Donny’s Late TOS Movie Era Interiors
- Thread starter Donny
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Knocked out the turbolift over the last 24 hours. Most of it was short work, since it was a redress of the Enterprise-E turbolift model I generated back in March. The big difference, however, was the very 1980s monitor built into a recess in the side of the turbolift in TFF, which played a simulation of turboshaft lights passing, similar to what we saw out the turbolift grille in TOS. It's wonky in the film due to the fact it's clearly a CRT monitor and not a portal seeing decks passing by, but I've decided to include it anyway. We can say that in-universe it's not meant to be literal turboshaft lights passing, but just a video file playing to let the passengers know the turbolift is indeed moving. Hell, they even had a similar graphical representation of this effect on the turbolift display in Insurrection.
@Lt. Washburn graciously provided me with one of his findings: the turbolift monitor shows up on another monitor in an early Ds9 episode ("Dax"). It's behind Odo here. Not only did it give me a great straight-on shot of the monitor housing to use as reference, but it clued me in on another little nugget of info. Notice that in the shot in TFF, the monitor well is justified on the left edge of the turbolift's right-side wall panel. However, in the Ds9 shot, notice the monitor is justified on the right edge of the panel. This tells me that there were indeed two panels with monitors built into them. Thus, we can assume that the panel behind Odo is the turbolift's left-side wall panel that we never saw on-screen. Also note that the white glowing panel behind Odo is the light well for the turbolift's main display panel, but with the smoke plexi and graphic removed. This shows that they switched the TFF turbolift's right-side wall panel with the left-side wall panel for that shot.
I hope all that makes sense.
Anyway, I've gone forward with this information and modeled the turbolift with two side display monitors, which creates a nice symmetry I was afraid otherwise wouldn't be there if there indeed was only one monitor.
I'm taking steps to make the turbolift actually functional, and part of that is playing the passing deck simulaiton on the monitor when the in-game turbolift is moving:
And with that, the Final Frontier bridge is complete! I'll be taking final screenshots and set up a video of the bridge sometime later in the week. For now, I'm going to start preliminary work on modifying everything for use as the TUC Enterprise-A and Excelsior bridges!
@Lt. Washburn graciously provided me with one of his findings: the turbolift monitor shows up on another monitor in an early Ds9 episode ("Dax"). It's behind Odo here. Not only did it give me a great straight-on shot of the monitor housing to use as reference, but it clued me in on another little nugget of info. Notice that in the shot in TFF, the monitor well is justified on the left edge of the turbolift's right-side wall panel. However, in the Ds9 shot, notice the monitor is justified on the right edge of the panel. This tells me that there were indeed two panels with monitors built into them. Thus, we can assume that the panel behind Odo is the turbolift's left-side wall panel that we never saw on-screen. Also note that the white glowing panel behind Odo is the light well for the turbolift's main display panel, but with the smoke plexi and graphic removed. This shows that they switched the TFF turbolift's right-side wall panel with the left-side wall panel for that shot.
I hope all that makes sense.
Anyway, I've gone forward with this information and modeled the turbolift with two side display monitors, which creates a nice symmetry I was afraid otherwise wouldn't be there if there indeed was only one monitor.
I'm taking steps to make the turbolift actually functional, and part of that is playing the passing deck simulaiton on the monitor when the in-game turbolift is moving:
And with that, the Final Frontier bridge is complete! I'll be taking final screenshots and set up a video of the bridge sometime later in the week. For now, I'm going to start preliminary work on modifying everything for use as the TUC Enterprise-A and Excelsior bridges!
Looks great Donny! I didn't notice any of that about the wall panels, and that's one of my favorite things about this is figuring out these little details that aren't apparent at first but can be discovered by carefully going over different references and putting all the details together like this to see it all as one, more clearly.
Thinking back to a previous bridge video you did, I hope you use the great barrier music for this. I always really liked those scenes where everyone is mesmerized by what's on screen and you get the cool lighting and music...
As an aside to anyone here, I've tried to identify the model of monitor used in the turbolift with no luck. I would appreciate it if anyone can figure it out. Thanks!
Thinking back to a previous bridge video you did, I hope you use the great barrier music for this. I always really liked those scenes where everyone is mesmerized by what's on screen and you get the cool lighting and music...
