Ahahaha. That's the funny thing, actually. Sometimes I get a really colossal surge of creative energy... Then, other times, sometimes for long stretches... Nothing. Barren, Empty. It's very depressing. That communicator is perfect. An absolutely fantastic mixture of Kelvin, TOS, and Cage. Using the best little doodads of each. I wouldn't change anything. I like a lot of the ideas you have in the phaser. My only real criticism is the general grip. Though, honestly, this is a weakness of most phaser designs in Trek. I've only held one hand phaser that felt good in my hands, the Star Trek V/VI Assault phaser. The grip on that one actual feels fairly good. But I digress. My tweak on the design. I tweaked the back end of the weapon to recall The Cage a little more, with the black bumps and the flip up sight.(It's a shame the TOS phaser didn't end up with that.) and I pulled the handle back a bit and curved the back area there so it has more of a beaver-tail style grip. Plus some grooves on the handle. If I were to follow from that design though I think that curve on the back of the handle there behind the trigger would be gray like the rest of the trigger portion, and then i'd add a little more gray body going along the bottom towards the front. Just to balance it out. Slightly revised. "The weapon systems... They won't be installed until Tuesday..." "It is Tuesday." "...Oh." She's almost as heavily armed as the refit. I didn't give her any phaser banks on the bottom of the star drive(...yet?), but she's got fairly full coverage otherwise. There's an aft pair just under the shuttle bay. Added those four sensor/window things. I have no idea what those things are called, but I added them from the TOS-E. I always thought they might be deuterium storage or something... Docking ports. Dish still needs to be redone. Now it has a spike, though! Rear end of the warp engine, take one. This lacked flow so I junked it. I think this looks much better. It's in line with the look of the rear end of the Kelvin, too. Though, I'm not sure if making the whole thing glow is a good idea. I was thinking of maybe just the beveled outline glowing so you get an interesting shape back there without having it just be a big blue-white glow. Also, I was curious to see how the volume of the ship might work out in terms of what-is-where. Blue is science, Gold is command and defense. Green is storage. Red is "Engineering" meaning anything fuel, engine, power, related.
[QUOTE="OpenMaw, post: 11742892, member: 54223" My tweak on the design. I tweaked the back end of the weapon to recall The Cage a little more, with the black bumps and the flip up sight.(It's a shame the TOS phaser didn't end up with that.) and I pulled the handle back a bit and curved the back area there so it has more of a beaver-tail style grip. Plus some grooves on the handle. If I were to follow from that design though I think that curve on the back of the handle there behind the trigger would be gray like the rest of the trigger portion, and then i'd add a little more gray body going along the bottom towards the front. Just to balance it out. Slightly revised." I love the changes to the barrel you made. As for the grip at this point the TOS grip would probably look best, and make sense with only about fifteen-ish years difference in design. (Not my best edit, but it conveys my point)
[/QUOTE] She's almost as heavily armed as the refit. I didn't give her any phaser banks on the bottom of the star drive(...yet?), but she's got fairly full coverage otherwise. There's an aft pair just under the shuttle bay. Added those four sensor/window things. I have no idea what those things are called, but I added them from the TOS-E. I always thought they might be deuterium storage or something... Docking ports. Dish still needs to be redone. Now it has a spike, though! Rear end of the warp engine, take one. This lacked flow so I junked it. I think this looks much better. It's in line with the look of the rear end of the Kelvin, too. Though, I'm not sure if making the whole thing glow is a good idea. I was thinking of maybe just the beveled outline glowing so you get an interesting shape back there without having it just be a big blue-white glow. Also, I was curious to see how the volume of the ship might work out in terms of what-is-where. Blue is science, Gold is command and defense. Green is storage. Red is "Engineering" meaning anything fuel, engine, power, related.[/QUOTE] As for the ship the armament is looking great! The added details are coming along fantastically with additions to the saucer section and stardrive. As for the Nacelles I much prefer the second design you made. I agree it fits more with the Kelvins rear design. As for the glow it should really be bright in the center of the rear and radiate outward towards the beveling so that when in sublight travel you can still see the power in the nacelle but make out the design features of the end cap, but when going to warp should in some ways be reminiscent of the warp scene in ST:2009 with a major bloom increase coming from that central focal point and then BAM, warp speed. On a little side note I feel the impulse engine cowling should be a bit more oval and less boxy while the ports themselves remain rectangular. Would give a smoother look to the profile of the saucer and blend the impulse deck better to the hull. I'm going to start work on the engineering deck and shuttle bay tonight. Also started in on sewing the tunic. I'll post uniform updates hopefully in the next couple of days! (P.S. extra motivated since today is my cake day)
@OpenMaw Another thing I was thinking on was the look of the bussards. I feel to keep it not only retro but also pre-TOS in its look they should keep that burnt orange fan blade look. I imagine a bussard design between what the USS Franklin had in ST:B and Gabe Koerner's Enterprise. ex. They have a classic appeal while seeming mechanical. Would suit the 2240's Pre-TOS look while leaving room to in time be updates into Kirk's later Enterprise. Do you agree?
