Ok I tried a new engine, and after hours of work and having to restart several times due to mistakes, I got a new engine design that looks neat.
But frak me sideways if I didn't have the same problem in the end, after I applies a l2 subsurf I ended up at just about 150,000 verts.
Well, I spent several hours eliminating every very and loop I could, and got it down to about 95K verts. I'm sure it'll be just over 100k verts when I finish.
Here's some views of the unfinished, 95,000 very engine. Oh well, even if I get it down to just about 100k verts it still saves me 150k verts when I get all 3. I still wish i could get it at a lot less verts, but when I tried a l1 subsurf it lookee a little bad up close.
I like the new windowed approach. I also like the detailing you've got going on in the back. I have to admit, I prefer the bulgy/rounded version of the nacelle design that you scrapped to the hard-angular one. The rest of the ship has so many smooth curves that having the hard, angular nacelles feels very out of place.
If it's not a secret, can I as you what the very count on your ambassador engine is? I mean, is 100K verts unreasonable for something like this?
With all of the pieces (including interior bits) the engines clock in at something ridiculous like 250k a piece. The pair of nacelles and saucer together weighin at very nearly one million. I did some optimization on them, but not as much as with the rest of the ship.
Don't sweat the poly count too much. Definitely cleanup redundant loops, but be aware that because of the way Cycles renders (not always simulating a smooth normal across a polygonal "curve"), having too few polygons making up a curve can result in weird shading artifacts (some of which you can see on my Ambassador, especially in transition areas from very bright to very dark).
With the new windows I may not model the warp coils, but will make a bussard collector behind the red windows. Uh, what dod you think of the new engine design, btw?
I think these have all been orthographic renders, which always make anything look bloated and fat. As a result, I've been waiting for a proper perspective render.
I've had an idea for a new pair that combine angularity and smooth curves, might try it.
They say the third time's the charm, hope they're right. A lot of people disliked the original engine nacelles, my original concept, which was partly based on my limited modelling skills, had the high guard section being all angular to reflect the fact she was not streamlined for atmo operations while the lander section was.
As my skill got better I could redo the high guard section into something more elaborate. So eventually the original nacelles didn't go with it.
I tried a more smooth design and while you liked it I wasn't too happy with it. You'd also said you liked some of the stuff on the original engine redo, and I liked some of the original engine ideas too, so I tried to do a new version of the original engines that was smoother and combined the window look.
So here it is, and yes it's a quick render as I'm still working on it.
I like the look as it's smoother, does have some of the original look to it and also has a certain potentially ominous aspect to it, sort of like a snake head maybe. Happy to hear what others (Well, McC since he's the only one replying to this thread now, but he's a real blendermaster) think about it.
Had some problems with the engines, finally went back to an early design but made it more smooth and less angular, I think I'll go with this one as it is close to the first design gut is definitely not as sharp edged.
The bussard collector ended up with a slight asymmetry in the middle, decided to leave it to suggest maybe some sort of centerline reinforcement. The dim recessed areas between the bright bars are where the hydrogen in gathered in and contained. The vertical bars would flash inward from the outer edges to reflect the bussard field sweeping in hydrogen. The horizontal bars on the top and bottom would be on continuously.
The blue windows are the warp coil windows which TNG fed designs seem to need. The dark bars between them are forcefield bulkheads that are designed to generate a containment field if a coil malfunctions to minimize damage to the whole engine. The panels under the windows are emergency plasma vents meant to vent plasma from a coil in an emergency.
The projections under the rear section are heat sinks. The original enterprise had a pair of projections on the upper rear of the nacelles, these are inspired by those.
Don't know what the dark recess under the red bussard intake is, reminds me of the dark areas on the original motion picture nacelles. Will likely add a mesh or grill of some type if I learn how to make one.
More detail work, added some lateral sensors to the high guard section, and the thin slots on the front and near the back are tractor beam arrays. Also redid the side phasers to match the lander phasers. Put the engines back in place finally, hated seeing her without them.
Had to redo the rear hull, had some real issues that weren't visible until I tried to add the ventral phaser.
After some time off I'm woprking on this again, I'd like to know how to do like a hex mesh over the colored panels on the sensor array, any ideas for making on easier tham modeling it by hand? Is there a way to select an area and have a hex mesh arrange itself to it?
