Shocking! Poor Oberths don't deserve such abuse! Besides, @PixelMagic has already done a badass version of the Oberth, done in the Kelvinverse style.
The secondary hull is pretty much all there now I think. Time to move onto the primary hull, which in theory should be a good deal simpler, with just 3 main texture sets - the upper saucer, the lower saucer and the superstructure. The saucer textures are going to be much quicker to make than the secondary hull textures because the saucer geometry is so much more regular.
That's stunning, all those details and it's not overdone or too much, it's just right, I love the textures, it looks very much like what a real life aircraft hull looks like and with the hull panels it also looks a lot like a navy ship.
Thanks, Santaman! I'm glad you think it's not overdone - I find it challenging to remain objective when texturing stuff like this. There are so many hull panels to apply, it's easy to lose the forest for the trees.
First, this entire mesh and design is simply amazing. The details are insane and every time I look I see new things. But what I've been meaning to ask since the beginning.... The 'cavern' at the back of the lower decks of the secondary hull....What is this area? And is that the warpcore we're looking at?
I figure it's a sort of engineering bay, with equipment and stores against the walls. You're seeing where the warp core is, yes, but the core is a very slender object, so that cylindrical casing is some hull armour, behind which is the crewed engineering spaces, at the centre of which is the core. The idea I had for this ship when I started modelling it is that it's an engineering prototype, so what's considered 'interior' and 'exterior' is less defined, because engineers are going to be wanting to get in and change systems to get them working well for the main production run of the Ambassador Class. It's also why the Albacore has an NX designation. Edit - I've also given some thought to making an 'NCC' version where all the systems in the engineering bay, the spine and neck, and the saucer cargo bay, exposed pipes etc etc, are all capped off and everything looks more like standard starfleet, but I'm not sure if I'll get around to it this year. I do tend to revisit my models a year or two onwards though to spruce them up, so I might end up doing it eventually.
Looks pretty much like what we’ve seen on all the Excelsior’s. That was ILM’s little star destroyer greeblefest back then. I was halfway expecting to see the Tantavee IV docked in there as an Easter egg.
The detailing is exquisite, and I like your reasoning for the exposed tech that this is an engineering prototype. I have a question about the Bussard collectors: are they based on a hosepipe (like in those self-destruct cylinder thingies in Alien)?
I suppose it is rather hose-like in its structure, yes. I wanted the bussard to be a wraparound tube (think of it like a half-tokamak that contains and processes the ingested hydrogen.) that then is ducted inside the nacelle. The surface of the bussard has numerous pores that let in gases, but like a cell membrane, won't let them out. here's a closeup of the wireframe:
*old man* Son, I don't understand anything you say about that 3D mumbo jumbo but that's looking mighty nice! *old man off*
Sick model! Do you have any full ship wireframe screenshots? The detail you put into this is insaneee
Here's a couple of wires. There is no reason to make a secondary hull mesh this dense, which is something I learned only after making it.
I do like making all the detailing, but what I meant was that many of those hull panels could have a quarter the amount of polys and you wouldn't lose any perceptible smoothness in the curvature of the hull, unless you were literally a few meters away from it.