How big was the Enterprise?

[blssdwlf]

I believe that it was Vektor*, a magnificiently talented artist who used to post on TrekBBS, who built a 3DMax version of the Constitution based upon the Franz Joseph blueprints.

I'm sure there are variances, but Joseph appeared to have based most of the exterior contours of his ship on the Jefferies scale drawing.

Unfortunately, the model was built in a now-outdated file format. With his permission, I did a partial conversion of the mesh to Lightwave back in 2004, for use as the wrecked U.S.S. Kongo in the fan film Starship Exeter: The Tressaurian Intersection.

IIRC, I converted only the engineering hull and nacelles since that was all that survived per the storyline.** And then I modified the details of the model to suggest a ship that might have been refit as a more advanced vessel than the Enterprise or Exeter. So in the work image below, you see things like a ST:TMP glowing deflector dish.

Be that as it may, you can also see the different curvature and proportions of the Jefferies' drawing represented in the image:

View attachment 43019

View attachment 43020

Since canon sources contradict each other as to the ship's dimensions (and much of Trek's canon is self-contradictory) I'm perfectly happy with the SNW scale of 442 meters. The ship's size was apparently quietly retconned in the last days of the Roddenberry/Berman era, and the larger scale makes more sense.

*I'm not sure it was him. If someone else is the actual artist and they're still active on the board, I hope they'll see this and correct my error.
**The grounded saucer also appears, but it was a physical model that was painted over as part of a matte.

Thanks - Vektor does wonderful work but as you note, FJ's plans has some variances from MJ's plans. Even though FJ took the engineering hull curvature and the BC deck the saucer rim, bridge and other bits are different.

Still seems odd to me that more 3D artists have built FJ's version than MJ's after all this time (Google doesn't seem to find any builds of MJ's version.)

 

[Mudd]

Thanks - Vektor does wonderful work but as you note, FJ's plans has some variances from MJ's plans. Even though FJ took the engineering hull curvature and the BC deck the saucer rim, bridge and other bits are different.

Still seems odd to me that more 3D artists have built FJ's version than MJ's after all this time (Google doesn't seem to find any builds of MJ's version.)

There's not a lot of unique detail to the Jefferies version - what's the highest resolution or largest scale at which the illustration is available? FJ definitely did some extrapolation to make the design work, as he did with a lot of the limited photographic and drawing references he had to work with.

For example, look at the nacelle "intercoolers" on the drawing - how much visual information is really there?

 

[Warped9]

This subject comes up every so often and bringing up the same arguments.

I trust Matt Jefferies knew what he was doing in that he designed everything to fit within his 947ft. ship. If the show runners ignored his thinking in some areas I will still defer to him.

 

[blssdwlf]

There's not a lot of unique detail to the Jefferies version - what's the highest resolution or largest scale at which the illustration is available?

The highest resolution that I'm aware of is present in the Star Trek Sketchbook which is supposed to be reproduced from the original but at a different size (I think). Unique detail I would imagine would be the differences between filming model and the illustration such as hull shape, proportions and placement of windows, etc.

FJ definitely did some extrapolation to make the design work, as he did with a lot of the limited photographic and drawing references he had to work with.

Which makes FJ's work a variation of MJ's but not the same, no?

For example, look at the nacelle "intercoolers" on the drawing - how much visual information is really there?

I'm not sure that matters considering that there are creations of Matt's other concept work with arguably similar or less visual information (shuttlecraft, sphere ship, etc).

You would think that since MJ's work is referenced as the "author's intent" so many times someone would have taken the time to render the author's intent...

For those curious, here are FJ's (from his blueprint) and MJ's (from TMOST) illustrations overlayed on Petri Blomqvist/Gary Kerr's rendering of the Enterprise. You can see there are lots of differences between all three.

Interestingly, MJ has no undercut in his saucer design and has an engineering diameter larger than Kerr's but smaller than FJ's. There are differences from top/bottom and front/back but putting that together will have to be another day...

 

[CaptChris42]

Perhaps we shouldn't be too hasty in writing off the DS9 technical manual.

Except for Defiant, which is all over the place with its lengths, is it correct to say that the majority of 24th century-era starships are sized correctly? Not including designs from the 23rd century that are still in service, of course.

Ex Astris Scientia lists some David Stipes reported VFX size figures, only some of which are in the Manual.
The Miranda is scaled like 1120 feet, for example (exactly double the Defiant) whilst the Akira is scaled quite small, considering. The Galaxy is also sometimes rounded down a bit.
Voyager got rounded up to 1200 feet sometimes?
And the Bird of Prey gets two different sizes - 360 ft for the 'regular' one, and 450 for the Rotarren.

 

[publiusr]

I believe that it was Vektor*, a magnificiently talented artist who used to post on TrekBBS, who built a 3DMax version of the Constitution based upon the Franz Joseph blueprints.

I'm sure there are variances, but Joseph appeared to have based most of the exterior contours of his ship on the Jefferies…I did a partial conversion of the mesh to Lightwave back in 2004 …. you can also see the different curvature and proportions of the Jefferies' drawing represented in the image:

View attachment 43019

A lovely teardrop, the secondary hull—The Franklin Mint made a good physical representation of that.

