It's been about 15 years since I touched any 3d software in a significant way, so I've been learning to use Blender now (LW / Maya about in the early 00s).
I've been toying with a few ideas of 32nd century ships, the first one i took a stab at is a version of the Defiant class, trying to keep in spirit of the original.
Deflector housing looks a little weirdly shapped from the side in orthographic but it looks ok from other angles i think...
I tried tweaking the deflector section but it just ended up turning into a lump and the edge loops were pretty wonky so I ended up rebuilding it and made it more angular.
I also made some of the edges more creased where the hull changes direction, but tried to leave in some of the curves. Rebuilt the dorsal section too, raising it back up and instead cutting it in from the front since this seems a bit more in line with the canon designs.
I think I have a few edge loops to cleanup, but otherwise I'm feeling pretty happy with the main shapes.
Looks like a solid start. To me, the 32nd-century ship designs look pretty open-ended so far and yet still maintain a distinct signature style. I'm keenly interested to see where you take this!
I second this opinion, it's nice to see someone else do 32nd Century ships.
Turns out I wasn't completely happy with the shapes...the primary hull was feeling too flat, the nacelles just didn't have the same feel as the rest of the ship, and the deflector pod wasn't meshing well with the cutout in the front of the primary hull...
So I reworked the rear of the pod and redid the nacelles completely from scratch - they're now shaped so that the fit well to the primary hull - they didn't state this on discovery explicitly but it appeared that programmable matter formed the physical connections when the detached sections reattached, so that's my idea as well - the nacelles and deflector pod would retract say 90% of the way and then programmable matter would bridge the other 10% of the gap for a physical connection.
Gave the ventral side some more character including carving out an area for a vertical shuttle bay. I'd toyed with have a forward ventral shuttlebay immediately aft of the deflector pod, but that just didn't sit right and just felt too similar to the bridge window.
The aft section also got extended and cut in some areas for the impulse engines.
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I'm keenly interested to see where you take this!
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I tried tweaking the deflector section but it just ended up turning into a lump and the edge loops were pretty wonky so I ended up rebuilding it and made it more angular.
I also made some of the edges more creased where the hull changes direction, but tried to leave in some of the curves. Rebuilt the dorsal section too, raising it back up and instead cutting it in from the front since this seems a bit more in line with the canon designs.
I think I have a few edge loops to cleanup, but otherwise I'm feeling pretty happy with the main shapes.
I second this opinion, it's nice to see someone else do 32nd Century ships.
So I reworked the rear of the pod and redid the nacelles completely from scratch - they're now shaped so that the fit well to the primary hull - they didn't state this on discovery explicitly but it appeared that programmable matter formed the physical connections when the detached sections reattached, so that's my idea as well - the nacelles and deflector pod would retract say 90% of the way and then programmable matter would bridge the other 10% of the gap for a physical connection.
Gave the ventral side some more character including carving out an area for a vertical shuttle bay. I'd toyed with have a forward ventral shuttlebay immediately aft of the deflector pod, but that just didn't sit right and just felt too similar to the bridge window.
The aft section also got extended and cut in some areas for the impulse engines.