Donny's TOS Enterprise Interiors

[B.J.]

I'm simply amazed at not only the accuracy, but the *speed* at which you're doing this! You even have the paint chipping at the edges of the saucer. If I hadn't spied a little faceting on the nacelles in that pic focusing on the impulse engine, I wouldn't be able to tell it from the actual model.

 

[Donny]

Looking really great. Two questions, that you may have answered already. Whenever you show an image, is it already the game engine version, or are you showing high-poly examples as well. Second, is the ship scaled to full-size or model size in these renders?

These are all in-game shots of the game-ready model which is a modest 30k polygons for an object of it's size. I don't ever paint high-poly models or include them as game assets as they just serve as the basis for baking out extra geometric detail for the textures and are not optimized for use in a game engine.

The ship was built to the 11-foot model specifications, but can easily be scaled up or down to whatever size needed. In these images, the model has been scaled up 5 times (to 55 feet). When I later implement it into some of the environments (for instance, the hangar deck, when I get around to build it) it will be set to it's full scale of 947 feet.

 

[Lt. Washburn]

Okay, cool. I was wondering what effect that would have on depth of focus and apparent size with the lenses you're using, and whatnot.

 

[cardinal biggles]

Dammit, Donny, you broke my thesaurus. I, too, have run out of superlatives. Amazing, amazing work. Better than TOS-R.

 

[Nightowl1701]

Is it time to drop 'Interiors' from this thread's title, I wonder?

 

[Donny]

Is it time to drop 'Interiors' from this thread's title, I wonder?

You don't know how tempted I am to create other classes of ships, stations, etc.

I'm wondering where I should set my virtual tour. At warp? Orbiting a planet? In the proximity of K7? At a space dock facility at say, Starbase 11? I'm actually leaning towards the latter two, as it would be neat to beam down and explore a bit of K7 or Starbase 11. The spacedock facility near Starbase 11 would require me getting to create unique TOS-era drydocks, workbees and such. I really like @aridas sofia's drydock design (is that yours, or is it the handiwork of someone else?) and would love to create that in 3D.

EDIT: I really wish I'd had started a new thread when I started tinkering with the TWOK stuff just to avoid confusion, and just made this one massive TOS thread. Sigh. Oh well. Perhaps I should just change it to Donny's Star Trek Stuff or something comparable.

 

[Maurice]

Honestly, to my eye that doesn't look anything like Jefferies design aesthetic. Everyone wants to try to go backwards from the drydock designs done for the refit (Minor's and Probert's), but my gut says that's not what he'd have done.

 

[Donny]

Honestly, to my eye that doesn't look anything like Jefferies design aesthetic. Everyone wants to try to go backwards from the drydock designs done for the refit (Minor's and Probert's), but my gut says that's not what he'd have done.

Maybe not, but there are some Jefferies elements in the design, namely the rectangular "solar panels" and vane below the hangar, which we see in his original K7 thumbnail:


Anyway, just a thought. I'm thinking way ahead of myself anyway.

 

[Nightowl1701]

Honestly, to my eye that doesn't look anything like Jefferies design aesthetic. Everyone wants to try to go backwards from the drydock designs done for the refit (Minor's and Probert's), but my gut says that's not what he'd have done.

If I'm Jefferies, I'd be thinking 'the only way we would actually need a physical drydock model was if we were going to Earth. Gene's made it crystal clear that's not happening in this series, and we'd never have the budget for those shots anyway. So I don't have to worry about it.'

 

[Jesse1066]

Were this a democracy, I'd cast a vote for K7. At least we've seen that on screen.

 

[A Chimpanzee & 2 Trainees]

If I had a vote, it would be for orbiting a planet. Most episodes had the ship orbiting the planet of the week, and even the intro had shots in / leaving orbit. I also think it would be cool to hop in a shuttle and fly down to the planet and/or beam down... but that’s a whole other ball of wax.

 

[Donny]

If I had a vote, it would be for orbiting a planet. Most episodes had the ship orbiting the planet of the week, and even the intro had shots in / leaving orbit. I also think it would be cool to hop in a shuttle and fly down to the planet and/or beam down... but that’s a whole other ball of wax.

Which is why I’m tempted to do Starbase 11. Here's what would be an brief flow of the ideal experience:
----
1. Start off as Admiral or Commodore aboard the orbital drydock office facility
2. The Enterprise arrives for resupply and inspection. You watch out the facility's lounge viewports as she drops out of warp and approaches drydock.
3. Go to the drydock office's hangar bay and board a shuttle
4. A pilot takes you on an inspection tour of the Enterprise, starting with a cruise around the vessel's exterior.
5. The shuttle swings around after the exterior tour and the shuttlebay doors open as the pilot guides the vessel in for a landing
6. Shuttle lands, you disembark, and are greated by Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, as they proceed to take you on a tour of their vessel. Your shuttle leaves you in their company as it returns to the drydock facilities.
7. Take tour of vessel, exploring the Enterprise at your leisure, bumping into various characters from the series, finding Easter Eggs, reading data slates, etc.
8. As your tour concludes in the transporter room, beam down with the senior officers and proceed to M-11 Starbase Club for drinks and chat with the young, but respected Captain of the Enterprise.

