Have you asked the guys in-charge of the Legacy-Class if you could possibly ask them to use this bridge with the V2.0 ship currently being developed? Possible battle bridge design for (non-Mithra) starships?
Woo! So i got the ceiling done, added a whole bunch of different little doo-dads. There's some extra treats too! a jeffries tube leading out/in to the bridge. And I've started on the briefing room. Enjoy the pics. :]
I love the overall feel and design of this bridge, however, I can't help but to feel that some things are missing with the amounts of empty space on the sides of the bridge. That's a lot of wasted space that could be used to consoles or what-not.
Also, purely a self-indulgent thing here, or maybe I'm so used to it. I'm kinda partial to the 3 Command Chair setup, or the Voyager style Command Bench. Have you had any thought on more than the 1 command level chair?
I agree with Sevlek. Anything as big or bigger than an Intrepid-Class requires a "Captain", "Counselor/Mission Specialist" & "X.O."'s seat. *nods muchly*
Since I REALLY need to make better chairs anyways, I have in fact been considering remodeling the command chair area anyways and adding an xo's chair. Not certain yet how that's gonna look, but we'll see... and yes, there's a lot of empty space at the moment. I'm not certain how I'm going to fill it all up without making it seem TOO crowded. Keeping in mind though that the Galaxy Class bridge had a TON of empty space. x__x;
I hope to have an update soon... got nothing going on for christmas anyways. :P
Since I REALLY need to make better chairs anyways, I have in fact been considering remodeling the command chair area anyways and adding an xo's chair. Not certain yet how that's gonna look, but we'll see... and yes, there's a lot of empty space at the moment. I'm not certain how I'm going to fill it all up without making it seem TOO crowded. Keeping in mind though that the Galaxy Class bridge had a TON of empty space. x__x;
I hope to have an update soon... got nothing going on for christmas anyways. :P
They more-or-less fixed the abundance of empty space in Generations though with the redressed bridge, which looked pretty good. The challenge with your bridge, I think, will be to make it look functional, yet full. Especially with those doors at about the mid-way point on either side. Once again though, I love the feel of this bridge. Maybe turn those 2 step areas aside the tactical station(s) into ramps and put Voyager-esque curved standing stations or something? Not sure what I'd do tbh. I lack the patience and skill to accomplish anything near what you have.
I love the hull panels, and the layout of everything looks really good.
Why not use a JJ size view screen for the TNG bridge? That's the one thing that really gets me in all Trek bridges, they all have inexplicably small screens, even though the concept art usually, at first, shows a gigantic wall filling display.
Very nice, I love some of the details in your greebly areas! You need to work on your radiosity as it is coming out a little blotchy in places, you need a smaller minimum evaluation spacing and more rays per evaluation, or other jargon to the same effect, to get tighter samples in corners and such.
Thanks for the tips, Tobian! I took your advice and did a test render... it works marvelously, but absolutely murders my render times. Since I don't have much time nowadays I'm trying to keep my render times cut down so as to divert more time into modeling and less into staring at a progress bar. [My laptop is a piece of junk without very much ram and a crap processor, so... yeah. xD] Anyways, I'll be sure to implement your suggestions in the future when I have more time to sit around and wait. :P Or have a better comp to work with.
Anyways, I've made some major updates but on the note of rendering, I can't seem to figure out why light isn't reflecting the way that it should, and is now leaving the ceiling almost completely black... It's weird. Shadows are far darker/harder than they should be, too. At first I thought ithad to do with light bounces, but that's apparently not the case... anyone have any thoughts? The entire scene is lit by a single low-brightness skylight and the rest of the lighting I leave to the self-illuminated architectural materials... I set it up like this because spotlights, omnis, etc, don't seem to direct light as specifically as I'd like, thus never creating a realistic effect.
