JR Trek

[JR TREK]

There's a freighter type ship that appears in Next Gen a couple times, I have incorporated its bridge louvers because I thought it would be neat to have a call back to a ship that was too cool to only have one or two scenes. It was a non-Federation ship in one episode, but it may have been Federation elsewhere. Somebody will know. I could change the louver design, but it fits rather well. I'm inclined to leave it. Then again, I feel challenged to come up with something else too. But there are other parts of the model to work on. Decisions, decisions.

It's always fun to try to come up with another variation on the saucer rim, and the cross section of the saucer. For some reason I had a vision of insetting the top of the saucer, and IMO it turned out pretty good. But what could the reason for it be? Well, this ship breaks apart into a lot of pieces. The cargo hull is a major piece, the middle part with the warp engines and bridge is a tug, and the saucer can descend to a planet's surface to pick up cargo. It can land on water and float, so the rim is like the guard rail of an ocean-going ship. The red-brown boxes are shipping containers, and the yellow piece on the bow is a crane that can flip up and move back over the cargo hatch.

The Galileo shuttle fits between the decks, barely. I suppose you might want a shuttle in the saucer hull while it's operating away from the rest of the ship.

The saucer and cargo hull might get swapped around like semi trailers. The "Akimoto Maru" might only be the tug portion. I copied a deflector dish to the back of the tug, with the idea that it flips over to face the front when needed.

publiusr - You may not have been the only one who thought that It's a long way to the back of the Excelsior, what if you need a shuttle in a hurry and the turbolifts are down? I guess you could get into an escape pod and fly back to the shuttle bay!

E-DUB - I would have preferred to keep the saucer perfectly circular, but it didn't fit the rest of the design.

I wish they'd stuck with the swept-forward pylons on the E. I would have preferred to see the design language from the Galaxy and Intrepid class progress, instead of regressing back to the Constitution-refit look. But what's done is done.

 

[JR TREK]

Revising my thoughts on the NX class. I can't believe they didn't go this route on Enterprise. It's the lowest hanging fruit you could possibly pick, and yet it gives NX-01 the one thing it was sorely lacking - it's own unique design element.

In this design, the saucer is a secondary hull attached to a pre-existing warp delta class of ship, which can dump the saucer and continue on as a normal war delta. The saucer has a limited ability to operate on it's own, but it's main function is to enable deep space operation of the warp delta by carrying extra supplies/fuel and having larger accommodations for the crew.

 

[Commodore_Sarvour]

I just binged this thread....
Nice designs! Each and every one!
I will start a thread later, on the topic of Timelines & Canon, or Timelines Vs. Canon.....
I find your take on the NX concept Fascinating!
Especially since the Original Enterprise of the 2150s wasn't even a Starfleet vessel, but this civilian Cruise Liner:
Enterprise_legacy_tmp.jpg

USS_Enterprise_(XCV_330),_ENT.jpg

2011_Star_Trek_Ships_of_the_Line_calendar_January_promo

Interesting how STE/ENT bumped this ship's service a decade earlier so they could hamfist the NX-01 in...
There's a wealth event/year timestamps that the writers of STE/ENT ripped from the briefly canon Spaceflight Chronology, as they changed said events completely.

On a personal note, i want to take one one of these cargo haulers, set it up as a salvage vessel named Hurricane Kirk...

Edit: I deleted the extraneous code after the ".jpg" in my image links; if that doesn't fix it i'll have to upload them elsewhere.
Fixed.

 

[fireproof78]

Not sure what's up or if others are experiencing this but I cannot see the pictures.

 

[JR TREK]

Commodore_Sarvour - Yes, I was thinking about the XCV-330, but now I'm wondering if it is even canon? Did it ever appear onscreen? I thought that it had, as background art at least, but I'm not sure where.

fireproof78 - Evidently others can see the pics. Can you see them now?

 

[JR TREK]

I've got some rendering issues, but the rear is mostly finished. Since she's rigged as a tanker, I don't think she'd have a nice passenger module on the top deck. I figured the crew throws some cheapo pre-fabbed barracks on the back when they're tanking. They're probably air tight - who knows what atmosphere they'll be used in?

