Playing with Sketchup again....

[Starship]

I present you my new wip in sketchup. A Starfleet ship: big, fast and mortal. Ambitious, don´t you think?

 

[GhostLoveScore]

I gotta try Sketchup. I'll never be able to afford a real 3D program like 3DS

Why not try Blender? It's semi-professional program with integrated renderer. I use it for work and it's actually better than 3ds max personally.
And if you really want to use 3ds max, they have student licence and they don't check if you really are a student. If you use it for a hobby I don't see why you should buy it.

 

[Starship]

Blender isn´t that easy to learn. Already tryed. Sketchup is much more intuitive.
I own 3dsmax 9, but it´s a loooong time since the last time I used it. About the student licence for the new version, I´ll take a look.

 

[Kaiser]

Looks ok

 

[Atolm]

I dig these a lot!
Dunno if you can do this, but maybe see if Shapeways can import sketchup and get model ships printed

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

That one looks like it could detach from the top of a saucer section.

Sort of a super-duper captain's yacht.

 

[Starship]

I dig these a lot!
Dunno if you can do this, but maybe see if Shapeways can import sketchup and get model ships printed

Hi Cris! Thank you!
What can I say? You´re my master!

About Shapeways, I don´t know how it works. I´ll have to see it later.

 

[Starship]

That one looks like it could detach from the top of a saucer section.

Sort of a super-duper captain's yacht.

Interesting, but no. She is to much big for this. She is like Defiant with steroids.

 

[Starship]

Well, I don´t think the old bay looks right, so, redid it. I also added a few details to the underside, together with a few changes to the armour.

 

[Sgt_G]

Cool design, but it doesn't instantly read as Federation to me, or at least not Starfleet. I think I liked the first shuttle bay more, but I think it needed a "porch" to land on.

 

[Starship]

I corrected a geometry errors, added more armour, detailed a bit the weapons and the shuttle bay.

 

[Atolm]

I liking it

 

[publiusr]

That's something I've wanted to see for years--inlaid torpedo ports. I can just see them in the wing-leading edge of Discovery, Ariel, and other McQuarrie/Adam designs.

 

[Starship]

Update! A few details added. Still a lot to do...

 

[BorgMan]

Hmm... Why even bother with it having a "traditional" shuttlebay? If you'd make elevators on the top hull, you can keep the aft curve unobstructed. And a piece of advice: space those escape pods more around the hull to increase the survival rate of the poor redshirts. Having to run from one end of the ship to the other just to get to an escape pod might be a bit exhausting ;-)
I'd personally let the bussards wrap around the front instead of them end like they are now. If you would also move them a bit more to the front, you create room for the magnetic field coil (the yellow grilles present on a lot of nacelles). I thin adding them would break up the shape a bit.

 

[Starship]

Good questions Borgman!

Hmm... Why even bother with it having a "traditional" shuttlebay? If you'd make elevators on the top hull, you can keep the aft curve unobstructed.

I do like of that shuttlebay. I´ll keep it.

And a piece of advice: space those escape pods more around the hull to increase the survival rate of the poor redshirts. Having to run from one end of the ship to the other just to get to an escape pod might be a bit exhausting ;-)

kkkk! So, they need to run fast!

I'd personally let the bussards wrap around the front instead of them end like they are now. If you would also move them a bit more to the front, you create room for the magnetic field coil (the yellow grilles present on a lot of nacelles). I thin adding them would break up the shape a bit.

Humm... Naceles were inspired by 1701-E, Sovereign. But I can do a test adding the magnetic field coil. Let´s see.

In the meantime, a few more renderings.

 

[BorgMan]

But even the Sovereign has the coils (in the swooping thingies) and also moves the bussard collectors "over the edge" a bit. Can you give us a parallel projection front view? Also, check out that smudge near the phaserstrip right, last image; it seems your geometry does something wonky? I went back to your SketchUp exports but I couldn't see anything weird in them

 

[Starship]

But even the Sovereign has the coils (in the swooping thingies) and also moves the bussard collectors "over the edge" a bit. Can you give us a parallel projection front view?

Got it. I think I need to do them more proeminent, or continuous by the front of the naceles...

Also, check out that smudge near the phaserstrip right, last image; it seems your geometry does something wonky? I went back to your SketchUp exports but I couldn't see anything weird in them

There are other errors... Strange is that I just mirrored the sides and the other side don´t have the error when rendering. I manually redid that area and the error persist, just in the renderer. I will have to study it a little more.

 

[BorgMan]

I know the feeling, sometimes SketchUp just does that.
You might be able to circumvent this by making a component of half of it and then pasting it. Whenever you have something that is off-symetry, like a registry, you cut out a region so that you can fill it in later. Sometimes this creates a noticeable seam if you've got circular objects, but by rotating your base circle at the very start of your model just a little bit, the resulting faces will be coplanar. Hit the Rotate tool, find the centre of the circle as rotational point and click on a Midpoint just right of that center edge. A small turn to the left, bringing the Midpoint on the Red Axis, is all it needs

 

[Starship]

Thank you Borgman!

Well, after to inspect it closelly, found and corrected the geometry errors. Also, changed the naceles a bit.