Anywho, for the change list:
Helm console adjusted to be concave rather than convex, flowing better with the front of the bridge and viewscreens. I've made some changes to the floor extrusion, so the conn/ops stations have more room. I've taken apart the original tactical/security/engineering console that was behind the captain's chair and used the pieces elsewhere; the two side pieces are now on either side of the bridge, but idk if I'll keep them there as of yet... and the centerpiece is now serving as the center of the helm/ops console as someone suggested earlier. On that note, I've made a new tactical station to rest on the railings behind the captain's chair, and the most notable change of all, is I've changed the whole center-bridge layout around so it now includes an xo and gues seat on either side of the captain's chair.... Thank you guys VERY much for that suggestion... I agree, I like it much more like this. I've also created a set of "test" Lcars for this, intended to be a mix of TCars and First Contact LCars. Anyways, there's more tweaks and details, but I'll let you spot them on your own. :P
Interesting.
Looks a bit big thought from the last two images as perspectives.
Can you give us some top-down shot so we can see how the deck is currently looking?
To me it looks like the luminous objects are giving off zero light at all actually, like the light is coming through holes in the ceiling left by them, it's really quite unrealistic. You are either going to have to parent dozens of lights to the luminous polys or use real radiosity. Perhaps the luminous surface has become broken and needs to be re-applied somehow? and yeah getting good results does mean slow render times, sorry, nothing I can do about that, other than suggest getting Vray LOL, Though for a mostly matte environment, and very high glosiness reflections, I am surprised the render times are so high. You might want to look into baking out your radiosity solution as a map, so you can then render out much faster renders using it? Otherwise just start reading on ways to optimise render times, as mental ray has hundreds of complex options to tweak, and a bad setting somewhere might be making it slow.
The model is coming on nicelly though! The design in the centre of the bridge might make it look quite dark (radiosity issues asside) so you might want to add more areas of luminous panels, especially above the command-staff area. The centre of the bridge also looks like a bit of a waste of space, as there's nothing there, other than a step, which actually looks a bit high, you might want to add another step to it?
I agree woth Tobian on the centre.
It's very empty. I'd recommed either shorten the whole bridge or gettingt he command-officers chairs a bit more into the centre.
well I just tested them.. they are in fact, giving off light... I just can't seem to figure out why they're not giving off light *properly*. God, this is SO frustrating. I think I must have changed some setting somewhere along the way by accident... I'll have to take a peak at some of my older files and make a comparison.
I think both you and Tobian are right, Aresius. I'll see about moving the command area closer to the center. I have an idea for a Galactica-style CIC control area at the area just before the really-curvy last step... thinking of putting a Tactical MSD Table around there...
I also think you should give the Captain's chair a little individuality. That's what I hated about Voyager's bridge, if not for the fact that Janeway always sat there, you'd never know which seat was which.
An MSD, huh? Shouldn't you get a finalized idea of the ship's exterior shape first?
What kind of lighting are you using...lself illuminating materials? At least for the flat surfaces you could Mr Sky Portals. Are Photons/GI turned on? You seem to be lacking a lot of indirect light, maybe a couple more bounces would help :S
Take a look at this, to check out the lighting properties of luminous materials. it's quite clear that even I understood it, and I've never used Mental Ray
Oh wicked, thanks for the PDF there, Tobian... seems it has a lot of useful info!
I'm not using Arch And Design for anything though... maybe I'll change that later on. Anyways, I've solved my lighting problem. I never found out what it was exactly, but I put both the most recent and one of my former revisions side-by-side and checked all the materials and render settings to make sure they matched, and EVERYTHING did; nothing was changed so it could have been something in the scene that I'm neither aware of nor aware how to change. My solution to the problem was somewhat... inventive. :P Basically, I took the old scene that worked, deleted all of the meshes and lights, then merged the new file [with the non-working lighting sceme] into the old file [WITH the working lighting scheme] and it now all works right, and even renders at a decent speed too. Well, decent for this little machine. :P
So here's a pic. I've added a couple omnis but I messed up in placing them. Oh well, you get the basic idea of what I'm going for. I've also moved the command set forward to the area suggested; the mesh just needs a little bit of editing to make it work... Plenty of work to be done, but at least the lights are working. xD
ps: all my base materials are standard. for example, the LCARS are standard materials with diffuse and self-illumination maps applied, and the reflectivity is a metal (lume) map added as well. The walls are just a coloured standard material... the lights are architectural with 3000 set to luminance... honestly I have little experience with the Architectural And Design [mi] material, so that PDF is really going to come in handy, thanks!