 

[fireproof78]

Evidently others can see the pics. Can you see them now?

Yes, thank you.

 

[publiusr]

I love a busy secondary hull…The imagination about the uses of the structures…

 

[JR TREK]

That's 95% of the modelling done, unless I need to have the ship separate. I'm leaning towards replacing the barracks with a more space-appropriate habitat module, but I'm not sure yet. There's lots of texturing to do while I make up my mind.

This ship would be a good setting for a survival horror game, if it wasn't so small.

 

[JR TREK]

I was playing around with Mark Kingsnorth's Shipwright add-on for Blender, and I got this! There is a little extra refinement in it, but there's not more than a day and a half of work in it so far. I could put more time into detailing it, but it's not a hero ship and I don't know what I'll use it for. I'm going to see what I can do with procedural texturing and call this one done.

BTW, I call this the "Cardassian Freight Train." My Cardassian isn't good enough to give it a proper Cardie name.

 

[publiusr]

You know something? There are “bites” in DS9’s rim. Maybe have each segment designed to fit those cut-outs. So that’s how the ore gets in…

 

[JR TREK]

I'm not sure how the scaling works out. There's a circle in each of those cut outs which I assume is a docking port. I could put a matching port on the "top" of my containers, but I don't know if it would be sized right. But I don't know if the docking ports on the sides of the ship are sized right either. Compared to the bridge, they look like they're big enough for three or four Cardies to walk beside each other.

I'm making progress on the texturing, but no new renders yet.

 

[Rahul]

I was playing around with Mark Kingsnorth's Shipwright add-on for Blender, and I got this! There is a little extra refinement in it, but there's not more than a day and a half of work in it so far. I could put more time into detailing it, but it's not a hero ship and I don't know what I'll use it for. I'm going to see what I can do with procedural texturing and call this one done.

BTW, I call this the "Cardassian Freight Train." My Cardassian isn't good enough to give it a proper Cardie name.

Nice!
Happy to see you continue & post here! I literally wait and check every once in a while, I really love your designs so much!

Revising my thoughts on the NX class. I can't believe they didn't go this route on Enterprise. It's the lowest hanging fruit you could possibly pick, and yet it gives NX-01 the one thing it was sorely lacking - it's own unique design element.

In this design, the saucer is a secondary hull attached to a pre-existing warp delta class of ship, which can dump the saucer and continue on as a normal war delta. The saucer has a limited ability to operate on it's own, but it's main function is to enable deep space operation of the warp delta by carrying extra supplies/fuel and having larger accommodations for the crew.

Great idea! I would have never come up with it myself, but now that I see it, it really seems obvious. Well done.
At the same time - It's the USS Mickey Mouse!

There's a freighter type ship that appears in Next Gen a couple times, I have incorporated its bridge louvers because I thought it would be neat to have a call back to a ship that was too cool to only have one or two scenes. It was a non-Federation ship in one episode, but it may have been Federation elsewhere. Somebody will know. I could change the louver design, but it fits rather well. I'm inclined to leave it. Then again, I feel challenged to come up with something else too. But there are other parts of the model to work on. Decisions, decisions.

It's always fun to try to come up with another variation on the saucer rim, and the cross section of the saucer. For some reason I had a vision of insetting the top of the saucer, and IMO it turned out pretty good. But what could the reason for it be? Well, this ship breaks apart into a lot of pieces. The cargo hull is a major piece, the middle part with the warp engines and bridge is a tug, and the saucer can descend to a planet's surface to pick up cargo. It can land on water and float, so the rim is like the guard rail of an ocean-going ship. The red-brown boxes are shipping containers, and the yellow piece on the bow is a crane that can flip up and move back over the cargo hatch.

The Galileo shuttle fits between the decks, barely. I suppose you might want a shuttle in the saucer hull while it's operating away from the rest of the ship.