That secondary hull is very like the Vengeance. You beat JJ to the punch.
Well, thanks for the compliment. I'm not of fan of abrams redesigns or anything esle he's done with trek, but yes, the Hephaestus's rear hull, the high guard section, is an original design made lone before into darkness was released.
Now I'm starting on the underside of the lander. I want to add a tractor array for landing/takeoffs and some 'landing pads" along the rim for landing.
I'm finishing up the physical modeling with a few more details like tractor beams and sensor arrays. The ship does seem to have a near paranoid amount of secondary sensors on her, but when you've got the federation, klingon empire, orion syndicates and sundry others after you it never hurts to make it hard for people to sneak up on you.
Things got better (?) later when the dominion war broke out and the feds, taking a pasting early on, asked the hephaestus' captain to help the war effort as an ally. Not wanting his homeworld of Monticello to come under dominion control he agreed and all the ship had to worry about then were the jem he'dar.
From these views she doesn't seem to have too many sensor arrays. Now the part I need to work on is the underside of the lander. That needs some detailing, landing pads and tractors, etc.
I've had severe asthma/copd/whatever for over a month and didn;t feel like doing much. Now I'm back at it and have added a few touches, with more in mind.
I added some vertical rectangles to the upper high guard hull, they compliment the forward horizontal one. I think they will be antimatter ejector systems. Still don't know what the forward one is for.
I also added something after seeing some ww2 naval combat footage, side torpedo tubes. I can hear the hardcore trekkies screaming that no ship has been seen with side tubes on any trek eps of films already. :argh:
I added them after seeing real warships of ww2 firing side mounted torpedo tubes.
I plan to add some more details, including yet more that have never been seen on a trek ship before, like emergency thrusters on the undersides of the nacelles. The point of mounting the warp engines in nacelles on pylons is to keep them clear of the ship in case they become unstable and dangerous, and to make it easy to jettison them. Well, suppose the ship is immobilized and needs to jettison a dangerous engine?
I'm gong to add some emergency thrusters to the nacelles to thrust them away from the ship in a crisis situation. Again I suppose I'll hear the hardcore cases screaming about how that was never shown on any show or movie. :argh:
I also added something after seeing some ww2 naval combat footage, side torpedo tubes. I can hear the hardcore trekkies screaming that no ship has been seen with side tubes on any trek eps of films already. :argh:
I added them after seeing real warships of ww2 firing side mounted torpedo tubes.
In Star Trek Into Darkness, Enterprise has a bunch of side-mounted torpedo bays.
I plan to add some more details, including yet more that have never been seen on a trek ship before, like emergency thrusters on the undersides of the nacelles. The point of mounting the warp engines in nacelles on pylons is to keep them clear of the ship in case they become unstable and dangerous, and to make it easy to jettison them. Well, suppose the ship is immobilized and needs to jettison a dangerous engine?
I'm gong to add some emergency thrusters to the nacelles to thrust them away from the ship in a crisis situation. Again I suppose I'll hear the hardcore cases screaming about how that was never shown on any show or movie. :argh:
Not so! Ever since the refit Enterprise, RCS thrusters have been in place on nacelles, which could do the job of pushing the nacelle away from the ship in an emergency.
Additionally, based on how most nacelles are mounted on their pylons, it's not unlikely that any emergency ejection system would actually be contained at the mounting point. It wouldn't be externally visible until it came time to jettison it, much like a multi-stage rocket.
In Star Trek Into Darkness, Enterprise has a bunch of side-mounted torpedo bays.
Yeah, that's one thing I hated about the movie. (Not even going to get into the first time we saw enterprise in it) The way the director just creates stuff out of thin air that was never there before. I mean, there's never been any indication that they ship had those launch bays (they weren't tubes.) on the side of the ship like that, especially in large numbers, but the script calls for it so POOF!, they appear out of nowhere. They never make writers stick to canon anymore. I consider the abrams movies not to be star trek but just "Die hard in space" mindless action flicks so don't consider anything from them in my stuff.
If they wanted to threaten to launch those missiles, they could have lined them up in the shuttlebay and launched them out the bay doors. That would have been at least close to canon.
Not so! Ever since the refit Enterprise, RCS thrusters have been in place on nacelles, which could do the job of pushing the nacelle away from the ship in an emergency.