Yeah that looks better, but the centre of the bridge is quite gloomy. You should try switching to linear gamma, to solve the lighting issues there There's some stuff about that in there, enjoy, hope it helps!
Welllllllll I kinda sorta maybe had another change of heart...?
Yeeeaaaah I re-built the whole thing again. x3 This is the final variant, I promise!!!
Yeah, but seriously, I think you guys'll like it. There's plenty to do yet and a lot of things like the T/LCARS and such can still be re-used from the old bridge. Main reason why I've re-built it is because I found an old sketch book with my original floor plans for this... and I liked it enough that I decided to stick to it, with a couple tweaks and improvements! Additionally, after a while I realized the old mesh was indeed riddled with various errors that I couldn't simply fix... not at present, anyways. I have, however, kept it stuffed away in my archives so I can go back to it whenever I want.
I'll be keeping certain other things. The corridors and briefing room, for example. Soon enough I'll probably integrate the old service access ways too. And there are some consoles that you'll recognize from the old mesh that have been tweaked and modified for this variant.
Without further adieu, images of the new mesh! I may also provide a clay wire render so you may see just how clean the mesh is [I'm actually quite pleased!] if you so desire... just lemme know. ^_^
[Note: Second image depicts an updated helm/navigation console just added extra details and viewscreen refinements. ]
Thanks guys! I've expanded this project to include other areas of the ship, namely the corridors at the moment. I worked on this quite some time ago with little real success until now.
The corridors are widely based on the Voyager set's colour scheme, though I still need to work on lightening it up a bit. [I just realized my LCD display makes things much brighter and vibrant than most other displays, my laptop included... my bad.]
Anyways, here's some renders. I've finished this up just over the past two days. After about an hour more of work once I'm home tonight I plan to have the corridor completed so I can move onto the variants of the corridors... smaller versions for the less central areas of the ship, maintinence access ways, etc. Also, I've split this corridor into different segments, so I can make just about any corridor I want with simple copy-and-place methods. I'm quite happy with it.
Anyways, enough blabbering... PICS! Two of them, one at red alert and another standard illumination.
Posts
I especially like the jeffries tube and the chamber it leads to
Also, purely a self-indulgent thing here, or maybe I'm so used to it. I'm kinda partial to the 3 Command Chair setup, or the Voyager style Command Bench. Have you had any thought on more than the 1 command level chair?
I hope to have an update soon... got nothing going on for christmas anyways. :P
They more-or-less fixed the abundance of empty space in Generations though with the redressed bridge, which looked pretty good. The challenge with your bridge, I think, will be to make it look functional, yet full. Especially with those doors at about the mid-way point on either side. Once again though, I love the feel of this bridge. Maybe turn those 2 step areas aside the tactical station(s) into ramps and put Voyager-esque curved standing stations or something? Not sure what I'd do tbh. I lack the patience and skill to accomplish anything near what you have.
Why not use a JJ size view screen for the TNG bridge? That's the one thing that really gets me in all Trek bridges, they all have inexplicably small screens, even though the concept art usually, at first, shows a gigantic wall filling display.
Anyways, I've made some major updates but on the note of rendering, I can't seem to figure out why light isn't reflecting the way that it should, and is now leaving the ceiling almost completely black... It's weird. Shadows are far darker/harder than they should be, too. At first I thought ithad to do with light bounces, but that's apparently not the case... anyone have any thoughts?
Anywho, for the change list:
Helm console adjusted to be concave rather than convex, flowing better with the front of the bridge and viewscreens. I've made some changes to the floor extrusion, so the conn/ops stations have more room. I've taken apart the original tactical/security/engineering console that was behind the captain's chair and used the pieces elsewhere; the two side pieces are now on either side of the bridge, but idk if I'll keep them there as of yet... and the centerpiece is now serving as the center of the helm/ops console as someone suggested earlier. On that note, I've made a new tactical station to rest on the railings behind the captain's chair, and the most notable change of all, is I've changed the whole center-bridge layout around so it now includes an xo and gues seat on either side of the captain's chair.... Thank you guys VERY much for that suggestion... I agree, I like it much more like this. I've also created a set of "test" Lcars for this, intended to be a mix of TCars and First Contact LCars. Anyways, there's more tweaks and details, but I'll let you spot them on your own. :P
Any more suggestions/comments? here's the pics...
