Unrealistic lighting? Say it's not so! It's most evident on the Travel pod, in my opinion. If you look at a car's headlights, they illuminate the road but not the front of the car. Yet, they expect us to believe that lights that are built very similarly are lighting up the hull around them in perfect circles. Also, there's no source for the light hitting the number 05 on the bottom bow.
Of course, when you're reflecting lights onto the hull with little mirrors out of the camera's view, anything is possible. I do think it's interesting that ILM used mini spot lights, which weren't available in 1978. That's why it changes from TMP to ST2. You can definitely go bonkers trying to exactly duplicate their lighting scheme.
The impulse vent area looks pretty flawless to me. It looks like it does on the studio model. Your hull textures are looking good so far too, as is the aforementioned lighting.
You've touched on precisely my next challenge. I need to make a travel pod and a work bee. The bee should be a damn brief project but the decision on how to light the damn travel pod has me up some nights sweating over how to do it right.
I'll probably end up saying 'screw it' and have a network of spots floating in space around the pod. If nothing else, it would be true to the original model
I had a heck of a time trying to recreate the light rig when I converted Dennis Bailey's Refit Enterprise to Blender. Of course, it would have helped if Blender's spot lights could have different width on both the X and Y axis (I had even submitted a feature request to the Blender Foundation for that).
Ah well.
Your model is looking excellent - kudos for the awesome work.
I'll happily get some wire frame shots posted. Is there anything in particular that you would like to see? She's a beast in wire mode so I can't promise too much in the way of beauty, unfortunately.
Whatever you would like to post is fine with me although if I had a choice, I would select the shuttle bay area as that caused me the most grief :-) Would love to see how you tackled it because it looks so damn good.
I had a heck of a time trying to recreate the light rig when I converted Dennis Bailey's Refit Enterprise to Blender. Of course, it would have helped if Blender's spot lights could have different width on both the X and Y axis (I had even submitted a feature request to the Blender Foundation for that).
I've been goofing off with textures on spotlights. An oval texture might do the trick.
I've been goofing off with textures on spotlights. An oval texture might do the trick.
A capital idea! It took me quite a bit of experimentation but it worked like a charm! I'm still tweaking the shape but this is a wonderful way to sculpt the light cone.
Included is a teaser of my work on texturing the neck. Almost done, should have an update ready for that shortly.
Thanks everyone for the feedback and the suggestions regarding lighting.
Neck (minus the photorp bay) is done.
I added a temporary spotlight to show texture detail.
And I also appear to have accidentally broken or replaced my upper saucer shader. This will definitely not stand!
I'll definitely need to track down this malfunction before I proceed. Oh well, I did plan on rebuilding my hull textures...
It looks good. What color of blue did you use for that stripe going down the center?
I call it "the blue from hell".
I'm not terribly happy with the current cooler colors. The blue was coming out WAY off so I had to throw in a mix node to blend in pure white to nudge it closer to what I wanted.
For reasons I cannot explain, all of my attempts to create grays or blues come out shifted WAY beyond what I would consider reasonable. Most of my hull tile colors are basically white with the slightest hint of other colors added. The previews in the nodes panel are indistinguishable from white in most cases but when applied to the model and rendered they come out as you see in the pics.
I am assuming that I've got something configured incorrectly in there somewhere but I haven't found it yet. Until then I'll keep tweaking around it until the result approximates my goal
Whatever you would like to post is fine with me although if I had a choice, I would select the shuttle bay area as that caused me the most grief :-) Would love to see how you tackled it because it looks so damn good.
The shuttle bay is definitely one of the greater challenges of this model. As to how I tackled it, I think the short answer would be "very carefully"
Fortunately I learned a few tricks from when I modeled the TOS Constitution in Max a few years ago. I was able to adapt much of the process for the Blender build.
I actually ended up doing the fantail twice. I discovered some hellatious artifacts in the smoothing around that area and that completely blitzed my plans for the modeled shield grid in that area.
