Pre-Federation Early warp transport WIP

[psCargile]

http://cargile.tripod.com/sheet1.png

This ship is my hard surface modeling project in Blender, and something I get to every now and then. For Star Trek, I like to conceptualize in the pre-Federation era when ships were slow, and ship designers where trying different things. This cargo/personnel transport stays within the the boundary of the sun's gravitational influence, servicing the outposts and stations in the outer planets, Kuiper Belt, and the Oort Cloud. Top speed is warp factor 1.2.

I decided on a silhouette that would hint at the Constitution class to come, as evident by the lower tanks mimicking the undercut. The saucer is part Daedalus, part reversed DY100. The core berthing module holds up to seven containers, two of which are omitted to showcase the docking details when complete. This older slow boat isn't powered by antimatter. Each propulsion unit has its own fusion reactor (under the truss work). Inboard coils couple to comply with Roddenberry's idea of how the system worked, while the outboard coils emit the enveloping subspace field lobes. I'm iffy on the radiator panels and the reaction control system, so they will probably get reworked somehow.

While an United Earth vessel, the ship operated under the auspices of Korea. The registry hull number borrows from Jefferies' idea of using aircraft registration prefixes, and marine hull number prefixes: HL for Korea, C for container.

For an idea of scale, the aft doorway in the container is 1.62 meters.

Lots of details to add and minor changes, but this is the gist of it.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Awesome work...

 

[Santaman]

Very nice design, I like the industrial look of it.

 

[Tallguy]

It's so clunky! I love it!

 

[psCargile]

Late 21st century at best.

 

[scifieric]

This absolutely looks like it would fit right into the early Star Trek universe! Nicely done!

 

[uniderth]

That's a very interesting idea. I think it looks great.

 

[uniderth]

I apologize for the double post, but I was thinking about this design. I like its shape as a nod to 2001.

As for the RCS they do seem a bit overkill, but if you're going for an "uglier" look then they're fine. I think the radiator panels are great. My suggestion would be to make them less glowing and add them to the rear pylon as well.

I'm curious how you're handling the microgravity environment. Are the crew floating around or do the have magnetic shoes or something?

Also what made you go the fusion route rather than anti-matter?

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Beautiful work and amazing detail. The "head" looks a little Klingon from the top.

 

[psCargile]

uniderth, I will probably scale down the RSC. Microgravity...well if the DY100 had gravity generation, then that's the plan. I haven't thought that deep into it, but I'm assuming gravity generation.

Fusion... the difficulty of antimatter generation. Not to imply antimatter would not be used in this era. It's like the competition between steam, electric, and internal combustion at the turn of the twentieth century.

 

[Santaman]

Of course the Captain's name is Psy.. delivering containers Gangnam style!

 

[psCargile]

cowling shaded
cowling wireframe

This is a test article for rebuilding the nacelle forward cowling applying the lessons from the Hard Surfacing Modeling course (Thanks Gleb and Aidy!) I want the cowling to seem like it's a skin instead of a solid, and sometimes a boolean operation looks okay, but I want it too better. Because I'm using subsurface modifiers, I used 16 sided cylinders. I believe the fewest verts to use, the better. I made the cowling and proportionally shaped it, and added the operand, and extruded the top. Since the subsurf is doing all the work, I don't have to bother with forming exact curved shapes. Selected the faces the operand covered, and subdivided. I did a subtraction boolean and deleted the inside faces, then its moving and merging verts and getting rid of unwanted edges, and trying to stay true to only quads. Didn't quite work out because I wanted to be able to add a edge loop around the cut-out, and try to keep the topology of the cowling correct. There is still room for improvement, but as a trial, it works.

Along with the subsurf modifier, I added a solidify, and a bevel.

render

 

[Cjohnson1701]

Right, so you said "skin". What do you mean by that? Are we talking titanium sheets over a framework? Carbon fibre? Sci fi Canvas stretched-out? Either way if it is to be more like a "skin" you might want to cut up the mesh a bit more, have some seam-lines and large bolts attaching them.

 

[Flowrellik]

huh. It's got that early-bird daedalus charm to it. Nice work!

 

[psCargile]

Right, so you said "skin". What do you mean by that?

Future spacecraft hull material and manufacturing that doesn't require rivets or bolts. I decline to think too hard on this, it's just art.

 

[uniderth]

uniderth, I will probably scale down the RSC. Microgravity...well if the DY100 had gravity generation, then that's the plan. I haven't thought that deep into it, but I'm assuming gravity generation.

