TAS Armored Shuttle Reimagined

[Michael]

Inspired by @Warped9's wonderful thread about reimaging elements from The Animated Series I was finally moved to take up 3D modeling. For years I've been trying to get into it, but failed several times because of the steep learning curve. For some reason @Warped9's idea of visualizing that odd TAS shuttle is what finally gave me the motivation to try it out for myself.

So a week of Blender Guru's tutorials and countless hours fighting with vertices, edges and faces later I have more or less finished modeling my first 3D model! It isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination (I'm stilly trying to get the hang of avoiding disgusting creases in an otherwise smooth subdivision surface mesh), but to be honest I'm pretty happy with it.

Here's some of the process of how I went about this: The first step was to assemble all available visual references in “Mudd's Passion” …

Spoiler: Reference Screenshots. Warning: Large image!

From that I tried to figure out how all fits together and drew up a simple schematic I could use as the guide for my modeling …

As I guess is often the case with 2D references for 3D models, I had to change a lot of the proportions and details as I was building it in 3D space later on. My approach with this isn't necessarily to envision the shuttle as it would have been built on the live-action TV show — as there's simply no way they would have ever built this as a full scale model — but I do try to take all my cues from the designs they did create; mostly the Galileo shuttlecraft, of course. As much as the TAS artists simplified the design of the Galileo for their show, I'm trying to reverse engineer what the Armored Shuttle might look like with more detail and as a complete 3D object.

Anyway, here's where I'm at with this. I still want to model some kind of detail on the back of the shuttle as I think it looks a little too plain there (maybe something along those lines as well), but other than that I think I'm done with modeling this. Colors and materials are only temporary and I still need to learn about UV unwrapping, lighting and rendering this thing. I'd love to build some kind of scene for this as well.

I've been looking forward to share this with y'all for the last couple of days so I'm eager to hear what you think about it.

Oh, and does anyone have an idea how I could name this thing?

EDIT: Sorry, forgot to add those orthos …

 

[Atolm]

Stunning

 

[Santaman]

Nice looking shuttle you've got there.

 

[Redfern]

Intriguing...

I don't recall ever seeing a "splayed" nacelle configuration before. Of course, I've missed the majority of material since the 4th season of Voyager was dropped for the viewing region some 20 years ago, so I have no idea what may have been depicted since that time.

 

[Cyfa]

You learned how to do that in a week?!? Amazing!
I'm not really a fan of the TAS aesthetic, but I do like what you've done with this shuttle: the wide-legged stance and the non-parallel nacelles (or "splayed" - thank you, @Redfern) particularly. I'm sure you'll get to grips with all that "UV unwrapping" malarkey in no time (whatever it is?)

 

[Professor Moriarty]

This is downright nifty and super impressive, especially for one week of self-instruction! I may enlist you to teach me how to use my explosion dynamics software!

Can you elaborate a bit on the design decision vis-a-vis the bow-legged warp nacelles?

 

[Starscape]

Wow, that's some ambitious shaping for your first 3D model and impressive results, too. Well done!

Because the "nose" is so prominent in the design I think I'd have erred toward lengthening the rear half to try to balance that out. But it's a neat renditon of the TAS shuttle, anyway.

Names? Uhm, Pinocchio?

 

[ashleytinger]

The Defiant uses the same bent warp nacelle configuration on DS9. They just hide it under that armor cowling.

 

[Redfern]

The Defiant uses the same bent warp nacelle configuration on DS9. They just hide it under that armor cowling.

D'oh! You're right! Since it doesn't have the conventional cylindrical design, I didn't think about that one.

 

[Warped9]

Re: splayed nacelles on this shuttlecraft. An interesting perspective, but I think a forced perspective view is being taken literally while other views of the same craft to not support that interpretation.

 

[Michael]

Stunning

Nice looking shuttle you've got there.

Intriguing...

Thank you, guys! You're too kind.

You learned how to do that in a week?!? Amazing!

This is downright nifty and super impressive, especially for one week of self-instruction! I may enlist you to teach me how to use my explosion dynamics software!

Wow, that's some ambitious shaping for your first 3D model and impressive results, too. Well done!

I don't know what suddenly struck me to stick with Blender a little longer for once. 3D modeling can be so frustrating at first, but then suddenly what you are working on can look so cool that you just keep on going. I'm still in the middle of figuring everything out and there still seems so much to learn about it. Let's see where this takes me. This home office situation has given me the opportunity to spend more time with this than I usually could were circumstances a bit more normal.

What's so nice about Blender is that there seems to be a huge community of fellow artists out there who are more than willing to share their knowledge. There's almost no problem for which I haven't found a solution after a quick google search. It's kind of amazing, really.

I don't recall ever seeing a "splayed" nacelle configuration before. Of course, I've missed the majority of material since the 4th season of Voyager was dropped for the viewing region some 20 years ago, so I have no idea what may have been depicted since that time.

