Well it is about the Romulans I'm not planning on making this a continuing series though. This 2 hour feature length film is plenty enough to keep me busy for a while lol.
Oh, it's a single film. I misunderstood. So, does that mean you're also going to have Romulan main characters?
It's certainly a possibility! duh duh duhhhhh.......
New updates on engineering! I spent about an hour tonight combing episodes for good shots of engineering where I couldn't make out details in my current references. I'm up to 67 references for engineering, 63 for the bridge, and many more for many other things lol. What do you all think?
looks great! As a side note, I just finished marathoning most of Season 3. The textures/materials/lighting on Enterprise in that season look exactly like your mesh. Had a little deja-vu at times.
I'm curious how you're going to incorporate the digital set into engineering. Will actors still be able to climb atop the warp reactor, for example?
Thanks for the responses, all! I really appreciate the nice words I'm sorry for my delay in getting back by the way. I'm hoping to have some new updates soon
looks great! As a side note, I just finished marathoning most of Season 3. The textures/materials/lighting on Enterprise in that season look exactly like your mesh. Had a little deja-vu at times.
I'm curious how you're going to incorporate the digital set into engineering. Will actors still be able to climb atop the warp reactor, for example?
Haha, thanks! I'm glad to hear it, makes me feel a bit more confident about things!
There will be some limited climbing in engineering. There's no one going onto the core, but people will be going up on the rack (I can't think of the right word :S) in front of the warp core where the controls are. The trick with the compositing especially in places like engineering when you don't have a huge green screen studio is using every trick possible to make it look right.
I've been working on the spec and normal maps and I think I'm finally getting close. Also have made more progress on the textures for the catamarans (no spec or normals for the cats yet though). What do you all think?
Looks great! Though I'd swear those red lines on the dorsal sled are just painted on in the show mesh. Anyway, I love the glare on the saucer in the first render, really gives it a nice realistic look.
EDIT: and I think the bronzy look was only for seasons 1 and 2. By Season 3 Enterprise got a paint job, and the current mesh looks identical to that version.
As far as I know, the ship was the same color throughout the series. It got a brief refit at the end of season two, but that was mainly a few internal things. They added a brig and did a weapons upgrade. I think they also added some barracks space for the MACOs. There was never any mention of the ship being repainted. The ship's actual color appears to be more in the light tan area of the spectrum, but the specular mapping and lighting make it come out more bronze. They may have changed some of their scene lighting in the later seasons to make it appear not so bronze. Now, the Columbia had a different color scheme, as is apparent in this screen shot:
nice work and well lit. great surface detailing. judging by the picture evil genius 180 posted i would say that the colour you want to change it to is not exactly bronze but grey with a slight hint of brown and red. for the material you could perhaps try increasing the red slightly in it's rgb values. are you going to be modelling any other ships, maybe some cool romulan stuff or bird of prey type things?
Isn't this mesh supposed to double for the NX-04 too? Right now, it matches the gray paint on Colombia (and presumably other block-II NX-class ships.) Having two different tints would help tell the ships apart when their registries are obscured by camera angles/ action.
The NX-01 (as much as I can recall) didn't have a paint job at any point.
It received various upgrades before embarking to the Expanse at the end of Season 2 and again in early Season 4 - but none of those upgrades featured a hull paint change.
The NX-02 did have a more grey type hull color (the subsequent NX class vessels like the NX-03 and NX-04 would probably feature it as well, even though we never saw those ships).
Anyway, progress looks good. The actual color will likely require some fine-tuning because as it is, it does look a bit... clay-like (still, the actual NX-02 for example probably has ambient lighting casting very light specularity which is not too important for a WIP shot).
It's just the wording. I'm sure we all agree that in-universe it's more akin to the alloy mix for the finish on the hull plating or something like that. Kinda like how real-life prototypes often use new materials which will be improved/perfected once the mass-production models are built.
Thanks again for the thoughts everyone! I'll try futzing with the colors as suggested and see what I can come up with. I don't have any new screenies at the moment, but I'm making some good progress. Getting close to finishing the cats and the underside of the saucer. Woot woot!
In regards to mesh doubling, yeah...it will be the NX-01 and the NX-04. I agree that a color difference on the two will help to be able to tell them apart. That's what I'm hoping anyway!
I know it's been MONTHS since my last post, but I've been working hard. I got to a point where I was spending hours just making small updates to things that I felt didn't warrant special posts or pictures. After a while, it'd been so long since my last update I felt that whatever I posted next had to be big, and the longer I waited the bigger it had to be! So, without further ado, I give you the third Star Trek: Horizon video blog:
Opening the vlog is a shot of the finished or near-finished NX and the finalized STH logo. Following that is a lot of other cool stuff! Let me know what you all think. Looking forward to hearing your opinions
Looking very impressive! The bridge model and compositing all looked high quality, especially for a WIP demo. Subscribed to your channel to make sure I keep up with it all. :thumb:
Really like where this is going. First rate work. The compositing was great and I liked the fact that there was camera movement rather than the static shots you generally find in fan films.