As an aside to anyone here, I've tried to identify the model of monitor used in the turbolift with no luck. I would appreciate it if anyone can figure it out. Thanks!
I was messing around tonight with the in-game camera and pulled outside of the bridge and looked down on it at a 3/4 view. I was floored. It looked gorgeous, but there was so much geometry in the way. So instead of starting the TUC Ent-A bridge tonight, I decided to finally buckle down and do the work required to get a nice three-quarter view with the necessary geometry removed to make it presentable. As I'm sure @Rekkert can atest: this is not a simple job and takes several hours. It requires planning and careful modification of geometry, and then I had to do quite a bit of setup to maintain the lighting I've achieved with the normal 3D renders. However, I will say, the results have turned out far better than I imagined they ever would, and I learned a lot from the process. I won't promise I'll do this with every interior I do from now on, but at least I've dipped my toe in the water and know exactly what's in store.
Enjoy, friends. You can click on the image to go to my Flickr where you can download the 8K version.
Enjoy, friends. You can click on the image to go to my Flickr where you can download the 8K version.
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It looks incredible! Really shows how that bridge is a reboot of the TOS set.
But it also shows why the changes were made for the next film - Spock's and Uhura's stations are split very wide so you can't get everyone into one shot.
Reconfiguring the bridge made that final hero shot possible. It's also a more interesting shot because you have a whole bank of consoles instead of lift doors.
But it also shows why the changes were made for the next film - Spock's and Uhura's stations are split very wide so you can't get everyone into one shot.
Reconfiguring the bridge made that final hero shot possible. It's also a more interesting shot because you have a whole bank of consoles instead of lift doors.
This is an amazing way to present your sets. It was that wonderful feel of being presented like a miniature but rendering like photo-real. It makes the brain go sideways in the best way.
I'm always blown away by FX breakdowns that look like they take more work than the actual scene.
It actually got worse for the TUC set, spreading the turbo lifts so wide, they would have extended outside the outer hull of the bridge. The TMP bridge was perfectly designed to match with the filming miniature. Once they redid the whole thing for TFF, it started pushing the boundaries of internal vs external reality, then TUC kind of wrecked it.
I've never understood when they did stuff like that. There are 50 easy ways to disguise a CRT so it doesn't scream "¡ C R T !" and they rarely made the effort.
Yeah, but it looks great on an aesthetic level for the film, which is the most important thing. The lifts already don't fit in the TFF bridge, so that horse had bolted.
Oh, agreed. And Donny’s treatment of these bridge designs has been a very interesting thing to watch over the years. The accuracy and attention to detail exhibited here, coupled with the non-standard POV angles really shows how some cool cinematography could have been done beyond the traditional eye-line shots. There are some seriously missed opportunities in that regard over the decades, IMO.
I'll gladly trade the reality of where the turbolifts should fit for shots like this, and this one, and especially this one.
This x1000!
I was looking for a comparison from TFF but I don't think there's a good shot of the bridge square-on in that film.
Not that I can recall. And with the way the stations were placed, Spock and Uhura would either be out of frame (in the latter two images, the turbolifts are out of frame) or just on the edge of it (you can see maybe 1/3 of the alcoves in the first image).
Yeah, the Enterprise-A bridges in TFF and TUC definitely were done with an homage to the bridge set used throughout TOS in mind, such as the arrangmenets of the control okudagrams on the parameter stations, the rectangular monitors, etc., not to mention bringing back classic TOS sound effects for use on the bridge.
Amazing. Simply amazing. Once again, Donny, you've outdone yourself.
It's a display, so couldn't it have a variety of modes?
One thing that's surprised me about Donny's work on the TFF bridge is that I never noticed the colors before. For a long time I've summed up my displeasure with this version of the bridge with three words: "So. Fucking. Beige." And it actually isn't. There's a lot of warm gray going on in the carpet, ceiling, support columns, the turbolift alcoves, and around the viewscreen. I guess those leather padded covers around the perimeter kind of grabbed my attention and fooled me into thinking the set is as beige as the TNG bridge. Donny's work on this has given me a whole new appreciation for this set.
Sure, but I’m trying to focus on one for default for the renders.