Per your request:
I honestly have no frik'n idea from where the artifact that creeps across the centerline came. This is the first time I've seen it and I'll definitely be remediating it once I get to the shuttle bay for texturing/polishing.
It looks good. What color of blue did you use for that stripe going down the center?
There are definitely many different finishes throughout the movie series. For almost all of the screens I've got, I'm currently WAY too dark. I'm working on a happy medium between the TMP paint job and the final one in The Undiscovered Country.
I was basing my comment on the pics I have, but that area is also in shadow a lot and the stripe probably looks darker. Plus, there's lighting to consider. Soft white lights will throw off colors. That's one thing I hate about trying to match colors from photos. Though, the photos I have are also of the ship in its final configuration, where the stripe is clearly darker and more saturated.
I was basing my comment on the pics I have, but that area is also in shadow a lot and the stripe probably looks darker. Plus, there's lighting to consider. Soft white lights will throw off colors. That's one thing I hate about trying to match colors from photos. Though, the photos I have are also of the ship in its final configuration, where the stripe is clearly darker and more saturated.
You couldn't be more right!
No doubt about it, it's a real bear to try to match color for color. I was actually quite startled in the differences I just found between the first and last films! Mostly I find I do my best if I reference the fan photos of the studio models and then balance it with the screen captures from the finished films. For this first pass I think my best bet is to get the patterns and general forms down and then to massage the shaders into a final configuration.
Obviously all of this will also be subject to the lighting of whatever scenes the model is ultimately used, too. Always something to tweak, I guess!
I just based mine off of a beauty shot of the CGI version that Foundation Imaging did for the Director's Edition. At least it was rendered in Lightwave, likely with white lights. Though, that's not to say that one was super accurate either.
I tell you what, this model will take it out of you. First, there's the fun modeling, especially the shuttlebay area. Then there's the colors. Then there's the lights. Yeash. Even more fun: Build one with a deadline. :shiner:
Thanks for the wire frames. They look pretty good and clean. Shows your modeling skills in getting it right in only 2 tries. I modeled, then re-modeled my shuttle bay area probably 5-6 times and still wasn't 100% happy with it. I kept trying over and over and ending up in the same place with basically the same result. Finally said "Enough" and moved onto another area.
Yea, the lighting really changed the look of the paint a lot.
In warmer light, the colors are green. In cooler light, they're deep-ish blue. Unfortunately, I don't think there is any paint color information available like there is for the Enterprise D.
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I've reworked the UV mapping in the neck to provide some interruptions in the hull plating continuity to produce a more believable separation of parts. I've also finally got the damn powder blue shader working close to the way I want it
The UV mapping on the torpedo bay was quite a challenge! Definitely an opportunity to get more familiar with how UV mapping works in Blender.
Apart from reworking some of the mesh on the pylons and the nacelles, this may have been the last major challenge.
I am still debating if I should redo the hull plating nodes. I think I've got a better shader for the saucer plating in a procedural tile solution by SynaGl0w. I'm fairly confident that to improve the quality in the neck, torpedo bay and (eventually) engineering hull I'll need to paint the plates by hand and that's not terribly appealing.
I'm reserving judgement until I see the whole mesh fleshed out.
For those who are curious, the first recessed light on the bay actually illuminates the front of the warp nacelle, which is why there is no visible cone on the neck originating from there. The spot on the neck will come into play once I finish work with the nacelles.
That looks so cool. What are you using for the lights, objects with an emission material or lamps?
Both, actually! I've got very roughly modeled 'can lights' inside the recesses with a low-level emission shader to give it just enough glow to be convincing and then spotlights (also using emission shaders) positioned along the light path to produce the desired effect.
Making progress shading the navigational deflector. Colors on the hull areas are not quite there yet but I'm waiting for the rest of the first-pass texturing before I waste too much time getting the right tones.
