Fennius' Ships and Images

[lewisniven]

Thank you Lewis for that information

EDIT: Interesting, it just occurred to me that you made your 944' TMP Enterprise smaller than the TOS Enterprise that is usually scaled at 947'.

I just checked the length of my model accurately, it's exactly 289m, so 948 feet long, top of saucery front to rear tip of nacelle.

 

[Fennius]

Been a while, but I have been quietly working in the background.

I got the Art of John Eaves book and there is a page in there for...what I suspect is mistakenly labelled a bird of prey (as the next page has a much more BoP looking ship labelled a battlecruiser) that he designed with Greg Jein, that was apparently a klingon ship designed for TNG and never used. Its a gorgeous bit of art that I can't for the life of me find online, but looks roughly like a K'tinga with something halfway to a saucer section and some interesting rounded off nacelles.

I like it, it has TMPish era vibes, and I need something to go up against the Astraea, so I've been working on bringing my interpretation of it to life, cheekily named the J'Gein class battlecruiser.

Not at all finished yet, in fact a chunk of the bridge superstructure has been - to use the technical term - all fucked up and needs redoing (think I must have accidentally smoothed it at one point....somehow), but in principle *most* of the modelling detailing is done. Bit of work on the leading edge of the wings, the back of the nacelles and rear superstruccture, redoing the bridge, and adding a torp launcher/deflector.

Then its into blender for shading - I will say though I tested the engines in there the other day and the bubmpy glass I've made over the engine glow is looking *chef's kiss*, can't wait to show that off properly.

There is a space battle competition on another forum I'm on due start of november, so I want to get this finished this week if I can, then work on a quick little scene with it, assuming I can work out how to do the effects I want.

 

[Fennius]

Right, modelling done finally (unless I go back and change bits, not happy with the nacelles to be honest) and a quick texture test using a slightly tweaked version of the texture I made for the Ravenna class

 

[blssdwlf]

I think if you made the nacelles more tall than wide it would give it a more Klingon feel. IMHO.

 

[Fennius]

I think if you made the nacelles more tall than wide it would give it a more Klingon feel. IMHO.

It would be more classically Klingon yes, but this is the design on the concept art (which I cannot find an online copy of anywhere ) and what drew to the design on the first place

My hesitation on them is in how well I managed to model the

 

[Fennius]

Been playing around with hull shaders, the J'Gein might end up more of a dark blue grey maybe with a greenish tint, it loks good in those colours and it echoes the original D7 scheme.

In the MEAN time

So there are surprisingly few (bwim bugger all) tutorials on how to do the iconic photon torpedo effect from Trek, and the ones that I could find....I really didn't like the result I was getting. Finally stumbled across an idea creating a single lens flare streak with a flat plane and a point light which would have never occurred to me (after having failed to make anything I liked with volumetrics). duplicating that plane a bunch and making some judicious use of light linking and I think I haver a pretty decent photon torpedo effect thats very close to what we see on screen. Sort of a cross between the TMP/TWOK and TUC ones I think.

There's a little bit of a border, especially when its in brighter colours (it looks very good in blue actually), and it can sometimes cast very slight density shadows when passing in front of objects, so its not flawless but I'm very happy with how its looking here - and being entirely in blender and not reliant on compositing hopefully gives me more freedom of use.

Also it can double as a mobile, omnidirectional lens flare which could come in handy.

The only question is whether it is better with the movement constrained so it always faces the camera (meaning the spokes are sharper but always spin relative to it) or unconstrained, so it spins freely which gives a more random, twinkling aspect to the spokes.

(Next up Phasers and shield - though I may got for more comp work for them!)

 

[Michael]

I got the Art of John Eaves book and there is a page in there for...what I suspect is mistakenly labelled a bird of prey (as the next page has a much more BoP looking ship labelled a battlecruiser) that he designed with Greg Jein, that was apparently a klingon ship designed for TNG and never used. Its a gorgeous bit of art that I can't for the life of me find online, but looks roughly like a K'tinga with something halfway to a saucer section and some interesting rounded off nacelles.

This is as good a reason as any to get out my copy of this wonderful book and look for the sketch you are talking about.

It’s not easy to make a good scan since it goes across the spine in the middle, but here you go …

The text that goes alongside these sketches in the book isn’t entirely clear on this, but I wonder if Jein and Eaves did these sketches for when they came up with the Vor’cha class (which Sternbach ended up designing). They just mentioned it was for The Next Generation, the TV show, but don’t mention the exact time or occasion.

And there’s also this rough sketch on the next page, which looks like it’s supposed to be the same ship maybe …

 

[Fennius]

This is as good a reason as any to get out my copy of this wonderful book and look for the sketch you are talking about.

