Here's a quick image I did with the Enterprise after its Blender conversion:
I just dropped it into one of my scenes that I set up with my other Constitution model and a procedurally generated planet. I did change the lighting some and rotate the planet a bit to make it look slightly different.
I may change the blue glows on the navigational deflector and the warp engines.
A little back story on this. I originally built a version of this ship in Truespace. Then, in late 2013, I was attached to a fan film as the model maker. They had ideas for what they wanted as the hero ship, so I showed them that model and they liked it, so I rebuilt it in Lightwave 10. Then there was a bunch of childish stuff with the people making the film, and then the whole thing with the people making Axanar doing things they shouldn't be doing happened, which led to the restrictions on fan films, so the film I was attached to fizzled. No biggie to me, but I wound up with some models left over, including this one. I would just convert the model, but it's not up to my current standards, so I just rendered some orthos and I'm going to rebuild it in Blender.
Here's a quick image I did with the Enterprise after its Blender conversion:
I just dropped it into one of my scenes that I set up with my other Constitution model and a procedurally generated planet. I did change the lighting some and rotate the planet a bit to make it look slightly different.
I may change the blue glows on the navigational deflector and the warp engines.
Beautiful image! I am interested to see how the image looks after you tone down the blue. It's already beautiful!
A little back story on this. I originally built a version of this ship in Truespace. Then, in late 2013, I was attached to a fan film as the model maker. They had ideas for what they wanted as the hero ship, so I showed them that model and they liked it, so I rebuilt it in Lightwave 10. Then there was a bunch of childish stuff with the people making the film, and then the whole thing with the people making Axanar doing things they shouldn't be doing happened, which led to the restrictions on fan films, so the film I was attached to fizzled. No biggie to me, but I wound up with some models left over, including this one. I would just convert the model, but it's not up to my current standards, so I just rendered some orthos and I'm going to rebuild it in Blender.
That is another beautiful model, and a VERY interesting story!
That is another beautiful model, and a VERY interesting story!
Not really one of my favorite stories. It was not a pleasant time, but I told part of the story to give the model context. Let's just say, I saw the ugly side of fan films when they became not just fans making films, so I'm actually glad that CBS put some of the restrictions on them that they did.
If you model Star Trek and you've never done this type of hull, you're missing out on some good fun:
Obviously, I'm still in the very early stages, but it took quite a while to get to this point. I will say that, when it comes to beveling the edge that runs around the top part and the join between the back piece and the saucer, Blender makes that so much less of an ordeal than Lightwave does. And Lightwave was way easier than when I originally did the model in Truespace.
Some background on my original design from Truespace: This ship isn't supposed to be the Miranda class. In fact, it's actually quite a bit smaller. According to Memory Beta, the Miranda class is 237.6m long by 141.7m wide. That checks out, since the Miranda was supposed to be the same width as the Constitution refit, but a more compact design. My ship is approximately 213.4m long by 111.3m wide. I originally based the design off of the Surya and Benning classes from the old FASA designs, with a liberal amount of original stuff thrown in. My intent is for this to be an older class of ship than the Miranda class, possibly a predecessor to that class. These would have been largely phased out when the Miranda entered service.
Now, when it comes to doing things for films, you tend to not get as much creative input as you'd like. As I said, the fan film people I was working with 9 years ago loved my design, but they insisted on calling the ship Miranda class. I told them that my design was much smaller, but they didn't care. That's why the last model I did in Lightwave carries such a high registry number, NCC-1832. I used that number because it was supposed to be Miranda class. However, as that film was never made and the design rests in my hands, I'm going back to my original idea of it being an older ship and I'll be giving it a much lower registry number, as my original Truespace model had.
I realized I messed up my line work on the saucer edge when I did it yesterday, so I redid it. I also did the rest of the line work on the top and bottom of the saucer and added the greeble trenches and the piece that looks like a spoon.
One thing that's nice about working on a ship that I designed over a decade ago is that I don't have to design anything. I'm changing some of the details slightly, but the overall design remains the same. Another thing is that I'm working from orthos that I rendered, so I don't have to deal with the all too common problem of the views not matching when dealing with drawn schematics.
I added the warp pylons and started on the nacelles:
The pylons are pretty close to what I had on my previous version. I'm sure the shapes aren't exactly the same, but they're close. After all, it's not like I'm going for a 100% recreation. I've already made subtle changes on the saucer. One intentional change for the pylons is that I did more line work.
I loaded up my old mesh into Lightwave to look at the inner cut on the nacelle and I realized I was missing some vents on the inner side of the pylons, so I added those. Then I did the boxes on the side of the nacelles and added some RCS thrusters and the inner cut.
I'm going to keep the look of this ship consistent with my Enterprise mesh that I imported, so that they can look like they're from the same fleet. Essentially, TOS with a few added details. However, it should also fit nicely with the Franz Joseph Constitution that I did a while back.