[Edit: Added a floorplan view]
Looks a bit big thought from the last two images as perspectives.
Can you give us some top-down shot so we can see how the deck is currently looking?
The model is coming on nicelly though! The design in the centre of the bridge might make it look quite dark (radiosity issues asside) so you might want to add more areas of luminous panels, especially above the command-staff area. The centre of the bridge also looks like a bit of a waste of space, as there's nothing there, other than a step, which actually looks a bit high, you might want to add another step to it?
It's very empty. I'd recommed either shorten the whole bridge or gettingt he command-officers chairs a bit more into the centre.
I think both you and Tobian are right, Aresius. I'll see about moving the command area closer to the center. I have an idea for a Galactica-style CIC control area at the area just before the really-curvy last step... thinking of putting a Tactical MSD Table around there...
An MSD, huh? Shouldn't you get a finalized idea of the ship's exterior shape first?
What kind of lighting are you using...lself illuminating materials? At least for the flat surfaces you could Mr Sky Portals. Are Photons/GI turned on? You seem to be lacking a lot of indirect light, maybe a couple more bounces would help :S
Also, what version of max are you using?
http://www.mentalimages.com/fileadmin/user_upload/PDF/arch_and_design.pdf
I Believe the arch and design materials comes with Max?
I'm not using Arch And Design for anything though... maybe I'll change that later on. Anyways, I've solved my lighting problem. I never found out what it was exactly, but I put both the most recent and one of my former revisions side-by-side and checked all the materials and render settings to make sure they matched, and EVERYTHING did; nothing was changed so it could have been something in the scene that I'm neither aware of nor aware how to change. My solution to the problem was somewhat... inventive. :P Basically, I took the old scene that worked, deleted all of the meshes and lights, then merged the new file [with the non-working lighting sceme] into the old file [WITH the working lighting scheme] and it now all works right, and even renders at a decent speed too. Well, decent for this little machine. :P
So here's a pic. I've added a couple omnis but I messed up in placing them. Oh well, you get the basic idea of what I'm going for. I've also moved the command set forward to the area suggested; the mesh just needs a little bit of editing to make it work... Plenty of work to be done, but at least the lights are working. xD
ps: all my base materials are standard. for example, the LCARS are standard materials with diffuse and self-illumination maps applied, and the reflectivity is a metal (lume) map added as well. The walls are just a coloured standard material... the lights are architectural with 3000 set to luminance... honestly I have little experience with the Architectural And Design [mi] material, so that PDF is really going to come in handy, thanks!
Yeeeaaaah I re-built the whole thing again. x3 This is the final variant, I promise!!!
Yeah, but seriously, I think you guys'll like it.
I'll be keeping certain other things. The corridors and briefing room, for example. Soon enough I'll probably integrate the old service access ways too. And there are some consoles that you'll recognize from the old mesh that have been tweaked and modified for this variant.
Without further adieu, images of the new mesh! I may also provide a clay wire render so you may see just how clean the mesh is [I'm actually quite pleased!] if you so desire... just lemme know. ^_^
[Note: Second image depicts an updated helm/navigation console just added extra details and viewscreen refinements.
The corridors are widely based on the Voyager set's colour scheme, though I still need to work on lightening it up a bit. [I just realized my LCD display makes things much brighter and vibrant than most other displays, my laptop included... my bad.]
Anyways, here's some renders. I've finished this up just over the past two days. After about an hour more of work once I'm home tonight I plan to have the corridor completed so I can move onto the variants of the corridors... smaller versions for the less central areas of the ship, maintinence access ways, etc. Also, I've split this corridor into different segments, so I can make just about any corridor I want with simple copy-and-place methods. I'm quite happy with it.
Anyways, enough blabbering... PICS! Two of them, one at red alert and another standard illumination.