Yeah, I have a tendency to over plan my designs, so forgive me if I'm too analytical. The question of the DY-100 having gravity generation is interesting. My stance of the issue is that the artificial gravity we see in "Space Seed" was caused by the Enterprise. Either through towing the Botany Bay as 1G acceleration or by using some sort of field to generate it. In my head the DY-100 could have had artificial gravity through acceleration, but not with any deckplating magi-tech. I back this up with the fact that the Ares 4 in Voyager's "One Small Step" which came almost 40 years after the DY-100s didn't have artificial gravity deck plating of any kind. I usually place the invention of gravity generation much later. But that's just my personal overly obsessive analysis of a scifi TV show.

Fusion... the difficulty of antimatter generation. Not to imply antimatter would not be used in this era. It's like the competition between steam, electric, and internal combustion at the turn of the twentieth century.

Hmm. Interesting. I like the idea of different competing systems, but I don't know if we've ever seen any instances of just fusion being used to generate a warp field. For this era I usually take a page from Rick Sternbach's Spaceflight Chronology and have a fusion reaction spiked with anti-matter. I'm not trying to tell you how to design your ship. I just think it's an interesting discussion topic.

Future spacecraft hull material and manufacturing that doesn't require rivets or bolts. I decline to think too hard on this, it's just art.

Oh, come on. How can you design a ship if you don't know every bolt and weld? Here I was expecting you to actually design a working space warp engine just so your art can be accurate.

On a serious note. I do like your nacelle dome cowling with that side cutout thing. I don't think there are too many designs with odd protrusions on the warp nacelles. It adds a more realistic, early-tech feel to it.

 

[psCargile]

I don't know if we've ever seen any instances of just fusion being used to generate a warp field.

We haven't, until now. I pioneer things. If I go antimatter, then I'm doing a different variation of a warp nacelle that everyone does, and it's boring. I could do a variation of the Phoenix nacelles, but anyone can do a variation, so what is Paul Cargile doing to push the art forward? Make it fusion power with different parts, a different kind of nacelle that stands out from the rest.

 

[Santaman]

Fusion power should be fine, of course it won't be as high energy as M/AM but who cares? Also fusion power is very safe, it can't explode and any hickup will make the reactor shut down.

I'm curious to see what you'll create for this ship.

 

[Kaiser]

Cool design

 

[psCargile]

Some more nacelle cowling tests.

http://cargile.tripod.com/nacelle_cowling06.jpg
I like how the torus section detail looks, but it distorts the scale to something much smaller.

http://cargile.tripod.com/nacelle_cowling05c.jpg
These details are better, but they are just filler and lack the Star Trek visual language. I'm going to do away with the vertical slot on the model. It doesn't look Star Trek. It's a little bit too busy. I'll keep the cylinder and add tertiary details to it. No idea what it does.

http://cargile.tripod.com/nacelle_cowling07.jpg
Better geometry. Used a 24 sided cylinder, but am going back to 16. Fewer control edges work better with the subsurface modifier. I had to smooth vertices around the boolean difference to remove bumps, and that took the cowling somewhat out of true. To keep it round, I want the longitudinal (fore to aft) edges as straight as I can keep them since they are defining the curvature.

http://cargile.tripod.com/nacelle_cowling08.jpg
Initially I wasn't going to have Bussards--should be able to refuel in the solar system somewhere--but it's Star Trek, so I gave this Bussard idea a go. Though, I have a better idea for the cap dome for the model.

http://cargile.tripod.com/nacelle_cowling09.jpg

http://cargile.tripod.com/nacelle_cowling10.jpg
The cap dome is not a sphere primative, but a cube smooth subdivided by seven. That gives you more geometry to play around with. I was able to extrude the corners for nice circular insets instead of using boolean operations.

The model will not be chromed with lots of bare metal. I like doing this on these experiments so it doesn't look boring.

Blender stuff: Materials are all principled shaders except the glowies. There is no particular metal I'm mimicking. Lighting is from an enivornmental hdri I made in Blender, and a sun lamp. I'm running Blender on an old HP laptop so its all CPU rendering. I have indirect lighting and light samples clamped to 1, 250 samples path tracing, with full global illumination light path, with caustics. Using two streak glare nodes in the compositer. And no denoising. I like a little bit of noise sometimes, and it looks better in these renders.