Okay, okay. A lot of that "running into the characters from the show" would be extremely difficult to do without a full team of professional animators, voice actors, etc behind me. So we may have to find a way around that But a guy can dream, eh?

 

[Firebird]

Kudos to you, Donny. I haven't seen a digital build of the Enterprise look that much like a real, physical model since the final CG asset the STC folks used in their finale. Simply agog at your skills, as always!

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Starbase 11 sounds fun.

 

[Maurice]

I'd consult Jefferies various spacecraft concept drawings for what should be near this proposed docking situation, like the various tugs and pods on this page (link), like this one (link).

Note that on some of these sketches he wrote "ship yard", "space repair dock" and "space dock" but not the anachronistic "drydock". I'd go with Jefferies terms and lose "drydock".

 

[Donny]

I'd consult Jefferies various spacecraft concept drawings for what should be near this proposed docking situation, like the various togs and pods on this page (link), like this one (link).

Note that on some of these sketches he wrote "ship yard", "space repair dock" and "space dock" but not the anachronistic "drydock". I'd go with Jeffries terms and lose "drydock".

I've actually been consdering this craft or this craft as the TOS "workbee" equivalent and have one or two stored near the hangar deck.

I agree with the switch to using "space repair dock" or "space dock"

----

So tonight I got the nacelle effect in working order. After studying more original footage, I've also tinted the nacelle domes themselves to bit a bit less orange and very much in the "peachy" range. I also did careful examination and count a total of 20 lights inside each collector, instead of the commonly depicted 10. There are 5 primary lights, arranged in a pentagon fashion, that are yellow/orange and are usually always lit. And then there are 15 blinking red, green and blue lights arranged in a broken circle behind the 5 primary lights.

Here's a video of the effect. Let me know your thoughts, please! This is a difficult detail to nail down. (EDIT: There seems to be a hickup in places where the frame rate struggles to catch up with the rotation of the inner spinning domes. This is not present in-game.)

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[Maurice]

Are they both supposed to be spinning counter-clockwise?

 

[Donny]

Are they both supposed to be spinning counter-clockwise?

I admit that that got past me. But now that I’m looking at videos, I’m seeing conflicting things Am I correct in saying that the starboard rotates counter-clockwise while the port rotates clockwise? I’m embarrassed that that detail got past me. <shakes head in shame> I’ll correct that first thing.

EDIT: Now I’m seeing footage that looks like they’re both moving in the opposite directions than stated above. Hmmm.

 

[aridas sofia]

Yes Donny. The “drydock” is my design. (I don’t like the terminology either, though it does maintain the established naval aesthetic.) And while Maurice is right that it looks forward to Probert’s TMP design, I tried to do so using as much Jefferies panache as I could. You correctly point out the source for the power transmission mast. The dock also has a small “tug-like” design of Jefferies’ and of course, the Douglas Aircraft space station parts he used for K-7. And most of all, it uses his psychedelic moire panels as power absorption plates.

Do I think this would have appeared in TOS? No, of course not. It’s meant to go with on something from a decade later that itself was based on a Mike Minor, “Phase II” design. (And it does borrow some Minor design elements from his Phase II work as well.) But fundamentally, more than either Probert or Minor, it is based on a zero-gee interpretation of a navy construction dock http://navy.memorieshop.com/Artisan/Subic-Bay-View.jpg ), with its rolling construction arch http://www.navy.mil/ah_online/USSFord/images/gallery/G-Photos/01-DCS13-93-154.jpg - this has two, one above and one below. Since we don’t really know what Jefferies would have designed for an “orbital assembly and repair dock” had he been called upon to do one, it was one of those instances where drawing on other complementary sources seemed appropriate.

 

[Maurice]

I admit that that got past me. But now that I’m looking at videos, I’m seeing conflicting things Am I correct in saying that the starboard rotates counter-clockwise while the port rotates clockwise? I’m embarrassed that that detail got past me. <shakes head in shame> I’ll correct that first thing.

EDIT: Now I’m seeing footage that looks like they’re both moving in the opposite directions than stated above. Hmmm.

Looking at the Spacedock video again at the end it's pretty clear that they both spin from the top towards inboard, so when facing them from the front, starboard spins clockwise and port anti/counter-clockwise.