I think I've at least proven that my ship's proportions are closer than that hobbytalk image. (not that it didn't seem obvious anyway)

 

[EJD1984]

At the risk of being a bit of a wet blanket. I'm still not too sure about the outer diameter you have for the warp nacelles, they look a little over sized to me.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I think that's one of the key points of these discussions. They are oversized.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I think that's one of the key points of these discussions. They are oversized.

Exactly!

Sheesh... this is the problem. People... the "New" Enterprise is DRAMATICALLY DIFFERENT from the "classic Enterprise." There are big differences between the TOS and TMP Enterprises (explained away, in-universe, as the TMP ship being an "almost totally new Enterprise," remember!). But those differences kept the general arrangement and proportion and so forth, and mainly altered the "fine details."

In this case, we have a ship that is far more different from the TOS ship than the TMP ship was, yet is supposed to be "the SAME ship." It doesn't just change "fine details," it changes overall proportions.

The "new" ship has nacelles which are HUGE up-front and taper dramatically as they go back. The mounting configuration of those nacelles is totally different. The shape of the secondary hull (and all elements therein) is totally different. The shape of the primary hull is similar in some ways but only insofar as they look vaguely similar... and couldn't possible by the SAME HULL.

The new nacelles are far closer together, shorter, attached further along the nacelles, and are HUGE, diametrically.

If they look "wrong" to you... that's right. They DO "look wrong." But that's not the fault of the guy doing the interpretation... it's the fault of JJ. Abrams and Ryan Church (with a few other "responsible parties" in there as well, I'm sure).