It’s not easy to make a good scan since it goes across the spine in the middle, but here you go …

The text that goes alongside these sketches in the book isn’t entirely clear on this, but I wonder if Jein and Eaves did these sketches for when they came up with the Vor’cha class (which Sternbach ended up designing). They just mentioned it was for The Next Generation, the TV show, but don’t mention the exact time or occasion.

And there’s also this rough sketch on the next page, which looks like it’s supposed to be the same ship maybe …

YES! Thank you, I've been completely unable to find an online copy!

I am convinced there's a bit of mislabelling, as I said the first one is labelled a bird of prey, and the next page has this small sketch (which has got to be the same one albeit a different revision and looking more angular in profile) and a much bigger mnore detailed picture of a more classically John Eaves looking Bird of Prey labelled a battlecruiser.

Based on it being a design for TNG I figure the only possibilities are the Vorcha, or maybe the K'Vort if they originally wanted a new model before going with the BoP?

But it makes the most sense to me if it was designed before the Vorcha, because that really solidified the Klingon look going forward. Before that you've got the D7/Ktinga and the BoP, and only the latter was green (and...possibly still being thought of as Romulan? Honestly TUC makes so much more sense if it is), and when you're starting format the D7 this design feels a LOT less weird - especially if like me you interpret the head as a little narrower, because then it becomes much more like a bigger Bird of Prey head, and less like a Feddie Saucer section

 

[Michael]

Ah, I think I can solve the mystery: This text about the design of the Negh’Var from one of the Eaglemoss magazines talks about how Eaves got the task of designing a new Klingon ship that ultimately was scrapped … At least that’s my suspicion for how this went down.

 

[Fennius]

Ah, I think I can solve the mystery: This text about the design of the Negh’Var from one of the Eaglemoss magazines talks about how Eaves got the task of designing a new Klingon ship that ultimately was scrapped … At least that’s my suspicion for how this went down.

Oooh, that surprises me as it looks so....not that era

Cool to know though!

For my take on it I'm calling it an approx TMP era oen because it just doesn't look TNG/DS9 and also I want to pair it up with my other model

 

[Fennius]

Right, spent all evening on a hull shader which....has ended up becoming a monstrosity of a node tree so I might have to simplify it if its causing render problems.

But here we go:

The orthos don't quite give the right impression of the colour there as they're lit from several angles, and the greenish tint on it is only visible on far angles:

 

[Fennius]

Naturally immediately after that I then trim down the node tree to make it less stupidly complex.

Don't have an upload but the result actually ended up dirtying up hull slightly with some nice weathering, so the above is probably a pristine version

Done a quick little fly around and test firing render, might have a look at experimenting with a film LUT tomorrow after work before finishing it off.

 

[blssdwlf]

Looking at your orthos the textures look more like World War 2 camo pattern than hull plating. Is that your intent?

 

[Radu Molasar]

Ah, I think I can solve the mystery: This text about the design of the Negh’Var from one of the Eaglemoss magazines

I think Sternbach had a souped up Vor'cha with extra nacelles or something--a Klingon Keldon, if you will. That might be a good project.

 

[Fennius]

Right done! First attempt at LUT work...didn't really work that well, made the ship look haunted

This isn't perfect but will do for this effects test! Ended up using physical halation nodes I found online

 

[Fennius]

I started this one months ago and it's been on hiatus, but learning a couple of things on the other items has let me revisit it and get it to a state I am fairly happy with!

I was going to make that flare at the end of the warp effect smaller and shorter with a punchier feel, but it was just looking too much like a 2D effect pasted on top, so I embiggened and slowed it, letting the softer edges to the work of making it feel integrated.

I also had to track it to the moving star field right at the start of its appearance, because I was wondering for months why I couldn't get it to look like a thing in the distance before I clicked that it was a parallax issue


My girlfriend suggested the music off the top of her head and it is honestly freaky how well I think it times to it, especially as the last note - to my ear anyway - feels like it's transitioning into the the enterprise music!

 

[Fennius]

VFX test for TWOK style phaser bursts, this actually turned out a lot better than I expected, and I really like the effect of turning the opacity of the effect down just a smidge - not strictly accurate for the STII phasers but helps sell it for the era. the problem is the phasers seeming to come out from too high up - As I'm uploading I realise what happened. It was rendered in passes and so sections of the phaser bolt that were still emerging from within the ship now end up on top - changing the origin point of the blast will probably fix this though it might change the feel - worst case I can always try masking it when I'm doing the postwork

 

[Radu Molasar]

The ST II phaser sound effects just sound angry—