I don't know if anyone else noticed this looking at my last couple sets of renders, but I had a little mesh error in the grill here:
This was bugging the crap out of me. I tried to figure it out before I went to work yesterday, but I couldn't. After work, I tried again. I made sure all of the faces were planar, I tried merging any duplicate vertices, face triangulation, changing my shading settings, adding in an inset, rebuilding the face, all kinds of things. Finally, I decided to just rebuild the whole piece. I selected everything linked to that face, which selected that whole piece, and hit "delete," only to find I still had a section of grill there. Somehow, though I have no idea how since I definitely didn't intentionally do it, I wound up with a duplicate of that piece. The two pieces occupying the same space is what was causing the error. As soon as I deleted the extra piece, the error went away.
Don't worry if you don't see this again for a while, this is more of a proof of concept.
To keep the look of the ship consistent with the imported Enterprise, I'm using the same texture maps, I just cut them up to fit this ship. Since the saucer has a smaller diameter, I appended my Enterprise saucer into the file for this ship and I used that to make an orthographic camera above the main hull. I then rendered only the main hull so that I could get the size I needed. I saved that to a .png file and opened it in GIMP. I opened my circular maps for the Enterprise and used the circle select tool to select the right size of circle for the main hull, then I trimmed the maps to fit where I wanted the paneling, which is only where there are grid lines. For the Top/Back part, I imported the engineering hull textures and then used the free select tool in GIMP to select where I wanted that paneling and trimmed it too. Then I went back to Blender and selected only the faces where I wanted the paneling and created a new material and applied it there. I applied my mirror modifier temporarily to make sure this would work how I wanted it, then I went into top view and generated a UV map for that material from that view. I used the "bounds" setting to size it to my image, and now I have paneling exactly where I want it in the shape that I want it.
Edit: I almost forgot to mention, up next is a lot of booleans to cut in windows, hatches, torpedoes, etc. That's why it's only temporarily mirrored. However, after I finish all of that I'll be able to permanently mirror it and then do the UV mapping for real and have my specular paneling that's consistent with my Enterprise.
I absolutely love the shape of that B-C deck under the bridge.
Thanks a lot. It's more based on the 70s blueprints than the filming model because the filming model shape for that is a pain to make. It's not that I can't do it, I just save having to do it for when I try to make a screen accurate Enterprise.
The two pieces occupying the same space is what was causing the error.
And I hear the voice of Homer Simpson saying......"DOH", lol. I have experienced many such headaches.
I'm loving the frigate. I once toyed with the idea of doing the Coventry Class from the Ships of the Star Fleet book but ended up doing a Knox instead.
The two pieces occupying the same space is what was causing the error.
And I hear the voice of Homer Simpson saying......"DOH", lol. I have experienced many such headaches.
I'm loving the frigate. I once toyed with the idea of doing the Coventry Class from the Ships of the Star Fleet book but ended up doing a Knox instead.
Thanks. Yeah, I don't know how I wound up with a duplicate of that part, I don't remember hitting Shift+D with it highlighted at any point. Maybe it was just Blender weirdness. I know I've seen where other people have mentioned having issues like this before.
I've looked at the Coventry before. Really, I've looked at all of the ships with this style of hull, and none of them really suit my personal taste, that's why I wound up mixing elements from the Surya and Bening. I like the greeble trenches and the way the pylons sweep back on the Bening, but I don't like the fact that the pylons are perfectly vertical and I don't like how they connect to the hull. Then, for the Surya, I again like that the pylons sweep back and I like that they angle, but I don't like the bend in them or the fact that it lacks the greeble trenches. So, I took what I like about both and took the bend out of the Surya pylons and basically wound up with a hybrid design.
The Coventry is larger, more Miranda sized. In fact, it would make a great base design for doing a TOS-era Miranda.
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I just dropped it into one of my scenes that I set up with my other Constitution model and a procedurally generated planet. I did change the lighting some and rotate the planet a bit to make it look slightly different.
I may change the blue glows on the navigational deflector and the warp engines.
A little back story on this. I originally built a version of this ship in Truespace. Then, in late 2013, I was attached to a fan film as the model maker. They had ideas for what they wanted as the hero ship, so I showed them that model and they liked it, so I rebuilt it in Lightwave 10. Then there was a bunch of childish stuff with the people making the film, and then the whole thing with the people making Axanar doing things they shouldn't be doing happened, which led to the restrictions on fan films, so the film I was attached to fizzled. No biggie to me, but I wound up with some models left over, including this one. I would just convert the model, but it's not up to my current standards, so I just rendered some orthos and I'm going to rebuild it in Blender.
Thanks Eric. Yeah, the blue is a little too much. It looked different in Lightwave.
Not really one of my favorite stories. It was not a pleasant time, but I told part of the story to give the model context. Let's just say, I saw the ugly side of fan films when they became not just fans making films, so I'm actually glad that CBS put some of the restrictions on them that they did.
Thanks a lot. I actually put the torpedo launchers on the saucer underside, since that's where we saw the torpedoes launch from on the show.
Thanks a lot, Eric.
If you model Star Trek and you've never done this type of hull, you're missing out on some good fun:
Obviously, I'm still in the very early stages, but it took quite a while to get to this point. I will say that, when it comes to beveling the edge that runs around the top part and the join between the back piece and the saucer, Blender makes that so much less of an ordeal than Lightwave does. And Lightwave was way easier than when I originally did the model in Truespace.
