Modelling and Rendering the TMP Enterprise

[AnyStar]

as to the teardrop, i dont know that i'd actually call it that, after the bulge its actually a straight cone back to the end, it doesnt curve back the opposite way that a teardrop will. but on an overall glance it does give a teardrop impression.

i've been swamped lately and havnt had much time to work on mine, but all this talk about that fantail got me to make a few attempts on mine this last week. i'll clean up what ive got and post a bit up in the morning, i ended up using an even shorter elipse on the back end, and it makes the profile of the upper part on top of the doors perfectly. except when viewed from above its too wide

i ended up doing what you've done also, i made an inverted cone, and skewed the top plane aft to create the actual fantail. i'm still trying to get it cut in nicely though.

 

[AnyStar]

• I think the vertical gridlines are not quite vertical! I'm wondering if the lean I see on some of the lines is because the model builders used the centre gridline as the horizontal and drew at 90 degrees to that. As the gridline slopes down aft of the airlock, the top of the vertical lines lean to the right.

Or of course I'm completely wrong and most of this can be attributed to optical distortion in the physical camera lens!

Cheers,
S.O.

i could buy that, using a straight edge t-square aligned in the horizontal grooves, and scribing along that. could easily be whats happening.

 

[Science Officer]

as to the teardrop, i dont know that i'd actually call it that, after the bulge its actually a straight cone back to the end, it doesnt curve back the opposite way that a teardrop will. but on an overall glance it does give a teardrop impression.

i've been swamped lately and havnt had much time to work on mine, but all this talk about that fantail got me to make a few attempts on mine this last week. i'll clean up what ive got and post a bit up in the morning, i ended up using an even shorter elipse on the back end, and it makes the profile of the upper part on top of the doors perfectly. except when viewed from above its too wide

i ended up doing what you've done also, i made an inverted cone, and skewed the top plane aft to create the actual fantail. i'm still trying to get it cut in nicely though.

Work is a pain! I get home and might find half an hour to work on it, but sometimes I just can't get the brain in gear to make any meaningful progress. But with Easter holidays coming up, I should be able to dedicate more time with better concentration.

My first fantail attempt wasn't very good. This time I stripped points out of the hull (as it's tricky to see what's what from a top view) and worked with sectors (3 to 177 degrees) rather than complete circles. I found it made it easier to see where the tangent of the circle would match the gradient of the hull edges. After that it was a simple scale and shift job.

That ellipsoid business will be tricky. Trouble is that looking down on the area in question you see an almost spherical bulge centred on the navigation light. I think a FFD would be appropriate here. I'd imagine by using an FFD i could squeeze the points in the x-axis to help form the bulge. But until I work on it I can't be sure. When I get to it, I'll give more thought and let you know.

Yesterday, I rotated the centre gridline down by 1/3 of a polygon height (1 degree) and that has helped things. I need to decide whether to now do yet another redistribution iteration.

Cheers,
S.O.

 

[Tomalak]

This is remarkable, I love seeing the progress! Great to see such care and attention to detail given to the greatest starship design.

 

[Science Officer]

Thanks Tomalak,

Well latest news is that I found an extra third of a polygon height to fix my panel height issue. After looking at the hi-res camera-mapped images again I saw that I could raise the top gridline by 1 degree. There are still some residual deviations, but I think it's close enough.

Now the downside is that having moved two gridlines, it's messed up the polygon distribution. So I've come to the conclusion that I'll either redo the hull to account for what I've found, or just slice off the top of the hull down to teh centre gridline and stick on a new one. The latter should be relatively little effort and won't disrupt the fantail work, bottom gridline and the cutout.

One thing I've decided not to do, is add a lean on those vertical gridlines. It's not much effort from the point of cutting, but is a massive effort from the point of redistributing the points over the surface. Afterall you want the sub-panel details to correctly scale with the varying width.

If I can get that done this week, I'm hoping to look at that section above the hangar deck that's been keeping AnyStar busy. Any news there AnyStar?

S.O.

 

[Science Officer]

It's been a busy week, so I haven't had the time to progress the hull as much as I wanted. The top of the hull has been replaced following the height adjustment for the top row of panels. The green ring on the hull had to be tapered and it's gained a nose too!

That nose should be simple and yet I can't get it to line up with the reference image. It's as if the thing is shifted up a bit. So I've based the radii off the top edges, which means my nose is a bit wider. I had a quick look at the rear that AnyStar was looking at. I could reproduce his problem. But an alternate approach was showing some signs of working and time permitting, I'll look into it further.

Cheers,
S.O.

 

[Saquist]

I love precision.

 

[Science Officer]

Hi Folks,

I needed a break from this last month - it was getting difficult to find the time. However with it being the May Bank Holiday in the UK, I've had some good hours to spend advancing the nose section.

The deflector was nice and easy. The three yellow side pods have been a challenge. I tried a number of approaches involving FFDs and NURBs cages, but none gave a good shape and none gave a nice clean edge that could be integrated into the secondary hulls large green ring. So I ended up resorting to some simple geometry, a set of disc primitives and an Excel spreadsheet! The result is a nice clean shape, but not quite the same as the model. The highlights on the model look almost parabolic whilst mine tend to curve outwards as they approach the front of the shape. I can live with it

Cheers,
S.O.