I see what you mean, actually. Maybe make the Kelvin-esque grip black with gray highlights? The only nit I would pick using the TOS style is the handle on TOS Phaser 2 is the power pack, hence it's rather "battery" like shape. That's a minor thing, of course. So more along the lines of this? (Green adjustment layer) Cool! I look forward to seeing what you come up with! Happy cake day! One thing I was thinking on the shuttle bay is the shape of the secondary hull is, obviously, different from the TOS hull. There's the area just below the doors, I was thinking along the the "call the ball" lights that usually go there, it might be a good idea to put some kind of a observation window down there for the hangar deck. Ugly photoshop. Was also contemplating an aft torpedo bay in that area and/or a small nub of some kind to indicate a tractor beam emitter. I'm actually a big fan of the Koerner version of the bussards. I'm not entirely sure what to do with them, but I have some vague ideas about two sets of the blades working against each other, intermixed with orange-tinted chaos/clouds/noise, with an emphasis to get near-white hot at the core. (pushing inwards, so that way by the time it gets to the dome it's more of an orange "fog" or "mist." The intention being to give it a sense of depth and not just be orange light bulbs on the ends of the engines.
The idea of opposing twin fan blades sounds pretty darn awesome to be frank, especially if you can see them imparting force on the hot orange glowing intermix like you said. I agree it would definitely add to the idea that the nacelles are extremely powerful and dangerous pieces of equipment strapped to a ship. Maybe you can almost see the intermix plasma vortexing, so that not only are the blades in opposing motion but the churning of the orange burning mix is also? I'm interested to see what you decide to test.
Also thought about for the impulse engines going with the honeycomb look for the vents. (Oh, and in the last post all my thoughts are in bold. Totally failed to quote)
@OpenMaw Here's my shuttle bay concept. Also an external shot to show off my idea of the approach lights and hanger ops window. The shuttle bay is similar to the Kelvins in that it's tiered but is clearly shorter and smaller in size due to the 300 meter length of the ship versus the 500ish meters of the Kelvin. It would house two Galileo's on the primary deck and two shelved on the upper deck. One could technically be on the pad while while the other four or docked. Blended some TOS elements too with the single pressurized entry/exit door to the bay and an internal observation window.