Some background on my original design from Truespace: This ship isn't supposed to be the Miranda class. In fact, it's actually quite a bit smaller. According to Memory Beta, the Miranda class is 237.6m long by 141.7m wide. That checks out, since the Miranda was supposed to be the same width as the Constitution refit, but a more compact design. My ship is approximately 213.4m long by 111.3m wide. I originally based the design off of the Surya and Benning classes from the old FASA designs, with a liberal amount of original stuff thrown in. My intent is for this to be an older class of ship than the Miranda class, possibly a predecessor to that class. These would have been largely phased out when the Miranda entered service.
Now, when it comes to doing things for films, you tend to not get as much creative input as you'd like. As I said, the fan film people I was working with 9 years ago loved my design, but they insisted on calling the ship Miranda class. I told them that my design was much smaller, but they didn't care. That's why the last model I did in Lightwave carries such a high registry number, NCC-1832. I used that number because it was supposed to be Miranda class. However, as that film was never made and the design rests in my hands, I'm going back to my original idea of it being an older ship and I'll be giving it a much lower registry number, as my original Truespace model had.
One thing that's nice about working on a ship that I designed over a decade ago is that I don't have to design anything. I'm changing some of the details slightly, but the overall design remains the same. Another thing is that I'm working from orthos that I rendered, so I don't have to deal with the all too common problem of the views not matching when dealing with drawn schematics.
I'm not worried about the whole single turbolift in back thing. After all, the Reliant had a single turbolift directly behind the captain's chair:
The pylons are pretty close to what I had on my previous version. I'm sure the shapes aren't exactly the same, but they're close. After all, it's not like I'm going for a 100% recreation. I've already made subtle changes on the saucer. One intentional change for the pylons is that I did more line work.
I'm going to keep the look of this ship consistent with my Enterprise mesh that I imported, so that they can look like they're from the same fleet. Essentially, TOS with a few added details. However, it should also fit nicely with the Franz Joseph Constitution that I did a while back.
This was bugging the crap out of me. I tried to figure it out before I went to work yesterday, but I couldn't. After work, I tried again. I made sure all of the faces were planar, I tried merging any duplicate vertices, face triangulation, changing my shading settings, adding in an inset, rebuilding the face, all kinds of things. Finally, I decided to just rebuild the whole piece. I selected everything linked to that face, which selected that whole piece, and hit "delete," only to find I still had a section of grill there. Somehow, though I have no idea how since I definitely didn't intentionally do it, I wound up with a duplicate of that piece. The two pieces occupying the same space is what was causing the error. As soon as I deleted the extra piece, the error went away.
Thanks bro.
Here's a sneak peak at some texturing:
Don't worry if you don't see this again for a while, this is more of a proof of concept.
To keep the look of the ship consistent with the imported Enterprise, I'm using the same texture maps, I just cut them up to fit this ship. Since the saucer has a smaller diameter, I appended my Enterprise saucer into the file for this ship and I used that to make an orthographic camera above the main hull. I then rendered only the main hull so that I could get the size I needed. I saved that to a .png file and opened it in GIMP. I opened my circular maps for the Enterprise and used the circle select tool to select the right size of circle for the main hull, then I trimmed the maps to fit where I wanted the paneling, which is only where there are grid lines. For the Top/Back part, I imported the engineering hull textures and then used the free select tool in GIMP to select where I wanted that paneling and trimmed it too. Then I went back to Blender and selected only the faces where I wanted the paneling and created a new material and applied it there. I applied my mirror modifier temporarily to make sure this would work how I wanted it, then I went into top view and generated a UV map for that material from that view. I used the "bounds" setting to size it to my image, and now I have paneling exactly where I want it in the shape that I want it.
Edit: I almost forgot to mention, up next is a lot of booleans to cut in windows, hatches, torpedoes, etc. That's why it's only temporarily mirrored. However, after I finish all of that I'll be able to permanently mirror it and then do the UV mapping for real and have my specular paneling that's consistent with my Enterprise.
Thanks a lot.
And I hear the voice of Homer Simpson saying......"DOH", lol. I have experienced many such headaches.
I'm loving the frigate. I once toyed with the idea of doing the Coventry Class from the Ships of the Star Fleet book but ended up doing a Knox instead.
Thanks. Yeah, I don't know how I wound up with a duplicate of that part, I don't remember hitting Shift+D with it highlighted at any point.
I've looked at the Coventry before. Really, I've looked at all of the ships with this style of hull, and none of them really suit my personal taste, that's why I wound up mixing elements from the Surya and Bening. I like the greeble trenches and the way the pylons sweep back on the Bening, but I don't like the fact that the pylons are perfectly vertical and I don't like how they connect to the hull. Then, for the Surya, I again like that the pylons sweep back and I like that they angle, but I don't like the bend in them or the fact that it lacks the greeble trenches. So, I took what I like about both and took the bend out of the Surya pylons and basically wound up with a hybrid design.
The Coventry is larger, more Miranda sized. In fact, it would make a great base design for doing a TOS-era Miranda.