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So, I made this.

Professor Moriarty

Rice Admiral
Premium Member
He's coming right at us!
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NOTE: For anyone just now finding this thread, almost all of the embedded videos you see here are posted in 4K resolution (a handful are 1080p). But to view any of them at full scale, you'll have to go to either Vimeo or YouTube (depending on where they were published). Just click the vimeo or YouTube logo in the lower right corner of the embedded clip and you'll be taken to the site where you can watch the Enterprise coming at you in Ultra HD. :evil:
 
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Niiice! I love "close calls" where the ship almost crashes with the camera, gives a really cool sense of scale. :)

By the way, what is it with Vimeo not allowing full screen? :(
 
Thanks :)

Here are a few more clips from earlier versions of the model. Some details have changed since these test videos were made (and some of those changes were to tweak things that I noticed in those videos), so if you see something disagreeable, there's a chance it's no longer there anyway. :D

This video is from July 7th, right after I converted the model to work with OctaneRender (a GPU-based rendering engine). OctaneRender is basically the reason I'm still working on this project--this entire video rendered in 87 minutes. When I abandoned this project several years ago, the old LightWave CPU render engine (and my old CPUs) would probably have taken 87 hours to finish this. GPU rendering has been a boon for my short attention span. :cool:
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This test clip is from July 26th. At this point the featureless upper primary hull has become... not-so-featureless. I'm definitely not aiming for a perfect reproduction of the 11-foot studio miniature like Donny, Chris PikE, and scifieric. They've pretty much nailed the screen-accurate look. What I'm trying for is something a little different: dimensionally, the ship at a macro scale is as close to an exact replica as possible, but I'm attempting to depict what I think the Enterprise would look like if it was a real thing. So, all of the materials are "real" metals, ceramics, glass, etc. (at least according to the rules of Octane-world), and all of the lighting is "real" lighting from actual objects on-screen. All of the interior lights are emitted by actual light fixtures, there are "light bulbs" flashing beneath the domes of the running lights, the Bussard collector lights are shaped like the Christmas lights used in 1966, etc., As for departures from canon (e.g., the razor-thin grid lines which are actually 1" gutters cut into the hull, the clamps holding down the escape pod doors in the rust ring, the raised registry lettering on the upper primary hull, the variations in hull plating refraction, etc.) you can chalk those up to pure artistic license. :)
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This test video is from August 1st. I toned down the glossiness and added some weathering (which is hard to see with the Enterprise zipping by so fast), but at this point the upper primary hull was finished and I started working on the remainder of the ship.
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And lastly, this one is from August 14th. When I get bored with what I'm working on I'll skip around on the model (generally, I'm trying to work down the primary hull, then the dorsal, then the secondary hull, then the warp nacelles last) but I still haven't nailed the look of the Bussards and they bug me in. every. video. So, this video tweaks the appearance of the lights in the starboard nacelle. Still not satisfied, but I'm still a ways away from where I have to make a final decision on the look so I'm going to just pretend it's not bothering me for now. :brickwall:
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p.s. If you want to view any of these full-screen, click the "vimeo" icon and you'll be taken to the vimeo.com website where they can be viewed in full 1080p or 4K (depending on the video).
 
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A quickie before bedtime: a peek through the portholes into Kirk's quarters. My "head canon" justification for this is that we do see a porthole in Kirk's cabin (just barely) in a couple of episodes, including "Mudd's Women". If that doesn't work, this could also just be a VIP cabin on deck 2... maybe where the Romulan commander from "The Enterprise Incident" bunked while she was Starfleet's "guest".

Basically, it's just a fun little low-poly interior to give some nice parallax when the Big E zooms by the camera. Someday I may add more detail (those chairs are super low poly!), but this level of detail is more than enough for my current needs. (For the full-size 4K render, click here.)

enterprise_wip_109_201909010515-1024x576.png


I continue to be amazed by the speed of OctaneRender. A depth-of-field shot like this (where the foreground is in focus while the background is blurred) would have taken hours to render in LightWave. OctaneRender generated this image in 205 seconds. Incredible.
 
Agreed, but it’s a tool that has to be used very carefully. Depending on the camera angle, distance to subject, and several other factors, it’s very easy to tip over from “nice depth of field” to “oh, look how tiny this model is”.

I never really used depth of field with LightWave, so I’m just starting to get my feet wet using it in Octane. Hopefully my technique will improve with experience.
 
Happy Labor Day! I've been laboring.
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The primary hull is now completely finished top-to-bottom and inside-out... onto the rest of the ship!

(Edited to add still image below)
enterprise_wip_109_201909021805.png
 
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Bah. Lost an evening last night to a bug hunt. Had some n-gons that were also light emitters, and unfortunately they were emitting in both directions--not only outward in the direction of the normals, but also inwards, which was flooding the inside of the ship with bright white light.

So, not much progress the past couple of days. :brickwall: But hey, here's a nice large render that I generated to check for any remaining signs of the light leak. :techman:
enterprise_wip_111_201909040547.png
 
Very nice work! I didn't realize you were Scott Gammans! I've been a fan of your work from way back! IIRC, I've got a few Enterprise images from you saved on one of my older hard drives. Keep up the great work and can't wait to see more!
 
Yeah, it's me :)
Scott-at-workstation.jpeg

In the background you can see the dedication plaque attached to the ship where the infamous "TAIL PIPE SOCKET ADJUSTMENT ACCESS" sign would normally be located.

And yeah, it's been longer than 3 years that I've been working on this stupid thing. :crazy: The first model was built using POV-Ray, all the way back in February 2002 (I remember watching the Salt Lake City Olympics while working on it). Then came Enterprise #2 built in LightWave 8.5/9.6 circa 2006-09. And now this version, which was started in 2016, stopped shortly thereafter, and restarted this summer.

Speed is not my forte.
 
Amazing work. I'm not sure if I'm a fan of gridlines in general, and that's the only thing here that feels odd. Setting that esthetic choice aside, however, I love pouring over your detail work. The gold trim on the signage? Oh so subtle, but gorgeous! The little brackets on the running lights? Nice touch! Oh, and the orange/red trim on the inside edge of the hatches! Even the 'Aztecking' feels right and appropriate to TOS. This is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to see on modern takes on the Enterprise.

Well done!
 
Thanks! That’s just about exactly the target I’m shooting for. Not as simple and undetailed as the original studio miniature, but also not as radical a departure as Vektor’s Enterprise was (and I say that as a yuuuuge fan of his work).

The engraved deflector gridlines are canon—sort of. The Defiant model used in the Star Trek: Enterprise mirror universe episodes in 2005 had them. I’m not a huge fan either TBH but those vast expanses of greenish gray needed something. The compromise was to make them very narrow (30 mm) so that they are only visible relatively close or if the light catches them at oblique angles.
 
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