I'd suggest fudging the hangar interior to make things fit rather than expanding the whole room. Fantastic job!
The marrying up of the shuttlecraft's interior and exterior has driven many to madness! Your design choices here are creative and even make sense in a real world setting! The differently proportioned windows and the completely different door types are not something I even attempted in my head; up until now, I just headcannoned them as belonging to 2 different types of shuttlecraft but no longer! Also, really like the presence of the cellular beam struts under the pylons. They were there on the prop, so they belong on the "real" shuttle too. The only thing that would improve the shuttle is an airlock - but that is missing on virtually every Starfleet shuttle anyway
My original idea was to create an airlock between the inner hatch and outer hatch, however the resulting space ended up being far too small to be a believable airlock. I will say that I've cheated a bit when fitting the aft compartment of the interior into the exterior shell. Not only is the room a bit shorter than it appeared in "The Galileo Seven", but also the geometry of the bottom aft edge of the aft compartment (where the aft wall meets the floor) protrudes outside of the shuttlecraft exterior model just a bit, right where the aft landing leg is anchored to the hull. Also, conversely, the upper portion of the aft landing leg's geometry protrudes into the aft compartment. Obviously these are visual errors that must be remedied, so I've used programming/game engine trickery to solve the problem. What I did was create a program which completely hides the aft compartment when you are outside of the shuttle (and therefore wouldn't be able to see it anyway), and also then hide the exterior landing leg when inside the aft compartment. Since you can never be outside the shuttlecraft and inside the shuttlecraft at the same time, you never see one or the other offending pieces of geometry sticking through what is otherwise a "solid" wall, or ever see that either of these things are hidden from the opposite position. Make sense? If I never told anyone, no one would've ever noticed. Unless someone wanted to see complete cutaway orthographics of my shuttlecraft model. Then I'm screwed.
I agree. With the size of the shuttlecraft determined now, I can begin mocking up the flight deck tonight and see how everything fits together. I'll keep everyone updated with the results. In a worst case scenario, I may have to do as @Tallguy suggested and forget marrying the two sets together and come up with an alternate way to believably access the shuttle interior. I wanted to shoot for a seamless transition of boarding the shuttle from the outside, but I could do the following as an alternative: Plan B 1) The player approaches a 24 foot shuttle from the outside, clicks the giant "Push" button and opens the hatch. From the outside looking into the open hatch, you can see the interior of the shuttle. This interior is scaled smaller than the actual full-sized set, but the player really can't tell since they aren't inside yet 2) Approaching the open hatch, the player presses a button on the keyboard when the interact prompt "board shuttle" appears on screen 3) Fade to black. When the player camera is completely black, the 24 foot exterior/interior is replaced with the 28 foot exterior/interior combo and the player camera is transferred from outside of the shuttle to the interior of the shuttle. 4) Fade from black. The player is now aboard the full sized interior. The player really can't tell the shuttlecraft is now sized to 28 feet since it cannot see the shuttle's exterior while on the interior (except for the bit of nacelle right outside of the hatch) 5) To disembark, the player hits another interactive prompt near the hatch. 6) Fade to black. The shuttles are swapped out again 7) Fade from black. The player finds himself outside of the 24 foot set again. Does this make sense at all?
That being the case - couldn't the shuttle be scaled up a little more and avoid the cheating? http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/star-trek-modelers-blueprints.php
Yep. But that would unfortunately mean rebuilding the window port-holes and the bridge between the interior and exterior hatches again, and would then require an even LARGER shuttlecraft exterior. This is all still an option, but I wanna see if I can make this 28 footer adequately fit within a flight deck which then adequately fits inside the Enterprise exterior first before I redo the entirety of yesterday's work, or resort to the "Plan B" that I covered in my last post
I do appreciate that it is far easier said than done! Having said that, I do hope you can find a way to fit the shuttlecraft into the Flight Deck - the fade to black would be a bit distracting IMO. BTW, while I'm dreaming up ridiculously labour intensive solutions: Would it be possible instead to "shrink" the user instead, as they approach the entry hatch? That way, the reduced scale interior would line up perfectly!
I like it. A lot. It makes the shuttle look more substantial, more like an actual craft. The plywood-thick walls used throughout TOS (by necessity) still sometimes looked more like sets than actual bulkheads. As you say, this now has room in the walls for electronics and conduits and machinery. The door ramps look especially workable. I also like the idea of real windows instead of monitors. The only thing that's a little jarring is the ports on either side as seen in the last shot above. It makes obvious the difference between the width of the set and the width of the exterior. Looking at the previous shots from the interior, the narrower interior dimensions make this arrangement make sense. And it does provide a somewhat wider field of view for the pilot on the opposite side of the craft. It works. I'll add my agreement with this idea, and add that the Eagles and Hawks from Space: 1999 also had the black sills. It seems quite practical, as well as aesthetically pleasing.
That became such a convention that when the travel pod in TMP had an actual window that you could see PEOPLE in it blew me away! Same for the medical frigate in The Empire Strikes Back!
Black sills and dark tinted exterior windows better? I like how it looks from the outside, but not the inside so much.
I think it's perfect the way it is. Who could have guessed the best TOS enterprise model out there would be as perfect of a recreation of the studio model as possible?
The black, to me, looks more NASA, but less TOS. Just my $.02. Thanks for the fun of seeing all this develop.
I like the black. In your worst-case-scenario, could you instead of fading to black set up something like in Portal where stepping through the door will transport you to the interior which is stored somewhere else in the scene?
I've thought about that, and from my preliminary research on the topic, it's possible within the Unreal engine. I'll try matte-black for the window sills tonight.
Hmmm... You're right; the black is a bit too stark. Even from the outside, the effect is a little raccoon-ish. Maybe try the matte black that was suggested, or possibly a dark grey, between the black and gunmetal grey you used before.
That is the method I'd vote on if this were a Republic. The situation is just impossible because BOTH scales are canon. If you scale down the interior to match the exterior then you've sacrificed something. If you scale up the exterior to match the interior then you've sacrificed something. I think the fade to black transition is the best way to do it enables you to eat your cake and have it too.