I'm really looking forwards to watching this all come together.
Oh and now that your NX class ship model is done, will you be posting photos of it?
Dude, you're really doing fantastic work on this. I was trying to figure out (until you told us) if you actually built a bridge or if you were in front of a green screen. That's how good the bridge looks. Also, the costumes and props look great, very authentic. One minor nitpick: You did what a number of artists have done over the years and used the wrong hull font for the ship's name and registry. The hull font used for the Enterprise-era ships is the same font used on TOS. I'd recommend using the Airborne font by Charles Casimiro:
Looking very impressive! The bridge model and compositing all looked high quality, especially for a WIP demo. Subscribed to your channel to make sure I keep up with it all. :thumb:
Really like where this is going. First rate work. The compositing was great and I liked the fact that there was camera movement rather than the static shots you generally find in fan films.
I'm really looking forwards to watching this all come together.
Oh and now that your NX class ship model is done, will you be posting photos of it?
Thanks! The camera movement is definitely really important to me because I think it's a huge part of making the composite immersive. I have the feeling if I'm going to be spending all this time on it, that I want to do it right and make it look good. So I'm glad you like it
I'll definitely be posting some photos soon. Though, I'm unhappy with my current saucer, mainly because of poor patch flow. The saucer was one of the first things I did when starting the project and I've since built up my once-rusty modeling skills. So, I'm taking a few hours to try out doing a new saucer and it's coming along quite well and much faster than before, so I might wait until I get that done before I do more photos.
Dude, you're really doing fantastic work on this. I was trying to figure out (until you told us) if you actually built a bridge or if you were in front of a green screen. That's how good the bridge looks. Also, the costumes and props look great, very authentic. One minor nitpick: You did what a number of artists have done over the years and used the wrong hull font for the ship's name and registry. The hull font used for the Enterprise-era ships is the same font used on TOS. I'd recommend using the Airborne font by Charles Casimiro:
Other than that minor nitpick, everything looks very authentic and wonderful. :thumb:
Like Borkless, good catch on the font! I got that all fixed up, but didn't feel like re-rendering :P I'm glad you're liking the bridge and the composite. It's really quite good to know because after hundreds of hours of staring at your own work, it gets hard to tell if it's looking good or not. So, that's one of the best complements I could receive
Cracking work, looks like you'll be delivering a really professional looking final product. Excellent compositing and model work there on the interiors. Your NX class is looking spot on in that opening sequence. Will definitely be following this with great interest.
Wow, this is all looking very impressive. The ship, the interiors, the props. You're doing a great job with this!
The interiors in particular blew my mind, unless you look closely, sometimes it looks very very real.
I have one minor nit-pick on the logo (well, maybe it's intentional)
I've noticed that the font used for "Star Trek" gives a very wide separation between each letter. I made a logo using the same font once, and I had to manually adjust each letter to be closer to the one before, so that the whole thing resembles the original logo better.
I've made a small example that probably explains this better that I just did. The one on the bottom is the way it looks with just the normal font, and the one on the top is the modified one, resembling much more the original. (I used the spoiler thingy to use less space)
For all my finished Trek fan art, please visit my portfolio
Cracking work, looks like you'll be delivering a really professional looking final product. Excellent compositing and model work there on the interiors. Your NX class is looking spot on in that opening sequence. Will definitely be following this with great interest.
Wow, this is all looking very impressive. The ship, the interiors, the props. You're doing a great job with this!
The interiors in particular blew my mind, unless you look closely, sometimes it looks very very real. Amazing job, both
I have one minor nit-pick on the logo (well, maybe it's intentional)
I've noticed that the font used for "Star Trek" gives a very wide separation between each letter. I made a logo using the same font once, and I had to manually adjust each letter to be closer to the one before, so that the whole thing resembles the original logo better.
I've made a small example that probably explains this better that I just did. The one on the bottom is the way it looks with just the normal font, and the one on the top is the modified one, resembling much more the original. (I used the spoiler thingy to use less space)
Thank ya! That's actually a really good nitpick on the logo Now you've gone and made me have to re-render the darn thing, it'll be a few days... lol
Posts
It's certainly a possibility!
New updates on engineering! I spent about an hour tonight combing episodes for good shots of engineering where I couldn't make out details in my current references. I'm up to 67 references for engineering, 63 for the bridge, and many more for many other things lol. What do you all think?
engineering_wip05.jpg
engineering_wip06.jpg
I'm curious how you're going to incorporate the digital set into engineering. Will actors still be able to climb atop the warp reactor, for example?