I will say that I'm pretty darn happy with the overall look of the 'dish' itself. I originally did the effect with a material defining the gradient but I later found examples at BlenderArtists.org that illustrated how to do it properly with a color ramp node.
I'ts looking great. I just had a flashback to doing that frakking paneling around the deflector and upper secondary hull using only photos as a reference. Man, that was a bitch to get right. *shudders* How do you feel about it?
I'ts looking great. I just had a flashback to doing that frakking paneling around the deflector and upper secondary hull using only photos as a reference. Man, that was a bitch to get right. *shudders* How do you feel about it?
The hull around the deflector has presented some challenges and more than a little lost sleep. I thought I had everything done with my illustrator-generated stencil layers. Fired them up in the modeler and saw that I had the lower textures biased way too far off-center. I knew it was a relatively simple tweak to fix but I had an early morning so I called it quits for the night. In retrospect, after spending 2-3 hours tossing and turning in bed mentally reviewing the tweaks I wanted to make, I should have just gone ahead and updated the stencils. I might have gotten to bed later than planned but I sure as hell would have gotten more sleep
The forward most portion of the hull is textured using a different technique than what I used on the aft portion. I will probably tear it apart and redo it with the style I used for the aft-most portion. It's much cleaner and far easier to tune the colors. It also doesn't help that I made that portion while squinting at cinema shots without having checked to see how much better some of my other reference pictures were. The details are close enough but I still think that they could stand to be improved.
For this part of the project I'm definitely finding the non-cinematic model shots to be the best reference. Between film grain and cinematic lighting it's too hard to make out these details from what actually makes it onto the big screen.
I strongly suspect that the panels surrounding the warp pylons will be the real challenge. I think I'll dig up the best reference shots I've got tonight so I can start the ol' wheels a turnin' and start on those tomorrow after work. If I am lucky, I'll get through it without feeling that I have to rebuild the base of the pylons
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Of course, when you're reflecting lights onto the hull with little mirrors out of the camera's view, anything is possible.
The impulse vent area looks pretty flawless to me. It looks like it does on the studio model. Your hull textures are looking good so far too, as is the aforementioned lighting.
I'll probably end up saying 'screw it' and have a network of spots floating in space around the pod. If nothing else, it would be true to the original model
That's exactly how I feel about it.
Ah well.
Your model is looking excellent - kudos for the awesome work.
Eric "GuitarEC"
Whatever you would like to post is fine with me although if I had a choice, I would select the shuttle bay area as that caused me the most grief :-) Would love to see how you tackled it because it looks so damn good.
I've been goofing off with textures on spotlights. An oval texture might do the trick.
A capital idea! It took me quite a bit of experimentation but it worked like a charm! I'm still tweaking the shape but this is a wonderful way to sculpt the light cone.
Included is a teaser of my work on texturing the neck. Almost done, should have an update ready for that shortly.
Neck (minus the photorp bay) is done.
I added a temporary spotlight to show texture detail.
And I also appear to have accidentally broken or replaced my upper saucer shader. This will definitely not stand!
I'll definitely need to track down this malfunction before I proceed. Oh well, I did plan on rebuilding my hull textures...
I call it "the blue from hell".
I'm not terribly happy with the current cooler colors. The blue was coming out WAY off so I had to throw in a mix node to blend in pure white to nudge it closer to what I wanted.
For reasons I cannot explain, all of my attempts to create grays or blues come out shifted WAY beyond what I would consider reasonable. Most of my hull tile colors are basically white with the slightest hint of other colors added. The previews in the nodes panel are indistinguishable from white in most cases but when applied to the model and rendered they come out as you see in the pics.
I am assuming that I've got something configured incorrectly in there somewhere but I haven't found it yet. Until then I'll keep tweaking around it until the result approximates my goal
The shuttle bay is definitely one of the greater challenges of this model. As to how I tackled it, I think the short answer would be "very carefully"
Fortunately I learned a few tricks from when I modeled the TOS Constitution in Max a few years ago. I was able to adapt much of the process for the Blender build.