The saucer and cargo hull might get swapped around like semi trailers. The "Akimoto Maru" might only be the tug portion. I copied a deflector dish to the back of the tug, with the idea that it flips over to face the front when needed.

publiusr - You may not have been the only one who thought that It's a long way to the back of the Excelsior, what if you need a shuttle in a hurry and the turbolifts are down? I guess you could get into an escape pod and fly back to the shuttle bay!

E-DUB - I would have preferred to keep the saucer perfectly circular, but it didn't fit the rest of the design.

I wish they'd stuck with the swept-forward pylons on the E. I would have preferred to see the design language from the Galaxy and Intrepid class progress, instead of regressing back to the Constitution-refit look. But what's done is done.

God damn. I love it. I really do.

One thing I absolutely appreciate is, how you're not doing only hero ships. Like, it feels like I have already seen every three-cylinder-saucer arrangement possible already. Posting these secondary ships, workhorses, alien ships, freighters feels very exciting, because it's so fresh. But then again - your hero ship, the USS Enterprise, is just the best.
The simple fact of bending the nacelle struts forward made it "feel" so much more like the original, and not like any other re-design, which usually just looks like a mixture of the TOS and TMP connie. I'll continue to look out for your work, simply for your great design ideas!

 

[JR TREK]

The procedurally generated textures are working well now. This is pretty awesome for a ship that is almost entirely procedurally generated. Sure, it would need more work to be ready for a big scene in 4K on a big budget show, but this is something I could do as concept art. Back in the TNG/DS9 era, we rarely got to see new ships, and they'd have to be recycled a few times. It's amazing to be able to do this stuff at home as a hobbyist.

A few more little details and I'll be able to wrap this one up.

Rahul - I appreciate your comments! I'm sorry I can't do more Trek art, but I have to do it on the side of the side. I enjoy doing it though. I've got a bunch of designs in my head that I'll never get to.

I can see the Mickey Mouse in my NX class now. Oh well, Disney will probaby end up owning Trek too at some point. In honor of you comment, I'll name my NX Enterprise's bar "The Mickey."

I like all the little side ships but so far the Connie is the one that gets the most attention, by far. It feels like it's a waste of time to do anything else. One of these days I'd like to do a very high resolution version of it with a full interior you can walk through like the Stage 9 Enterprise.

 

[publiusr]

WOW!

 

[JR TREK]

I think I need a couple passenger cars and a caboose. I've got an idea for a shot I could do. I'm imagining the freight train travelling at warp, we see it from the front as it passes by. There are a couple Dominion bug ships escorting it. After the train and the bugs pass by, a couple Birds of Prey and maybe a Vor'cha decloak behind them. It might not be too ambitious if there are good models of the other ships available. Maybe I'll try it - when was the last time we got a new Dominion War shot?

I took a look at the scale vs DS9 -

Fleetyards has a good size comparison of DS9 with a few ships here - Link

Scroll down to the top view, and you can compare it to mine.

DS9 is much smaller than I thought it was. The scaling in the show must be wrong because when a Galaxy is docked at DS9, the saucer appears to be about as wide as the Galor in Fleetyard's image. A Galor is not as big as a Galaxy.

My scaling may be a little small, but you can see that the cars can be docked flat at the primary docking ports and fit well in the "notch." The secondary "notches" are smaller, and the cars would have to dock in a vertical orientation. Altogether, I'd say they fit pretty well with the station.

It's interesting to see that the Starglider's wingspan is about the size of a B'rel, and the body is a little smaller than Defiant. My Connie is only going to be a little smaller than the Galor. With a few upgrades maybe she can show the Cardie's a thing or two

 

[publiusr]

Cool!

 

[JR TREK]

I started building the passenger cars and quickly realized I was adding six story buildings. If they were as deep as the containers, each car would be the equivalent of a big hotel. All I wanted was a few rooms of cramped, uncomfortable quarters, fit only for the poorest travellers.

Next I'll prepare this for animation.

 

[JR TREK]

It's taken me a couple weeks to track down a flickering problem in my textures, but this one should be good now!

 

[publiusr]

Wow!