Haha, thanks! I'm glad to hear it, makes me feel a bit more confident about things!
There will be some limited climbing in engineering. There's no one going onto the core, but people will be going up on the rack (I can't think of the right word :S) in front of the warp core where the controls are. The trick with the compositing especially in places like engineering when you don't have a huge green screen studio is using every trick possible to make it look right.
I've been working on the spec and normal maps and I think I'm finally getting close. Also have made more progress on the textures for the catamarans (no spec or normals for the cats yet though). What do you all think?
ship_wip74.jpg
ship_wip75.jpg
Also does anyone have any ideas on how to turn this thing bronze? Every time I try it just tends to go into an off-white or ugly muddy brown.
EDIT: and I think the bronzy look was only for seasons 1 and 2. By Season 3 Enterprise got a paint job, and the current mesh looks identical to that version.
As far as I know, the ship was the same color throughout the series. It got a brief refit at the end of season two, but that was mainly a few internal things. They added a brig and did a weapons upgrade. I think they also added some barracks space for the MACOs. There was never any mention of the ship being repainted. The ship's actual color appears to be more in the light tan area of the spectrum, but the specular mapping and lighting make it come out more bronze. They may have changed some of their scene lighting in the later seasons to make it appear not so bronze. Now, the Columbia had a different color scheme, as is apparent in this screen shot:
Warpfields.JPG
As you can see, the Enterprise still has that bronze look. (that's from season four)
I wouldn't go for a brown color, make it a subtle red with a bit of yellow. (In RGB make so you have more Green than Blue and more Red than Green).
It received various upgrades before embarking to the Expanse at the end of Season 2 and again in early Season 4 - but none of those upgrades featured a hull paint change.
The NX-02 did have a more grey type hull color (the subsequent NX class vessels like the NX-03 and NX-04 would probably feature it as well, even though we never saw those ships).
Anyway, progress looks good. The actual color will likely require some fine-tuning because as it is, it does look a bit... clay-like (still, the actual NX-02 for example probably has ambient lighting casting very light specularity which is not too important for a WIP shot).
In regards to mesh doubling, yeah...it will be the NX-01 and the NX-04. I agree that a color difference on the two will help to be able to tell them apart. That's what I'm hoping anyway!
I know it's been MONTHS since my last post, but I've been working hard. I got to a point where I was spending hours just making small updates to things that I felt didn't warrant special posts or pictures. After a while, it'd been so long since my last update I felt that whatever I posted next had to be big, and the longer I waited the bigger it had to be! So, without further ado, I give you the third Star Trek: Horizon video blog:
Opening the vlog is a shot of the finished or near-finished NX and the finalized STH logo. Following that is a lot of other cool stuff! Let me know what you all think. Looking forward to hearing your opinions
I'm really looking forwards to watching this all come together.
Oh and now that your NX class ship model is done, will you be posting photos of it?
http://charlescasimiro.com/airborne.html
Other than that minor nitpick, everything looks very authentic and wonderful. :thumb:
Thank you much! Glad to hear it
Thanks! The camera movement is definitely really important to me because I think it's a huge part of making the composite immersive. I have the feeling if I'm going to be spending all this time on it, that I want to do it right and make it look good. So I'm glad you like it
I'll definitely be posting some photos soon. Though, I'm unhappy with my current saucer, mainly because of poor patch flow. The saucer was one of the first things I did when starting the project and I've since built up my once-rusty modeling skills. So, I'm taking a few hours to try out doing a new saucer and it's coming along quite well and much faster than before, so I might wait until I get that done before I do more photos.
Thanks!!
Like Borkless, good catch on the font! I got that all fixed up, but didn't feel like re-rendering :P I'm glad you're liking the bridge and the composite. It's really quite good to know because after hundreds of hours of staring at your own work, it gets hard to tell if it's looking good or not. So, that's one of the best complements I could receive
I know exactly what you mean.
The interiors in particular blew my mind, unless you look closely, sometimes it looks very very real.
I have one minor nit-pick on the logo (well, maybe it's intentional)
I've noticed that the font used for "Star Trek" gives a very wide separation between each letter. I made a logo using the same font once, and I had to manually adjust each letter to be closer to the one before, so that the whole thing resembles the original logo better.
I've made a small example that probably explains this better that I just did. The one on the bottom is the way it looks with just the normal font, and the one on the top is the modified one, resembling much more the original. (I used the spoiler thingy to use less space)
Thank you kindly! I appreciate the kind words
Thank ya! That's actually a really good nitpick on the logo