USS Grandeur - One... More... Time!

[Trekker4747]

Really beautifyl Vek!

Man, I wish I had this kind of talent, I've got ideas in my head for starships, but can never knock them out correctly.

 

[TheSeeker]

Nice to see some more updates! Keep 'em coming!

 

[Colonel Midnight]

Vektor said:
UPDATE!!!

She's gorgeous as always, Vektor.

This is a nice view, especially. Put a starfield behind it, and it would look just ... WOW! :thumbsup:

Cheers,
-CM-

 

[Professor Moriarty]

I like the little fin thingies on the aft part of the connection between the warp nacelle pylons and the nacelles themselves. :thumbsup:

 

[Vektor]

Ptrope said:
This has got to be the most artistic ship of Starfleet I've ever seen. :thumbsup: Truly worthy of the name Grandeur.

Thanks, Ptrope, but I think the TMP refit would still have to hold that title in my book. Although, I have been trying to incorporate certain characteristics of the TMP refit into the Grandeur, so I'll take your comment as an indication of success.

 

[Vektor]

Colonel Midnight said:
This is a nice view, especially. Put a starfield behind it, and it would look just ... WOW! :thumbsup:

This is one of my favorite views also, but I'm afraid I'm going to hold off on any starfields or beauty shots until the model is finished.

 

[Vektor]

Professor Moriarty said:
I like the little fin thingies on the aft part of the connection between the warp nacelle pylons and the nacelles themselves. :thumbsup:

Those are a detail I had planned to add almost from the earliest design sketches for this ship but I'm only now getting around to them. They actually do serve a purpose; I figure not everything pulled in by the bussard ramscoops is going to be useable for fuel, so after the good stuff gets separated and extracted, whatever's left gets vented out those grills and back into space.

Remember the ring of grills just behind the bussard domes on the TOS Enterprise? Or the semi-circular grills on either side of the head of the nacelles on the TMP refit? Or the ring of grills on the Enterprise-D? Just about every Fed ship design has had them in one place or another, usually right behind or right next to the bussard collectors. I just decided to put mine on the trailing edge of the support pylon adjacent to the nacelle where the exhaust wouldn't leave a messy residue over time.

 

[AstroSmurf]

This is looking really amazing. It has such a genuine kinetic flow and full of tasty details. I love the little grills. There is so much about this design that mimics the styling of an old car (of course the Refit did as well) which I adore. Beautiful!

(I love your signature line. It expresses my own sentiments on the subject as well.)

 

[Ptrope]

Vektor said:

Ptrope said:
This has got to be the most artistic ship of Starfleet I've ever seen. :thumbsup: Truly worthy of the name Grandeur.

Thanks, Ptrope, but I think the TMP refit would still have to hold that title in my book. Although, I have been trying to incorporate certain characteristics of the TMP refit into the Grandeur, so I'll take your comment as an indication of success.

"Success" is an understatement . I agree that, of the onscreen ships, the TMP refit is the best of them all, both stylistically and visually; the refit 1701 is definitely a clean design, both well-balanced and well-detailed (thanks to a very strong original design by Matt Jefferies, and tasteful and thoughtful improvements by others on its way to the big screen). I think the final determination will come when Grandeur is fully textured, lit and rendered in context. As noted above, there is a lot of 'automotive' style and grace to Grandeur, lines that arguably have little or nothing to do with its function as a starship, and everything to do with simply making it beautiful, even stylish; the form is 'right,' and the details add both to the style and to the appearance of functionality. It's a Duesenberg in a fleet of Chevrolets, a Lockheed Constellation in a fleet of DC-3s.

Along with your campaign to have Vanguard in a canon Star Trek prequel film, I think, should there be any decision to make a Trek film that follows TNG/DS9/VOY, Grandeur should find a place onscreen, as well; it's just that good :thumbsup:.

 

[Squiggy]

IMHO, this looks like a better next step in the Enterprise lineage than the Sovvy.

Kudos!

 

[Vektor]

More progress on the warp nacelles...

I think these are pretty self-explanatory. All I'll say is that I know there is some segmentation visible, especially in the second image with the tight close-up on the bussard collector. My intent is to be able to use this model for animation so I am working hard to keep the polycount down, but I should still be able to fix most of the obvious stuff in the final modeling stages. By the way, the current polycount is about 186,000 for the entire model, but I haven't even started freezing and optimizing the Sub-D's yet so I'm still hopeful of staying under 200K.

 

[Ptrope]

Just ... wow!!

I love the detail on this, especially that second shot. The surfacing of the bussard collector, and the intersection of the character lines in the design ... beautiful!

Polar Lights? Art Asylum? Are you watching this?

 

[FrontLine]

Hot dang I love the work on the nacelles (as well as the rest of the ship. I like the honey comb paterns to the bussard collectors. I also like the grill between them. It harkens back (forcefully, but not obnoxiously) to the TMP refit.

Ptrope said:
Polar Lights? Art Asylum? Are you watching this?

Oh how I wish

Ptrope said:
Along with your campaign to have Vanguard in a canon Star Trek prequel film, I think, should there be any decision to make a Trek film that follows TNG/DS9/VOY, Grandeur should find a place onscreen, as well; it's just that good :thumbsup:.

Ok I obviously missed something along the way. Can anyone fill me in with out taking this thread too far off topic.

 

[Ptrope]

^^

This should do the trick:

Who Wants to See This Ship in Trek XI?

 

[Valley Forge]

Anyone else think that the first nacelle shot would also double as a great hand phaser design?

BTW, Vek, Sweet, sweet work!

Vf

 

[Vektor]

You know what's funny? Even though these warp nacelles are very similar to the previous version, they are an entirely new rebuild and I was downright shocked to realize how much easier it was this time than it was a couple of years ago. There is a definite intuitive/predictive knack to Sub-D modeling that takes a lot of time and practice to develop, or at least it did for me. It's kind of like chess in that you really need to be able to think multiple steps ahead of where you're at to achieve a winning strategy.

Since we're on the topic, here's a wireframe rendering of the base mesh for the warp nacelle before the two iterations of subdivision are applied:

 

[Trek]

Wow Vector, I think you've been working on this ship about as long as I've been doing my Sovereign.

 

[DRACO]

even throught the re design i still love this ship, what are the specs again?

 

[Vektor]

Well, this isn't the huge, awesomely impressive update I had intended it to be, but it's been so long since I posted anything new that I thought I'd better show something.

For starters, a full set of orthographics:

And some perspective views for good measure:

A few things to note before you start commenting:

1. No, the bridge and other details on top of the saucer have not been eliminated, they're just not in presentable condition at the moment so I left them out of these renderings.

2. The groove in the edge of the saucer is only temporarily absent and will be restored at a later stage.

3. The photorp/quantorp launchers above and below the deflector dish are not the final versions. I have a significant update in store for them in the near future.

4. The beam cannons on the bow and the auxiliary deflector just behind them are next on my list.

All for now.

 

[FrontLine]

That may be all for now, but it'll do nicely. Cant wait to see the next awesome update