That's a very nice shuttle bay. I like it. I'll have to put together a dummy shuttle and see what the scaling is like in there for real, ut that should be more or less doable. It'll be a bit of a tight squeeze, to be sure. Today's word was engines. I decided very early on to set aside the animated texture effects for the engines, because that'll come later. I rebuilt the "fins." Turned off the bussards for now. This is what I imagine they would look like turned off. (It's inspired by my little Galileo shuttle which has a smokey look to the nacelle ends.) Added a doodad off the Kelvin near the end of the engine where the TOS E had a rectangular shape. More on this later. Impulse engines. I built three different variations over the day. Building the first attempt. Say goodbye to the ol clunkers! New version. Take 2. I messed up the first attempt and junked it completely. ... I wasn't entirely convinced that the shapes meshed well together. I looked at the Kelvin, JJ, and original E variations. I decided to try and compromise. My compromise. It uses the outer curve of the JJ engines, and the flatter squared off look of the TOS engines. To give it even more of a TOS feel I put the little port/nub in the middle there. Honeycomb pattern. Power plants are currently offline. Another shot of the warp engine. PHOTOSHOP. This is an idea I have for the inner-side of the nacelles. A secondary doodad added near the front, and running between them a slightly inset set of grilles. These would be dead and off when the ship is sublight. The bussard and aft end would be in "brew" mode, oscillating normally. if you'll pardon the engineering parlance. Jump to warp concept: Bussards begin to spin to twice their normal speed. (Boil), the inner grille will begin to crackle and glow as the matter and anti-matter are allowed to collide, and then right at warp jump... WHAM! The aft end cap doubles it's animation rate, the glow goes through the roof, and the inner grilles are near-white hot. This all happens in seconds, but I think this gives it a nice sense of life without getting away from the simpler look of the TOS/Kelvin era. Just some thoughts, if you say nay i'll totally leave that bit off.
@OpenMaw Retooled the phaser design to take some of your elements in the last concept, a fastback TOS look, and the Kelvin grip meshed it all and got this design version 4. Still figuring color but it'll probably be black/charcoal and silver which again is very Pilot/TOS.
Perfect. That's damn good! Fits right next to your redesigned communicator design, too. Some more shots. Less about added details, more about just seeing how the design is firming up. I added The Cage bits on the port and starboard of the saucer, and some running lights. Warp engines should be fairly done geometry wise. Most of the detail left at this point is going to be texture stuff. Cheers... Classic beauty shot. Underside of saucer needs more details/lights. More phasers. Tweaked the neck slightly. Removed the docking ports for now. They were buggered anyway. Officers quarters.
Looking absolutely gorgeous! She's really shaping up to be what the Pre-TOS/TOS-E truly would look like in todays world. I'm excited to see where the texturing work and finalizing details go from here. Happy 50th Star Trek!
Just noticed in one of your shots I think the rear lip of the stardrive and shuttle bay needs to be tapered in a bit. Feels a little too rectangular. You can kind of see the tapering in the Kelvin (example below).
Refining the shuttle/hangar area details some. I tried to give it a fusion of the TOS and Kelvin styles with bits of the curve sticking back slightly from the curvature... ...Tapered the stern... ...Aft observation window Take 1... ...Take 2.
The tapered hull looks a lot more fluid and really fits the feel of it all. Love the look of the shuttle bay from the sketches to the internal concept you've added. Looks good without the pylons supporting the platforms, I like that change you made to it. The observation window looks gorgeous, streamlined, and purposeful. All in all it's really going places. Your 3D talents are phenomenal mate! Waiting for the boots and neoprene to arrive to finish the uniforms and going out today to buy supplies to start work on the 2240's phaser prop. Who know's this could really grow into something grand! (Phaser updates to follow)
I do love the shuttlebay design, but with the warp pylons back so far it almost feels like we should be seeing piping and/or supports jutting into the Shuttlebay from the warp pylons. Might just be the angles here or that my brain hasn't woken up yet.
Windows added for the stardrive section. More blinkers added. Took some of the greeblies off the JJprise and added them down there. No, you're actually quite right. I was doing some 3D doodling with low poly modeling inside of the pylons going down into the secondary hull to see how the plasma conduits and such would flow. Unfortunately there's nary any room. Some small piping, but nothing like what we got the impression of in TMP. Probert probably did the best job with directing the conduits down from the engines directly into the engine room, and then up into the saucer. I can believe it best out of any of the Trek ships, and that's where my thinking has been with trying to place things like windows and such. So i'm toying with a slight adjustment to the Pylon placement. Then, I'll readjust the shapes a bit to try and bring it back a little more without losing the more straight nature of the TOS pylons.I think that front curve comes back at the top too much. My thinking is that right down the center of the pylon (looking at it from this perspective) is where all the conduits are. The outer curves are basically just support structure and vacuum. The rear of the pylon still intersects with the shuttle bay, even with the downsized version, but not as bad, and the center line is in the clear.