Additionally, based on how most nacelles are mounted on their pylons, it's not unlikely that any emergency ejection system would actually be contained at the mounting point. It wouldn't be externally visible until it came time to jettison it, much like a multi-stage rocket.
Good points!
While I've got your atention, I'd like to ask you a couple things. First, I'm not quite satified with my nacelle ends, I'll post some pics and ask you if you have any idead.
Secondly, I have a new project to make an alien (grey) arm reaching down from space and holding a puppet control, and ideas on that? it's different from my usual hard surface modeling.
Yeah, that's one thing I hated about the movie. (Not even going to get into the first time we saw enterprise in it) The way the director just creates stuff out of thin air that was never there before. I mean, there's never been any indication that they ship had those launch bays (they weren't tubes.) on the side of the ship like that, especially in large numbers, but the script calls for it so POOF!, they appear out of nowhere. They never make writers stick to canon anymore. I consider the abrams movies not to be star trek but just "Die hard in space" mindless action flicks so don't consider anything from them in my stuff.
If they wanted to threaten to launch those missiles, they could have lined them up in the shuttlebay and launched them out the bay doors. That would have been at least close to canon.
The only canon antecedent for Star Trek Into Darkness is Star Trek (2009). One could argue that the various comic prequels to each movie are canon as well. The new series ain't beholden to anything that happened in TOS, TNG, DS9, or VOY, and it's only barely beholden to anything that happened in ENT. Trying to force it to be is an exercise in obstinacy and, if I may be so bold, bitterness. JJ's Trek is a new spin on Trek. It doesn't replace the classic Trek we grew up cherishing, nor does it demean or debase it. It's its own thing.
The preceding is all I have to say here on the topic. I'm not going to get into a debate in your WIP thread about the merits or flaws of the new Trek series. If you want to go that path, I'll respectfully bow out of the remainder of the thread. I simply have no patience for it.
Secondly, I have a new project to make an alien (grey) arm reaching down from space and holding a puppet control, and ideas on that? it's different from my usual hard surface modeling.
Uh...that's a very vague question. "Model a Grey hand, a puppet control for it to hold, rig it, then manipulate the hand rig to hold the puppet control and render" is my response to the question as-phrased.
I've been sick for a couple months, hardly done anything. Now I'm back and have redone the lower side of the landing section. I was always a little unhappy with it, for lower section looked wrong somehow, almost like the ship had a big lower lip or something.
I finally fixed it. I redid the lower section of the landing section with an inverse curve to give it a concave edge. That looked better and I realized it also made the two hulls have some symmetry which improved the cohesiveness of the design.
It's a small improvement but it seems to have an effect on the whole design, making it look more continuous.
I plan on adding some emergency one shot thrusters to the warp nacelles to facilitate blowing them clear of the ship in an emergency, which was the whole point of mounting them on pylons to begin with.
I'm detailing things now, so I'm detailing the engines. i make one and then duplicate it. I added some panels and grids to the sides and raised the upper phaser emitter with a thicker panel to give it a higher firing elevation and to protect it and the engines from interference from each other.
I plan to add some emergency separation thrusters to the underside of the nacelle, then add some more detailing to the ship, like the 'transporter emitters" I saw on a shop made by McC, someone I respect here a lot, I never had noticed TNG ships had transporter emitters on the hull, but may add them to the Hephaestus for detail.
I;m continuing to work away at the Hephaestus and had an idea for the rear hull. I'd added some rectangular structures to the upper rear hull, the high guard section, just because they looked good and didn;'t know what they did. Then it occurred to me that a lot of work on star trek ships, especially the connies, goes into making the deflector grid.
Now it looks like on the original connie only the saucer had the deflector grid and the shields apparently covered the whole ship. That was Ok as the rear hull was usually meant to be dropped in a crisis and would likely not survive so it didn't need a shield grid.
But let's fast forward this a little, like to the galaxy class. The hulls were meant to separate and operate independently, and as such the rear hull needed shields too. But to we see a lot of talk about the shield grid on the rear hull?
It occurred to me that the rear hull of the Hephaestus is the high guard section and meant to stay in space and fight to protect a world while the lander in on the surface rendering aid. So obviously it needs shields.
I already had those raised rectangular sections and I decided they could be a shield grid with the shield emitter arrays running inside raised armored conduits.
