Viper's miscellaneous Star Trek projects

[Viper]

*cough* GPU rendering! *cough*

Unfortunately my 970 GTX is not up for it. It only renders slightly faster and in a scene like that, it doesn't have enough memory. If someone wants to donate a couple of 2080 Ti cards though, I won't say no An AMD Ryzen 32 core would come in handy as well

I'd like to see a large concept where several of such dock structures were wrapping--an asteroid say...

Hmmm...I would think something like that would work better with a structure like McKinley station, with the arms. I was thinking of rendering Utopia Planitia shipyards at some point

 

[Professor Moriarty]

Look for cyber Monday specials. GPU rendering is a true game-changer (it sure was for me!). But having said that, there’s no substitute for talent, and you’ve got that in spades—your spacedock looks like unseen footage from TMP.

 

[Viper]

Look for cyber Monday specials. GPU rendering is a true game-changer (it sure was for me!). But having said that, there’s no substitute for talent, and you’ve got that in spades—your spacedock looks like unseen footage from TMP.

Cyber monday isn't a thing for me as I live in Brazil. A GPU like that is way too expensive here as well. I kinda wish I could do a Patreon or something like that for my art, but stupid me chose to do Star Trek stuff which is probably the worst one to try and make money of because of CBS Policy I'm also not a pro artist, so it's hard to get people's attention for things like tutorials and so on.

 

[SCE2Aux]

Cyber monday isn't a thing for me as I live in Brazil. A GPU like that is way too expensive here as well. I kinda wish I could do a Patreon or something like that for my art, but stupid me chose to do Star Trek stuff which is probably the worst one to try and make money of because of CBS Policy I'm also not a pro artist, so it's hard to get people's attention for things like tutorials and so on.

I feel your pain - my PC started smoking last week and, computer parts being what they are, I can't afford to fix it until next year.

As Professor Moriarty says, this is looking like footage from a movie - I'm looking forward to seeing this progress.

 

[Viper]

@Bernard Guignard I rendered some orthos for you guys

If someone would like to take a stab at doing some LCARs graphics of her, be my guest. I'll render a special wallpaper as a gift I'll work on some eventually, but it's really far off.

 

[ashleytinger]

Are you looking for TMP/WOK era, TVH/TUC era or TNG era LCARS?

 

[Norsehound]

Her registry would put her in the TMP/WoK era wouldn't it?

 

[Viper]

Are you looking for TMP/WOK era, TVH/TUC era or TNG era LCARS?

I'm not looking for anything specific. Just saying it would be cool to see some LCARs done. I think TUC era would make more sense though.

Her registry would put her in the TMP/WoK era wouldn't it?

Well, yes. But my head canon puts the ship in development during the WOK and then only going into service shortly before the Excelsior loses the NX designation.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

Outstanding! Marvelous! Author! Author!

 

[Bernard Guignard]

Very nice excellent work there

 

[Viper]

I've been super busy lately, but yesterday I finished a few things and should be free again to work on things. Star Trek: The Motion Picture anniversary is tomorrow and I ended up not finishing the drydock in time So my commemoration image will be a few days late, unfortunately. Here's a little preview though

 

[Viper]

For this image I'll have the drydock in copper color to echo the movie. So here it is adjusted. I also toned the blue down a bit and made the arms of the lights a bit thinner.

I'll work on the office structure next so I can have the connector arm to the saucer. Not sure what I'll do yet, so if I can't figure out I'll just do something like the movie drydock has but with my own spin on it

 

[SCE2Aux]

If you're thinking of putting a different spin on things with the spacedock, you could make it a Utopia Planitia scene over Mars.

Just a random thought.

 

[Viper]

If you're thinking of putting a different spin on things with the spacedock, you could make it a Utopia Planitia scene over Mars.

Just a random thought.

I think for this TMP image it should be Earth. But the Mars scene is coming

 

[Professor Moriarty]

That wet squishy plop! you just heard was my jaw hitting the floor. Those images are gob-smackingly gorgeous.

I know it's a cliche but you absolutely must do a startup sequence video of the Enterprise lighting up and majestically sailing out of the dock. Seriously, @Viper, this is outstanding.

 

[Viper]

That wet squishy plop! you just heard was my jaw hitting the floor. Those images are gob-smackingly gorgeous.

I know it's a cliche but you absolutely must do a startup sequence video of the Enterprise lighting up and majestically sailing out of the dock. Seriously, @Viper, this is outstanding.

I definitely want to do that at some point. The main issue is those blue lights take a long time to render. I might actually change them for this image as well, make them similar to the one in TMP. That should render faster and then the animation would be easier to handle, hopefully. But images first!

 

[Psion]

Thanks for doing this, Viper. ST:TMP is my favorite of the Trek films and the space dock sequences are gorgeous. Your work holds the amazing promise of upstaging the original shots!

What do you plan to do for Earth?

 

[Viper]

Thanks for doing this, Viper. ST:TMP is my favorite of the Trek films and the space dock sequences are gorgeous. Your work holds the amazing promise of upstaging the original shots!

What do you plan to do for Earth?

You are very welcome I missed quite a few Trek anniversaries, couldn't let this one pass up.

I'm going to do night time Earth, I think. I don't want to have the sun shining here, let the drydock do all the work

 

[Psion]

Thunderstorms?

One of the things that I love about this sequence is that it spends so much time establishing the scale of the Enterprise against the humans who built her. It's lovingly photographed and composited with other objects that tell us, this is a huge ship.



Only to be shown later as that huge ship cruises over the surface of V'Ger at 100 meters that the Enterprise is diminutive in comparison.


I wonder if you can similarly capture another motif of V'Ger's: lightning. It's flickering and dancing around the alien in numerous shots. From the cloud surrounding V'Ger to the whiplash bolts, to the near-constant flashes within the Voyager VI chamber itself.


It would be interesting if, within the atmosphere of the very planet that launched the core of V'Ger some 300 years earlier, there was foreshadowing of the danger approaching.

We know a lot more about what the Earth looks like from orbit now than we did in 1979; a series of stunning time lapse videos shows how alive the Earth's atmosphere can appear:

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Of course, this footage is sped-up, compressing the activity of several minutes into a few seconds, but with the stately pacing of those space dock shots, there's more than enough time to show a few flickering thunderstorms running along various coasts.

What do you think?

 

[Psion]

Hmmm ... crickets.

**Nervous cough**

Uh ... I'll just sit back down over here by the door. Nevermind me. I had something ... uh ... I had something caught in my throat.