 

[JES]

I remember seeing some of your work while browsing images on Image Shack. And this was WAY back when, before I joined this forum, and it was impressive even back then.

 

[Ensign Ro-]

That's a very tight mesh. I'm thinking movie quality. Nice work. :-)

 

[Science Officer]

Thanks guys. It's back to work tomorrow so progress will be back to a crawl

I want to complete the three pods and get the RCS thrusters cut into the nose before my next update. For me, the pods still pose a challenge. The spherical bits should be easy as they are just that, spheres and their positions and radii are defined by markings on the nose section and an old Abel Associates test image.

Then I've got to tackle the top of the hangar bay. Not looking forward to that. That will be the modelling challange for the secondary hull.

Cheers,
S.O.

 

[wjaspers]

The three yellow side pods have been a challenge.

I know, they look easier as they in fact are

That's a very tight mesh. I'm thinking movie quality. Nice work. :-)

That depends, if you are referring to a real phisical model that would be correct, if referring to the model FI made it is waaaayyyy better.

 

[Science Officer]

The three yellow side pods have been a challenge.

I know, they look easier as they in fact are

That's a very tight mesh. I'm thinking movie quality. Nice work. :-)

That depends, if you are referring to a real phisical model that would be correct, if referring to the model FI made it is waaaayyyy better.

Hi Wil,

LOL - correct, once I'd properly figured out how to do them they were easy (well the spreadsheet did half the work for me) Simple geometric shapes and primitives I can do. Fluid shapes no (the neck being a case in point) resulting in badly bitten finger nails and too much looking at the ceiling looking for inspiration. Afterall I am a crap modeller!

Cheers,
S.O.

 

[Science Officer]

It's been quite a while since I posted an update. I've struggled to find time to work on the project and to be honest really struggled to get the side pods completed.

My first revision was looking promising but had a number of problems with the shading when light hit at certain angles. I also couldn't get any decent bevels. The second revision is a step in the right direction. The pain has been modelling the rounded corners and I'm far from completing them - still got some shading issues.

Could I ask some advice from you guys? How would you model the sidepods?

Cheers,
S.O.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Hi Science Officer...

These "side pods" are supposed to be magnetic sensors, aren't they? So, it should have features in common with other magnetic field sensors we currently have.

So... what common features do these have?

1) A torroidal mass of ferrite material, wound with copper windings. Here's a very simplistic example of what I think is at the core of these devices:

http://www.kitsandparts.com/howtowindtoroidswithoutpain.php

Obviously, the "toroid" in this case is massive, and is enclosed/protected, but I think we're looking at the same basic idea here.

2) A "core," which passes directly through the center of the toroid. It is supported on both ends of the core (the little tabs are there to support the core). This is likely also an electromagnetic device.

Presumably, one side of this generates a controlled field. Whether that's the core or the toroid is debatable, but probably not important from our perspective.

The toroid is fixed to the ship's structure, but the core can be moved, albeit in very small amounts, to "skew" the field measurements.

The other part is passive... measuring returned field signals. You could use interferometry techniques to thus identify very subtle variations in ambient electromagnetic fields.

This concept is real physics, of course, and is in common use. You've used something very much similar to this if you've ever used a "stud finder" to locate nails and metal objects within and behind your drywall.

But comparing the device on the Enterprise to a "stud finder" is like comparing a cheep little plastic magnifying glass to the Hubble...

 

[137th Gebirg]

Ahh...cool drink of water in the desert. I missed this thread. Glad you're still around, SO, even if for a little while!

 

[Science Officer]

Never gone away 137th Gebirg, I'm always keen to see what people are working on. Must admit that if Cary gets around to it, I'd like to see his work on the Iowa class. I stopped posting updates, because I don't really anything new to show - my lack of modelling skills is impacting my ability to do what I want.

Cary, thanks for the info on the "side pods" aka "magnetic sensors". I tend not to concern myself with what things are on the Enterprise, as my aim is purely to produce a convincing model and then come up with a photorealistic render. But saying that, it is sometimes important to know what something is, so you can add details not in the original model. So I'll keep your ideas in mind.

I just want to get the pods finished and move onto the back of the secondary hull.

Cheers,
S.O.

 

[Science Officer]

Can't believe it has been so long since my last post. As usual time has been at a premium and so it's only now I have some fairly decent side pods. People have modelled entire starships in less time than it's taken me to do these

I've ditched the bevels around the edges - mostly due to time and focused on getting all the bits and pieces in there. I might do some refinements at a later stage.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Well, from an "engineer's" standpoint, yeah, you usually get the detailed work done, then add rounds and fillets as the final step... so I think it's a wise choice on your part to do what you've done.

Just don't forget to add 'em all in later. Ideally, if you can, do them in a way so that you can suppress them as a feature-group if you want to do a "from a distance" render at a decent framerate.

You can always turn them on again for close-up shots.

Are your colors representing NURBS patches here? I mean, is each of those a single NURBS surface? If so, that's pretty smart.

 

[blssdwlf]

It's kinda neat seeing the ship in the multi-section multi-color look Science Officer. It reminds me of prototype jet fighters in the manufacturing plant. Any chance you could post a full view with the wireframe turned off?