BTW, the lander has a shield grid in the armor on the upper hull not to different than a connie, this is just about the rear hull.nsg3_zpsee8deedb.png
Now it looks like on the original connie only the saucer had the deflector grid and the shields apparently covered the whole ship. That was Ok as the rear hull was usually meant to be dropped in a crisis and would likely not survive so it didn't need a shield grid.
Er, there are inset grid lines all over the ship (at least, once the TMP refit rolls around). Further, across three seasons and six movies (seven, if you include the first part of Generations), we never once see a pre-TNG ship resort to separation. Separation in this era is a last-resort emergency measure, only useful if there's a nearby planet, reachable at impulse, that the saucer can land on and if the critical damage is to the warp drive in some way.
So, I don't think this reasoning holds.
But let's fast forward this a little, like to the galaxy class. The hulls were meant to separate and operate independently, and as such the rear hull needed shields too. But to we see a lot of talk about the shield grid on the rear hull?
We don't see a lot of talk about it, but it's certainly there. There are hundreds of reference images of the studio model where they're visible, plain as day.
I already had those raised rectangular sections and I decided they could be a shield grid with the shield emitter arrays running inside raised armored conduits.
BTW, the lander has a shield grid in the armor on the upper hull not to different than a connie, this is just about the rear hull.
Typically, the shield grids are arranged such that there's a continuous "skin" of them for any given section. Yours has what appear to be 10 distinct sections, which sort of flies in the face of this logic. Further, there is no canon example (or even quasi-canon, for that matter) of a Federation ship with raised shield grids; they're all sunk into the hull rather than the other way around. They also tend to be quite a bit thinner than what you have here.
One of the times that I had to go back and re-do the gridlines on my Ambassador was to narrow the gridlines and make them shallower; they were too wide and deep.
We'll, the hephaeatus was not a federation ship, she was designed and built with fed ship tech, but not a fed ship.
Still, you make good points, so maybe I have to find anothet way to shield grid the high guard section, any ideas? If nothing else Ivll loot your ambassador class for ideas, your tips on how to do hull plates and shields grids was one of tea best things I ever learned for this sort of thing.
Posts
But frak me sideways if I didn't have the same problem in the end, after I applies a l2 subsurf I ended up at just about 150,000 verts.
Well, I spent several hours eliminating every very and loop I could, and got it down to about 95K verts. I'm sure it'll be just over 100k verts when I finish.
Here's some views of the unfinished, 95,000 very engine. Oh well, even if I get it down to just about 100k verts it still saves me 150k verts when I get all 3. I still wish i could get it at a lot less verts, but when I tried a l1 subsurf it lookee a little bad up close.
i3_zps40fd608b.png
image3015_zpsc058294e.png
image3004_zps28741e28.png
If it's not a secret, can I as you what the very count on your ambassador engine is? I mean, is 100K verts unreasonable for something like this?
Don't sweat the poly count too much. Definitely cleanup redundant loops, but be aware that because of the way Cycles renders (not always simulating a smooth normal across a polygonal "curve"), having too few polygons making up a curve can result in weird shading artifacts (some of which you can see on my Ambassador, especially in transition areas from very bright to very dark).
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
Got the new engines duped, scaled and placed. Here's the latest view.
nef1_zpsa574815b.png
With the new windows I may not model the warp coils, but will make a bussard collector behind the red windows. Uh, what dod you think of the new engine design, btw?
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
when I do a full render it's too big for me to post as an image.
Note this one was before I scaled the engines about 20 or 30 %.
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/ne5_zps7c892b13.png
Those nacelles are looking pretty nice! Very Galaxy-esque
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
They say the third time's the charm, hope they're right. A lot of people disliked the original engine nacelles, my original concept, which was partly based on my limited modelling skills, had the high guard section being all angular to reflect the fact she was not streamlined for atmo operations while the lander section was.
As my skill got better I could redo the high guard section into something more elaborate. So eventually the original nacelles didn't go with it.
I tried a more smooth design and while you liked it I wasn't too happy with it. You'd also said you liked some of the stuff on the original engine redo, and I liked some of the original engine ideas too, so I tried to do a new version of the original engines that was smoother and combined the window look.
