The green grilles look much better than the black ones Speaking of green (and because you're playing around with windows in the catarmarans), had you thought about adding a set of those big, floor-to-ceiling, aboretum-style windows from the Constitution's secondary hull? Maybe to the fourth panel back that, at the moment, contains one "dot" and one "dash" window? I realise this probably isn't the type of ship that would have an aboretum (especially if it's just a testbed produced in small numbers), but it'd be another refit-Enterprise cue. Whatever you do, this is looking pretty awesome! EDIT: I've just remembered (i.e. looked at that profile view image) that there's more hull under the saucer - maybe that would be a better fit for aboretum-style windows. Or, maybe, you should just ignore me and do what you want to do as it's your ship
I haven't figured out where the arboretum will go. There are a few possibilities.One is in the back of the central structure of the saucer, the other is in engineering hull. We'll see. I focused the past few days on getting the shapes refined. The catamarans are pretty much final. I also took a stab at modeling the engineering hull to be similar to the Akira itself. I know the design looks a bit too advanced, but it does look a lot better than what I had before. I'll keep this for now while I work on other parts and see what I think. Any comments are welcome of course.
I like your original secondary hull better; I'm not a fan of the flat forward face of this version. The space feels too under-utilized, and TMP ships don't often have slab-sides like this facing the fore, usually they're parallel to the direction of travel. On the other hand I just thought this up. Please forgive the chicken scratch...
Well, that's not entirely true. The Miranda does have some frontal faces. But I get your meaning. I like your sketch though I think the greebling is a bit excessive there. It goes a bit against the design that should be really slick and refined. It does give me an idea on how to handle this. I'll have an update soon.
I'd take the secondary hull and make it more Excelsior-like -- more of a rounded shape, and the bottom half becomes another place to do your green shaded paneling.
Perfection. Only change I'd make is to make the forward cavity bigger for a larger deflector module, but that's just me. This is a lot better than the slab-face version. While yes, the Miranda does have the aft-deck facades, they weren't as dominant to the design as the forward bulkhead of the secondary hull. Even then, the Miranda's walls are canted backward to help the design look a bit more aerodynamic. They're also reduced, and not the dominant feature of the ship.
So I woke up today, saw the renders from last night again and my head just went "Nope, that doesn't look right". I decided to go back to the other one I had before. After a bit of tweaking I got a result I'm happy with. This will be the final shape as I need to move on to detailing if I ever want to finish this ship Sorry for the fans of the Excelsior style hull
I agree that this version is better than the previous, which looked too bloated, for lack of a better term. However, if I were to make one change it would be to taper the belly further towards the aft end.
Thanks! I'm still tweaking that back part. Not 100% there yet. I've spent the past few days just figuring things out in my head. Doing some tests. Here are my current plans for the Shuttle Bays:
I finished the saucer top. It was already pretty close anyway. Just added the phasers. I also spent a few hours setting up the substance file for the project. Doing the textures will be a breeze now. Top is already done. I'll do bottom next and also create the decals for those.