3DRomulan T'Varo-class Bird of Prey (22nd Century)

McC

I was so impressed by the work tommygdawg was doing for Star Trek: Horizon that I dropped him a line to tell him so and mentioned that if he needed any sort of additional VFX support beyond the stellar stuff he was already producing, I would be delighted to be involved. Mostly, I just wanted to pay him extra compliments than I had in his thread already.

Imagine my surprise when he took me up on my offer!

So, I'm building a 22nd Century, Enterprise-era Romulan Bird of Prey for use in the film! In Star Trek: Online, this design is still in service in the 25th Century as the T'Varo-class light warbird, which is the name I've been using to identify it. I'm modeling it -- as always -- in Blender and will pass it along to Tommy for use in 3ds Max once finished. My goal is to build it efficiently and relatively quickly, so as to not be a bottleneck in his VFX pipeline.

So far, I'm still just working on the subsurf. There are a ton of imperfections and errors to smooth out still, lots of loop creases to add for edge definition, and so on, but it's substantially better tonight than it was last night, so I don't feel nearly as ashamed of posting it at this early stage.







The entire thing is a single mesh right now, which is something of an experiment. A lot of the components are pieces I would have probably split off and re-integrated later had I tried to tackle this model a year or more ago, but times change. I still need to model the warp nacelles, but the rest of the main physical features are all present in the single mesh.

I'm using a nice, big 5-ortho render of the CG model used on Enterprise as my main reference, along with John Eaves's concept sketches and a few episode screenshots. Having access to the big 5-ortho render is huge and making my entire process a lot easier and straight-forward.

My ultimate goal is to build this model well enough to share the screen with Tommy's beautiful NX model, which is a tall order -- especially when I'm also trying to do it quickly!

(For those curious what this means for Coro, just a delay. Tommy's timeline for needing this is much shorter than my target finish date for Coro, which is the end of August, so this one is taking precedence. Once I'm finished, I'll be kicking right back over. And I might poke at Coro from time to time anyway, should I need a break from all the green metal! )

evil_genius_180

Great start, she's looking beautiful so far. I'm amazed you got all of that into a single piece. This is one of my favorite ships from Enterprise, it's a shame we only got to see it in one episode. It would have been nice if the series had continued on a few more seasons to include rising contacts with and hostilities with the Romulans, leading up to the Earth-Romulan War. I'll bet they'd have pulled this beauty back out if they'd gotten to do that.

Vortex5972

Looking awesome so far.

McC

Thanks, evil_genius_180 and Vortex5972!

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

This is one of my favorite ships from Enterprise, it's a shame we only got to see it in one episode. It would have been nice if the series had continued on a few more seasons to include rising contacts with and hostilities with the Romulans, leading up to the Earth-Romulan War. I'll bet they'd have pulled this beauty back out if they'd gotten to do that.

That was, in fact, the plan for Seasons 5 and 6 and I think something that Tommy wants to address (or at least acknowledge) with the film. From here:

• The two main things they wanted to do with S5 was the "origins of the Federation" and the "begin whispers of the Romulan War", and tying those two together
• No other major villains were planned to be introduced, the Romulans were going to be the big villain, but would have new ones within new ‘mini-arcs’

Not a lot of progress made today. Rather than continue to refine the main subsurf, I decided that I wanted to at least stub-in the nacelles. This proved a far bigger challenge than I expected, due to their off-axis nature. At first, I tried to just model them whole, but the ended up looking lumpy and asymmetrical across their local axis (...because they were ). Ultimately, I hit on the idea to model the nacelle axis-aligned and then instance the geometry as a separate object, rotated into the correct position. This allowed me to mirror the two sides of the nacelle and made modeling it a lot easier.



It's not 100% bang-on to the ortho, but it's very close. Right now, it's still a very bare subsurf, with no control edges or anything and continues to be in dire need of surface smoothing, but at least they're in-place now.

tommygdawg

To quote the McDonald's theme song: "I'm loving' it!" Also thank you for the kind words on my work I can't wait to see more progress on this and actually do some shots of it with my NX model. THAT is going to be more fun than anyone should be allowed to have!

evil_genius_180

Nice start on the nacelles.

Aresius

hm, interesting.

McC

Thanks, tommygdawg, evil_genius_180, and Aresius!

Getting closer to having a finalized subsurf for the hull and nacelles now. The geometry is all present, but some of it still needs a little massaging.





Notes on the things I know need work:


Anybody see anything I missed?

evil_genius_180

Looking good. I'm not familiar enough with this design to spot any issues.

tommygdawg

*droolz*. Looking great!

McC

Thanks evil_genius_180 and tommygdawg!

Didn't have any time to work on the model tonight (instead, watched the Bruins inexplicably lose to the Sabers once again, despite the Sabers generally being a terrible team and the Bruins being one of the best; why the hell do so often lose to them?), but I did kick out some high-res (1080p!) wire renders to check the topology.





Ignore the ugliness on the tail -- that entire area is actually flat and will get optimized into a much nicer-loooking N-gon once the subsurf is frozen.

Here also is a quick animation (720p) to check for the way light falls across the surface as it moves:

For those curious, he's how I made the wire show up:

TALON_UK

Cracking work.