So here it is, and yes it's a quick render as I'm still working on it.
ne31_zps869b1a28.png
I like the look as it's smoother, does have some of the original look to it and also has a certain potentially ominous aspect to it, sort of like a snake head maybe. Happy to hear what others (Well, McC since he's the only one replying to this thread now, but he's a real blendermaster) think about it.
Here's some renders:
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/nacelle32_zpsfbcaa4bf.png
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/nacelle31_zps17fcffea.png
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/nacelle33_zpsd6e4d5cd.png
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/ne33_zps6e9c37e7.png
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/ne34_zpsab546d0c.png
newengine_zps3954abd8.png
The bussard collector ended up with a slight asymmetry in the middle, decided to leave it to suggest maybe some sort of centerline reinforcement. The dim recessed areas between the bright bars are where the hydrogen in gathered in and contained. The vertical bars would flash inward from the outer edges to reflect the bussard field sweeping in hydrogen. The horizontal bars on the top and bottom would be on continuously.
The blue windows are the warp coil windows which TNG fed designs seem to need. The dark bars between them are forcefield bulkheads that are designed to generate a containment field if a coil malfunctions to minimize damage to the whole engine. The panels under the windows are emergency plasma vents meant to vent plasma from a coil in an emergency.
The projections under the rear section are heat sinks. The original enterprise had a pair of projections on the upper rear of the nacelles, these are inspired by those.
Don't know what the dark recess under the red bussard intake is, reminds me of the dark areas on the original motion picture nacelles. Will likely add a mesh or grill of some type if I learn how to make one.
Had to redo the rear hull, had some real issues that weren't visible until I tried to add the ventral phaser.
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/hetb1_zps26cf94ba.png
Well, thanks for the compliment. I'm not of fan of abrams redesigns or anything esle he's done with trek, but yes, the Hephaestus's rear hull, the high guard section, is an original design made lone before into darkness was released.
Now I'm starting on the underside of the lander. I want to add a tractor array for landing/takeoffs and some 'landing pads" along the rim for landing.
I'm finishing up the physical modeling with a few more details like tractor beams and sensor arrays. The ship does seem to have a near paranoid amount of secondary sensors on her, but when you've got the federation, klingon empire, orion syndicates and sundry others after you it never hurts to make it hard for people to sneak up on you.
Things got better (?) later when the dominion war broke out and the feds, taking a pasting early on, asked the hephaestus' captain to help the war effort as an ally. Not wanting his homeworld of Monticello to come under dominion control he agreed and all the ship had to worry about then were the jem he'dar.
Bottom view
From these views she doesn't seem to have too many sensor arrays. Now the part I need to work on is the underside of the lander. That needs some detailing, landing pads and tractors, etc.
image2993_zps8ff2df3c.png
I added some vertical rectangles to the upper high guard hull, they compliment the forward horizontal one. I think they will be antimatter ejector systems. Still don't know what the forward one is for.
I also added something after seeing some ww2 naval combat footage, side torpedo tubes. I can hear the hardcore trekkies screaming that no ship has been seen with side tubes on any trek eps of films already. :argh:
I added them after seeing real warships of ww2 firing side mounted torpedo tubes.
I plan to add some more details, including yet more that have never been seen on a trek ship before, like emergency thrusters on the undersides of the nacelles. The point of mounting the warp engines in nacelles on pylons is to keep them clear of the ship in case they become unstable and dangerous, and to make it easy to jettison them. Well, suppose the ship is immobilized and needs to jettison a dangerous engine?
I'm gong to add some emergency thrusters to the nacelles to thrust them away from the ship in a crisis situation. Again I suppose I'll hear the hardcore cases screaming about how that was never shown on any show or movie. :argh:
Not so! Ever since the refit Enterprise, RCS thrusters have been in place on nacelles, which could do the job of pushing the nacelle away from the ship in an emergency.
Additionally, based on how most nacelles are mounted on their pylons, it's not unlikely that any emergency ejection system would actually be contained at the mounting point. It wouldn't be externally visible until it came time to jettison it, much like a multi-stage rocket.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
Yeah, that's one thing I hated about the movie. (Not even going to get into the first time we saw enterprise in it) The way the director just creates stuff out of thin air that was never there before. I mean, there's never been any indication that they ship had those launch bays (they weren't tubes.) on the side of the ship like that, especially in large numbers, but the script calls for it so POOF!, they appear out of nowhere. They never make writers stick to canon anymore. I consider the abrams movies not to be star trek but just "Die hard in space" mindless action flicks so don't consider anything from them in my stuff.
