So, I made this.

[Professor Moriarty]

It wasn't the pipes so much as that big blueish metal tank in front of the warp reactor. Kind of reminded me of these:

Well hell, now I can't unsee it. I must have had it subconsciously in my mind when I was building that interior back in 2016. Eh, like I said, no one will ever see the engine room from the inside; it's only meant to convey a fleeting impression as the Enterprise glides past the camera.

OTOH, looking at the animation, the specular (are they still called that in these days of HDRs and PBR textures?) highlights are either too shiny or too big (to my eyes only, of course). They are very DS9. If that's what you're going for, spot on! (Flipping between this thread and Erics gives me a little whiplash.)

Gorgeous art, man. We've been at this for 15 years!

It's partly because I was being lazy and didn't render the sequence to a multi-layer OpenEXR that I can control more precisely in After Effects. Like this, for example:

Even here I'm still blowing out some of the highlights (e.g., the shine on the port warp nacelle dome) but by rendering to a multi-layer OpenEXR, I can tweak each component of the image sequence. Rendering to OpenEXR uses a frightening amount of disk space though... that single frame you see above is 1.23 gigabytes on my render output drive. A sequence lasting only 30 seconds could easily gobble a terabyte of space.

 

[Santaman]

Awesome work would be a real understatement, boah, really kick ass!

 

[ashleytinger]

Well hell, now I can't unsee it. I must have had it subconsciously in my mind when I was building that interior back in 2016. Eh, like I said, no one will ever see the engine room from the inside; it's only meant to convey a fleeting impression as the Enterprise glides past the camera.


It's partly because I was being lazy and didn't render the sequence to a multi-layer OpenEXR that I can control more precisely in After Effects. Like this, for example:

Even here I'm still blowing out some of the highlights (e.g., the shine on the port warp nacelle dome) but by rendering to a multi-layer OpenEXR, I can tweak each component of the image sequence. Rendering to OpenEXR uses a frightening amount of disk space though... that single frame you see above is 1.23 gigabytes on my render output drive. A sequence lasting only 30 seconds could easily gobble a terabyte of space.

O.o

I am so rendering my stuff using the dark ages lol

 

[scifieric]

Enhance...
... zoom in and enhance...
... enhance...
... zoom in and enhance.

Yeeeahh, I may have gone a bit overboard with the interiors behind the portholes.

OMG! That looks like the proposed warp core for Star Trek Phase Two, the Roddenberry version! Outstanding!

Excellent work!

 

[BK613]

Eh, like I said, no one will ever see the engine room from the inside; it's only meant to convey a fleeting impression as the Enterprise glides past the camera.

You realize, of course, that by saying this, everyone is going to want to see it. I know I do, because it seems to be a good blend of futuristic and real-world nautical. Anyway, great job.

 

[Mytran]

I just realised that this gorgeous engine room spans the entire width of the secondary hull. Magnificent!

 

[Professor Moriarty]

Yup! And @scifieric is spot-on; the direct inspiration was the Mike Minor design for the Phase II engine room, which you can see along with his other designs at Nick Ottens' excellent Forgotten Trek website.

 

[scifieric]

Yup! And @scifieric is spot-on; the direct inspiration was the Mike Minor design for the Phase II engine room, which you can see along with his other designs at Nick Ottens' excellent Forgotten Trek website.

Thank you! I was having a brain fart with Mike Minor's name. (God help me.) I kept thinking both: Matt Jefferies and the simultaneous thought: Matt Jefferies is the wrong name!

Excellent. I'm very happy and you've done a WONDERFUL job!

 

[Santaman]

.. so about that engineroom?

 

[Professor Moriarty]

It fulfills its intended purpose: giving the viewer a fleeting impression of depth, light, color, machinery, etc. I could have just as easily put a fifty-foot tribble in the secondary hull that was lit with some nice gels and called it a day, but this was more fun.

 

[Santaman]

Guess that really means "no"

 

[Mage]

Enhance...

That's amazing!!

 

[Arpy]

This is one of the all-time greatest versions for my money! Have you considered putting crew at stations, peering out a window, etc?