:thumb:

Vortex5972

Incredible!

McC

Thanks, TALON_UK and Vortex5972!

Tonight, I did an initial UV unwrap, froze the subsurf, spent some time optimizing the mesh (from some absurd > 600k triangle count down to 387k triangles) and then added the very first panel detailing, bringing the triangle count back up to 394k

evil_genius_180

It's amazing how paneling can do that. It's looking good.

TrekMD

Looking great!

McC

Thanks, evil_genius_180 and TrekMD!

Haven't made a lot of progress of late, on account of being first busy and then sick! I was completely out of commission yesterday; spent the entire day whimpering in bed until it was time for the Bruins game, for which I finally staggered downstairs and promptly re-bundled myself on the couch. At least we won! Thank goodness for my wife and dog, both of whom helped nurse me back to health. I'm not totally better, but I was well-enough to work-from-home today and then spend the evening modeling. I've only broken out into a few cold sweats today!

Right, anyway, here's the new bit! Etching some paneling into the weapon module. I spent far too much time on making the geometry ultra-clean here, rebuilding ugly bevels and polishing up polygons that you probably won't ever get close enough to notice.

tommygdawg

McC wrote: »

Thanks, evil_genius_180 and TrekMD!

Haven't made a lot of progress of late, on account of being first busy and then sick! I was completely out of commission yesterday; spent the entire day whimpering in bed until it was time for the Bruins game, for which I finally staggered downstairs and promptly re-bundled myself on the couch. At least we won! Thank goodness for my wife and dog, both of whom helped nurse me back to health. I'm not totally better, but I was well-enough to work-from-home today and then spend the evening modeling. I've only broken out into a few cold sweats today!

Right, anyway, here's the new bit! Etching some paneling into the weapon module. I spent far too much time on making the geometry ultra-clean here, rebuilding ugly bevels and polishing up polygons that you probably won't ever get close enough to notice.

Now that's what I'm talkin' about! Nothing I love more than some good paneling

evil_genius_180

I hope you get to feeling better soon.

That bit is looking great. One thing that I don't get about the Enterprise era is how a lot of the line cuts don't go to the edge of things. I find it kind of odd.

Vortex5972

Wow!! That's looking great.

Based on limited experience, I can only agree that dogs are helpful.

McC

Thanks, tommygdawg, evil_genius_180, and Vortex5972!

Not a lot of progress to show for the last three days, but been plugging away all the same. More panels and weapon ports!




The weapon ports aren't terribly detailed at the moment, which I'm giving very serious thought to remedying.

colbmista

Corners of the torpedo tubed need to be more rounded imo

evil_genius_180

Looking great. Slow and steady is the way to go.

Aresius

Nice work there, looking forward for more.

Vortex5972

Fantastic work.

McC

Thanks, evil_genius_180, Aresius, and Vortex5972!

colbmista wrote: »

Corners of the torpedo tubed need to be more rounded imo

Might look better, but they're pretty bang-on to the orthos of the TV CG model, so I'm not terribly inclined to change them. However, they'll probably look better when they get a bit more surface and interior detail!

Been slowly plinking away at the underside hull paneling. The topology doesn't at all match the location of the panel lines, which makes cutting them in that much more tedious and slow, but I finally had enough done that I thought it'd be worth sharing.

tommygdawg

Gorgeous! Loving them panels! It's amazing how much that detailing adds to the model. It's really starting to come alive

evil_genius_180

Getting paneling like that to line up perfectly usually requires your model to have basically the same geometry as the original. Of course, there's no way it does, since that model was built years ago in Lightwave. Having said that, yours looks great. Also, I personally wouldn't sweat it if every little panel doesn't line up exactly. Like I said, your geometry is different and it's not like anybody is going to be pulling out the magnifying glass to inspect every little panel line. (if they do, they need to get a life)

McC

Thanks, tommygdawg and evil_genius_180!

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

Like I said, your geometry is different and it's not like anybody is going to be pulling out the magnifying glass to inspect every little panel line. (if they do, they need to get a life)

I dunno, man, have you seen Tommy's NX? Thing's a meticulous work of beauty and this needs to share the screen with her.

tommygdawg

McC wrote: »

Thanks, tommygdawg and evil_genius_180!


I dunno, man, have you seen Tommy's NX? Thing's a meticulous work of beauty and this needs to share the screen with her.

Awww man, you're making me blush! Lol. If these screenies are any indication, I think the T'varo will turn out to be a work of beauty as well

evil_genius_180

McC wrote: »

I dunno, man, have you seen Tommy's NX? Thing's a meticulous work of beauty and this needs to share the screen with her.

Of course I've seen it, I love it. However, he was building a hero ship and you always spend more time on your hero ship than on "other" ships. Also, the NX has a lot more documentation and there are a lot of people who have studied the design and know if something is off. The 22nd century Romulan BOP definitely has a lot less than that, since it was used in only one episode. Besides, nobody is doubting your ability to produce a beautiful mesh. After all, we've seen your ship models. I was just pointing out that nobody should begrudge you if a few of the lines are a bit off. They'll still be there, just not necessarily exactly where they were on the original.