Can you elaborate a bit on the design decision vis-a-vis the bow-legged warp nacelles?

To be completely honest, the ever so slightly angled nacelle configuration is just how I interpreted what I saw on TAS. @Warped9 might very well be completely right that I misinterpreted a shot that's just meant to be in forced perspective, but I really like how it looks and don't feel like changing it. Overall the “splayed” wings and nacelles make the shuttle look faster to me. I also really like how the tapering makes the roof look more interesting than if it were just straight.

I'm sure you'll get to grips with all that "UV unwrapping" malarkey in no time (whatever it is?)

I can't pretend to know everything about it at this point, but essentially, it's the process of “cutting up” your model at the edges to lay it flat like you could do with a paper model. That's how you can apply a texture image (with things like the registry and dirt or scratches) to your model.

Because the "nose" is so prominent in the design I think I'd have erred toward lengthening the rear half to try to balance that out. But it's a neat renditon of the TAS shuttle, anyway.

Interesting tip and a good point (pun intended, I guess)! Seriously, though, I will try that out.

Names? Uhm, Pinocchio?

Here's where I'm at with the shuttle. I've spent quite some time starting to add a scene for the shuttle to stand in. I'm going for the classic TOS studio “outdoors” look and am trying to replicate that as good as I can. I'm using a row of spotlights on the ceiling to simulate the artificial lighting and I built a sand ground like they would have done …

I'm also building my own styrofoam rocks for the background.

At the same time I've been trying to improve the material settings for the shuttle's hull. I'm taking my cues from how the light breaks on the painted surface of the restored full-scale Galileo model. I also added a subtle displacement to the whole hull to make it look more imperfect and handcrafted.

Fingerprints for the glass viewport … (Might have to scale those back a tad.)

And as I promised, I have modeled more details for the back of the shuttle. I'm riffing all of this off the original Galileo, of course. I still might add more details, though.

 

[Redfern]

You know, I could see the live action production constructing this "limited facade" for sequences depicting exiting and entering the craft. Any full view shots of the shuttle would be handled with a miniature sitting in a model environment.

Or, the model could be used as a "foreground" miniature, placed close to the camera as the performers walk about the set "behind" the craft, occasionally ducking out of view "under" that "wing".

 

[Michael]

You know, I could see the live action production constructing this "limited facade" for sequences depicting exiting and entering the craft. Any full view shots of the shuttle would be handled with a miniature sitting in a model environment.

Or, the model could be used as a "foreground" miniature, placed close to the camera as the performers walk about the set "behind" the craft, occasionally ducking out of view "under" that "wing".

I like this idea and can definitely see that that's how they could have pulled it off. Essentially they just would have had to build the wing for the cast to interact with and cut to an inside set once they had entered.

Not much in the way of progress, I suppose, but here's where I'm now with this:

After much fiddling I finally managed to apply the registry in form of an image texture. Additionally, I've been experimenting with the depth of field of the camera settings …

And I added even more details to the back of the shuttle. Plus the “license plate” and some dirt texture underneath the small grill to make it look a little more realistic …

 

[fireproof78]

Looks great!

 

[Atolm]

Very, very cool.

 

[Santaman]

Coming along nicely I would say.

As for a name, animal name okay? How about Crocodile? Since the thing is armored?

 

[Michael]

Looks great!

Very, very cool.

Coming along nicely I would say.

Thanks, guys! You're the best!

As for a name, animal name okay? How about Crocodile? Since the thing is armored?

The shuttle kind of looks like a crocodile's head, too, doesn't it?

In the meantime I actually kind of settled on a name and christened the shuttle Ibn Yunus, after an astronomer from ancient Egypt, because I wanted a name in the tradition of names like Galileo and Copernicus.

Here's the current status of the project: I furnished the “set” with more rocks and some atmospheric fog. Also, I designed the shuttle's name sign and added it to the hull.

Truthfully, I'm kind of tempted to leave it at that, as my computer can handle Blender less and less as the project has grown in size. It's getting really tedious to change even the tiniest thing and it kind of stopped being fun.

 

[Warped9]

My progress with SketchUp could get somewhat slow in the past, but now I have no real issues since I upgraded my 2011 iMac to an i7 chip, 500GB SSD and 32GB RAM. About $700 CAN of upgrades as opposed to about $3300 for anew iMac with similar specs.

 

[Atolm]

Those latest pics look amazing, but a tad too shiny (just my opinion)... Only when compared with the Galileo in the TOS. Stunning work though.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

I still can't believe this is the result of only a couple of weeks' worth of work. And I love the name you gave her.

I've really enjoyed watching your progress on this project. You've given me "the itch", and I can't wait to start modeling again, once I'm done playing Nurse Chapel for Mr. Professor Moriarty. NICE WORK.