 

[Professor Moriarty]

This is one of the all-time greatest versions for my money! Have you considered putting crew at stations, peering out a window, etc?

Considered and already done; I just haven't posted any results here yet because I'm still learning how to properly rig them. You'd be surprised what you can see through the windows...

 

[scifieric]

Two things from the back of my head and I quite honestly don't know why it took me this long to ask!

First, you turned the lower-saucer signage on both ships into some kind of access ports? That's cool! Is that what you did and if so, why?

Second, oh man. I had a second. YES! The green! You do know that the original USS Enterprise 11 foot model had green lights for the planetary sensor array, the bridge dome light, and that dome light over the shuttle bay, right? No need to explain, they were really there ... and not just on the AMT models!

In any case, exquisite work all the way around. I love watching this.

** Edit **
Oh, oh! (I feel like a kid again!) and are those PHASER or PHOTON TORPEDO bays over the planetary sensory array? I see you have two hatches (at least) in the front! Very nice detail!

***
I think I just answered my own question. I re-watched your video entitled "Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew!" and confirmed they ARE Phaser ports. I love that they glow before and after. May I ask how you did that? Separate texture? Some sort of lighting effect? No matter how you did it, well done!

 

[Santaman]

I agree that this is one of the best renditions of the Enterprise ever, not only in execution but also in all the little extra details.
As for Prof's methods, I think his version of the 3D software must have a "sprinkle magic here" button..

 

[Hunter-G]

Jeez why do I always miss the good threads?? This is really outstanding work, I had to go through the whole thing! Will be following with great interest. (Also, I might have to give Octane a good look)

 

[cardinal biggles]

I only just now took a look at this post:

I've been experimenting with blowing sh!t up. First, the phasers. Later, the a'splosions that they cause.

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My interpretation of the Constellation sites four phaser banks on her lower saucer: two forward banks, and two side banks covering port and starboard. Here you see the forward starboard and port banks simultaneously firing. (For the full 4K version of this image, click here)

The Starship Constellation fires her forward phaser banks at an unseen enemy. (For the full 4K version of this image, click here)

In this image you can see the phaser bolts frozen in flight as they lance out from the Constellation. (For the full 4K version of this image, click here)

You definitely don’t want to find yourself on the business end of these bad boys. (For the full 4K version of this image, click here)

Since I use OctaneRender, I had to come up with a technique for animating phasers that didn't use LightWave's volumetric system, which doesn't work in Octane (OR requires physical polygons in order to render something). I also wanted to avoid messing with LightWave's craptastic OpenVDB pipeline to OctaneRender (which even when it works is slow AF). After some tinkering, I settled on a technique that uses morphing cylinders for the phaser bolts. This lets me easily aim the phasers and morph them to make them appear to lance out and follow a target while they're firing (you can see this in the fourth test in the linked video). The polygonal phasers render in mere seconds, so I'd say the experiment was a success. If you're curious about the details just follow the link below to my blog where there's a more detailed 'splanation.

Now onto TurbulenceFD and Voronoi shattering!

I really like what you did with the different styles of phaser fire, especially the alternating "bolts" (like we saw in Wrath of Khan) and the streams firing in different directions. Really cool.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

I agree that this is one of the best renditions of the Enterprise ever, not only in execution but also in all the little extra details.
As for Prof's methods, I think his version of the 3D software must have a "sprinkle magic here" button..

If I had such a button, this project would have been finished 15 years ago.

Jeez why do I always miss the good threads?? This is really outstanding work, I had to go through the whole thing! Will be following with great interest. (Also, I might have to give Octane a good look)

OctaneRender is an amazing piece of software. Fair warning though, it's an all-or-nothing proposition. For the most part, objects that are rendered in Octane cannot use the native materials and textures of the host application; with a few minor exceptions you have to use Octane's materials and textures. Also, documentation is usually woefully out of date; the LightWave plugin doc is over three years old.

I really like what you did with the different styles of phaser fire, especially the alternating "bolts" (like we saw in Wrath of Khan) and the streams firing in different directions. Really cool.

Wait until you see them hitting something.

 

[Captain pl1ngpl0ng]

Enhance...

... zoom in and enhance...

... enhance...

... zoom in and enhance.