If they wanted to threaten to launch those missiles, they could have lined them up in the shuttlebay and launched them out the bay doors. That would have been at least close to canon.
Good points!
While I've got your atention, I'd like to ask you a couple things. First, I'm not quite satified with my nacelle ends, I'll post some pics and ask you if you have any idead.
Secondly, I have a new project to make an alien (grey) arm reaching down from space and holding a puppet control, and ideas on that? it's different from my usual hard surface modeling.
The preceding is all I have to say here on the topic. I'm not going to get into a debate in your WIP thread about the merits or flaws of the new Trek series. If you want to go that path, I'll respectfully bow out of the remainder of the thread. I simply have no patience for it.
Uh...that's a very vague question.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
I found a tutorial that seems to be what I need, here's the link if anyone;s curious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKPOL_u6hms
I finally fixed it. I redid the lower section of the landing section with an inverse curve to give it a concave edge. That looked better and I realized it also made the two hulls have some symmetry which improved the cohesiveness of the design.
hephnlh_zps58284f91.png
It's a small improvement but it seems to have an effect on the whole design, making it look more continuous.
I plan on adding some emergency one shot thrusters to the warp nacelles to facilitate blowing them clear of the ship in an emergency, which was the whole point of mounting them on pylons to begin with.
I'm detailing things now, so I'm detailing the engines. i make one and then duplicate it. I added some panels and grids to the sides and raised the upper phaser emitter with a thicker panel to give it a higher firing elevation and to protect it and the engines from interference from each other.
http://www.4shared.com/download/_8x2seKh/NESV1.png?tsid=20131111-061523-366a6348
http://www.4shared.com/download/x7UD-5TI/NESV2.png?tsid=20131111-061645-9d201964
http://www.4shared.com/download/-jYHY-UV/NESV.png?tsid=20131111-061710-d7d1ae8f
I plan to add some emergency separation thrusters to the underside of the nacelle, then add some more detailing to the ship, like the 'transporter emitters" I saw on a shop made by McC, someone I respect here a lot, I never had noticed TNG ships had transporter emitters on the hull, but may add them to the Hephaestus for detail.
NESV4.jpg
Now it looks like on the original connie only the saucer had the deflector grid and the shields apparently covered the whole ship. That was Ok as the rear hull was usually meant to be dropped in a crisis and would likely not survive so it didn't need a shield grid.
But let's fast forward this a little, like to the galaxy class. The hulls were meant to separate and operate independently, and as such the rear hull needed shields too. But to we see a lot of talk about the shield grid on the rear hull?
It occurred to me that the rear hull of the Hephaestus is the high guard section and meant to stay in space and fight to protect a world while the lander in on the surface rendering aid. So obviously it needs shields.
I already had those raised rectangular sections and I decided they could be a shield grid with the shield emitter arrays running inside raised armored conduits.
BTW, the lander has a shield grid in the armor on the upper hull not to different than a connie, this is just about the rear hull.nsg3_zpsee8deedb.png
So, I don't think this reasoning holds.
We don't see a lot of talk about it, but it's certainly there. There are hundreds of reference images of the studio model where they're visible, plain as day.
Typically, the shield grids are arranged such that there's a continuous "skin" of them for any given section. Yours has what appear to be 10 distinct sections, which sort of flies in the face of this logic. Further, there is no canon example (or even quasi-canon, for that matter) of a Federation ship with raised shield grids; they're all sunk into the hull rather than the other way around. They also tend to be quite a bit thinner than what you have here.
One of the times that I had to go back and re-do the gridlines on my Ambassador was to narrow the gridlines and make them shallower; they were too wide and deep.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
Still, you make good points, so maybe I have to find anothet way to shield grid the high guard section, any ideas? If nothing else Ivll loot your ambassador class for ideas, your tips on how to do hull plates and shields grids was one of tea best things I ever learned for this sort of thing.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
http://www.4shared.com/download/pcC0qsNIba/hullplates1.png
http://www.4shared.com/download/G2zm7rDDba/hullplates2.png
Thanks to McC for his patient tutelage.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog