Agreed - that was Michael Struck's idea, I believe. Also, at least on the full-resolution version you can see the animation of the texture on the front drive sphere as it passes.
My pick would be number 1 and 3 (Top left and top right) The top left version should be a side view though, not a top view. Number 3 might be modified so as to have polaris nest inside of it in some way. Polaris would be a stock vessel with perhaps many types of shells. Number 1 should be a capital ship.
Shield Generators are the method of energy shield generation primarily used in the Star Wars galaxy. I guess I was really in a Star Wars state of mind when I was elaborating on how the Trans Human Authority could be a lot like the Confederacy of Independent Systems, specifically pertaining to their fleet. Where as Star Trek vessels generate their shields I guess through a series of energy emitter grids, either a series of layers of hot and cold plasma, or controlled gravimetric fields, Star Wars vessels emit these energy fields through some sort of generators or nodes. I cannot say for certain how they work, but I've assumed for quite some time that they channel out of these generators and surround the entire ship in a protective bubble or screen. I suppose how vessels in the Polaris universe generate shields, if at all, depends on you, or who ever makes decisions about these sorts of details. Though I remember watching an educational program about future space travel, and coils that generate plasma were mentioned, which NASA is researching right now. Oh, and neat starship by the way. I like how the tri-hulled bow of the ship resembles the hull of a Star Destroyer, but also twists it into something completely different.
Thanks. Our ships don't really have energy shields for use in combat. There are probably a number of systems for deflecting objects from collision during travel.
Must be just me, but I think of the thing speeding up with the ship getting smaller and more streamlined. Now its not a plane, I understand that, my gut reaction just isn't meshed with what I am seeing on screen. It does look great though.
Worked for me insofar as it suggested the drives were powering down, but I guess different people will take different impressions.
While Vektor was building the Polaris mesh he rendered an image of it against a NASA photo which we've used for quite a while as the cover photo on the Polaris Facebook page. I've re-rendered it as closely as I could using the completely rigged, textured and lit version of the model, and this is our current cover photo.
Combat vessels in this universe rely on a combination of electronic countermeasures, hull armor and point-defense weaponry to fend off most forms of attack. Energy shields along the lines of Star Trek or Star Wars simply don't exist. They may have something similar to a navigational deflector for clearing away interstellar dust and debris ahead of the ship. It might be a powerful electromagnetic field or something more sophisticated like a gravitational beam that causes matter to "fall" out of the ship's path.
Yeah. Michael Struck suggested adding a number of lights to help define the ship in low-light situations. There are also some point lights in the main engine cowlings and the weapons pylons. Also yeah. I've been thinking that's a must, and much less "magical" than the energy shields that protect lots of sf ships from torpedoes and rayguns.
Thanks. Credit really goes to Vektor, Michael Struck at NEO f/x and aridas sofia - I just sort of moved the camera around and pressed F9.
How many centuries from now is Star Ship Polaris set in, BTW? Depending on how distant in the future we're talking about here, shields might not be as unrealistic as you might think. Last I've heard, NASA and the Air Force has been into research to make energy shields a real thing. Though to be honest, for the next few centuries, we'll probably only have shields capable of deflecting interstellar debris, radiation, and maybe light forms of directed energy (which are just more forms of radiation). Deflecting dedicated weapons systems will be much harder to develop, and I'd imagine that ships might depend on polarized hull plating to augment their defenses, and that is if they use anything else in combat at all.
I think that, as much as anything else, not having shields in this universe is a way to avoid endlessly tedious recitations of shield strength as dwindling percentages in lieu of, I dunno, actual drama.
I happen to LIKE that this is different. I don't see the need to ape Star Trek and have all the tech they do. If this film had been too close to that, I doubt I'd have gotten involved.
A number of centuries. Since we're talking about FTL spaceships it's not even a matter of what's "realistic," but what's interesting. The more magic you give people, the less peril they face, the less work they have to do, the more boring I find it. Pretty much, yeah. It's been a long time since "Captain, the shields are down" has been anything but rote. Roger Ebert, bless the man, had my favorite comment about this in his review of Star Trek: Nemesis:
Dennis, how did the convention go? Was the audience receptive? And will the rest of us get a chance to see this 7 minute preview?