A few years ago Star Trek Magazine had a cross section that was to be released as a book—that off the table now?

Since there are 12 or so ships, you could assign each a different look…

 

[Henoch]

I believe that it was Vektor*, a magnificiently talented artist who used to post on TrekBBS, who built a 3DMax version of the Constitution based upon the Franz Joseph blueprints.

I looked up the @Vektor old posts, and unfortunately, all the links to photos are broken; darn it.

 

[Mudd]

I looked up the @Vektor old posts, and unfortunately, all the links to photos are broken; darn it.

Managed to pull a few off of his old website via the Internet Archive:

Wayback Machine

web.archive.org

 

[Scrooge McTall]

THANK you @Mudd .

I have a soft spot for this model because a) It's GORGEOUS (even 20 years on) and b) it was between this and Rob Bonchune's In a Mirror Darkly Enterprise that got me to get serious about re-learning 3D.

That surfacing is still absolutely on point.

 

[fireproof78]

Managed to pull a few off of his old website via the Internet Archive:

Wayback Machine

web.archive.org

View attachment 43067View attachment 43068View attachment 43069View attachment 43070View attachment 43071View attachment 43072View attachment 43073View attachment 43074View attachment 43075

That really pops and there a unique texture to it that I like.

 

[Scrooge McTall]

I obviously don't know every version of every TOS Enterprise realized in 3D but I think Vektor set a lot of baselines that have been echoed in lots of other "modern" takes on the TOS ship. It was a significant effort in a well trafficked community at the time.

I know for myself I STILL find myself finding other things to do so that I don't copy Vektor. His TOS drydock is genius.

Oh, and it's a 286m long ship.

 

[BK613]

That surfacing is still absolutely on point.

Agree. There's a subtlety that you will always see in HD that would be completely obscured by a 1970s era TV CRT. The perfect amount of aztecking.

 

[fireproof78]

and it's a 286m long ship.

Does this make a difference in how the model is portrayed?

 

[Warped9]

Does this make a difference in how the model is portrayed?

Doug Drexler made an interesting observation some years ago when doing some visual fx work for Star Trek Continues. If you want your 3D TOS E model to look like it did on television don’t scale it to 947ft. Scale it to 11ft. the size of the filming miniature.

 

[fireproof78]

Doug Drexler made an interesting observation some years ago when doing some visual fx work for Star Trek Continues. If you want your 3D TOS E model to look like it did on television don’t scale it to 947ft. Scale it to 14ft, the size of the filming miniature.

That is quite interesting. So there is a visual difference from model to scaling up.

 

[blssdwlf]

That is quite interesting. So there is a visual difference from model to scaling up.

I wonder if it is because with a 11' model you have to shoot with a very small aperture to maintain depth of field at such a close range. With that small of an aperture then the lighting has to be significantly increased so you can have a proper exposure. That might be something a 3D artist could imitate.

Agree. There's a subtlety that you will always see in HD that would be completely obscured by a 1970s era TV CRT. The perfect amount of aztecking.

Yeah the aztecking in this photo would look like noise on an old CRT TV.

 

[Scrooge McTall]

I wonder if it is because with a 11' model you have to shoot with a very small aperture to maintain depth of field at such a close range. With that small of an aperture then the lighting has to be significantly increased so you can have a proper exposure. That might be something a 3D artist could imitate.

It's mainly how light behaves at scale. (Something something inverse square something...) The Enterprise was never lit with natural light (such as a sun). It was lit with studio lights that were several feet (not millions of miles) away.

You might be able to make a 1 (or 2) thousand foot spaceship look amazingly real in a realistic space environment, but that's not what the TV show or the movies (or SNW) ever looked like.

 

[fireproof78]

It's mainly how light behaves at scale. (Something something inverse square something...) The Enterprise was never lit with natural light (such as a sun). It was lit with studio lights that were several feet (not millions of miles) away.

You might be able to make a 1 (or 2) thousand foot spaceship look amazingly real in a realistic space environment, but that's not what the TV show or the movies (or SNW) ever looked like.

So, Star Trek isn't realistic in its space shots?


No snark intended. I'm not a big visual guy, so such ideas are a foreign language to me. I understand the idea of ship building and how gravity needs to work, hull plating, shields, etc. But model and scale for a ship is something different to me.

 

[blssdwlf]

It's mainly how light behaves at scale. (Something something inverse square something...) The Enterprise was never lit with natural light (such as a sun). It was lit with studio lights that were several feet (not millions of miles) away.

You might be able to make a 1 (or 2) thousand foot spaceship look amazingly real in a realistic space environment, but that's not what the TV show or the movies (or SNW) ever looked like.

I sorta agree but this would suggest it is possible to artificially light a 1000' Enterprise to achieve the same look as the TV show... (basically don't make it realistic).

 

[Warped9]

Doug Drexler made an interesting observation some years ago when doing some visual fx work for Star Trek Continues. If you want your 3D TOS E model to look like it did on television don’t scale it to 947ft. Scale it to 14ft, the size of the filming miniature.

My bad. I meant 11 ft., not 14.