I actually ended up doing the fantail twice. I discovered some hellatious artifacts in the smoothing around that area and that completely blitzed my plans for the modeled shield grid in that area.
Per your request:
I honestly have no frik'n idea from where the artifact that creeps across the centerline came. This is the first time I've seen it and I'll definitely be remediating it once I get to the shuttle bay for texturing/polishing.
There are definitely many different finishes throughout the movie series. For almost all of the screens I've got, I'm currently WAY too dark. I'm working on a happy medium between the TMP paint job and the final one in The Undiscovered Country.
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=578&page=4
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=507&page=4
You couldn't be more right!
No doubt about it, it's a real bear to try to match color for color. I was actually quite startled in the differences I just found between the first and last films! Mostly I find I do my best if I reference the fan photos of the studio models and then balance it with the screen captures from the finished films. For this first pass I think my best bet is to get the patterns and general forms down and then to massage the shaders into a final configuration.
Obviously all of this will also be subject to the lighting of whatever scenes the model is ultimately used, too. Always something to tweak, I guess!
I tell you what, this model will take it out of you. First, there's the fun modeling, especially the shuttlebay area. Then there's the colors. Then there's the lights. Yeash. Even more fun: Build one with a deadline. :shiner:
In warmer light, the colors are green. In cooler light, they're deep-ish blue. Unfortunately, I don't think there is any paint color information available like there is for the Enterprise D.
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 12GB
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The UV mapping on the torpedo bay was quite a challenge! Definitely an opportunity to get more familiar with how UV mapping works in Blender.
Apart from reworking some of the mesh on the pylons and the nacelles, this may have been the last major challenge.
I am still debating if I should redo the hull plating nodes. I think I've got a better shader for the saucer plating in a procedural tile solution by SynaGl0w. I'm fairly confident that to improve the quality in the neck, torpedo bay and (eventually) engineering hull I'll need to paint the plates by hand and that's not terribly appealing.
I'm reserving judgement until I see the whole mesh fleshed out.
For those who are curious, the first recessed light on the bay actually illuminates the front of the warp nacelle, which is why there is no visible cone on the neck originating from there. The spot on the neck will come into play once I finish work with the nacelles.
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Thanks! It was a real relief to finally get something that 'clicked' for that blue.
Both, actually! I've got very roughly modeled 'can lights' inside the recesses with a low-level emission shader to give it just enough glow to be convincing and then spotlights (also using emission shaders) positioned along the light path to produce the desired effect.
I will say that I'm pretty darn happy with the overall look of the 'dish' itself. I originally did the effect with a material defining the gradient but I later found examples at BlenderArtists.org that illustrated how to do it properly with a color ramp node.
The hull around the deflector has presented some challenges and more than a little lost sleep. I thought I had everything done with my illustrator-generated stencil layers. Fired them up in the modeler and saw that I had the lower textures biased way too far off-center. I knew it was a relatively simple tweak to fix but I had an early morning so I called it quits for the night. In retrospect, after spending 2-3 hours tossing and turning in bed mentally reviewing the tweaks I wanted to make, I should have just gone ahead and updated the stencils. I might have gotten to bed later than planned but I sure as hell would have gotten more sleep
The forward most portion of the hull is textured using a different technique than what I used on the aft portion. I will probably tear it apart and redo it with the style I used for the aft-most portion. It's much cleaner and far easier to tune the colors. It also doesn't help that I made that portion while squinting at cinema shots without having checked to see how much better some of my other reference pictures were. The details are close enough but I still think that they could stand to be improved.
For this part of the project I'm definitely finding the non-cinematic model shots to be the best reference. Between film grain and cinematic lighting it's too hard to make out these details from what actually makes it onto the big screen.
I strongly suspect that the panels surrounding the warp pylons will be the real challenge. I think I'll dig up the best reference shots I've got tonight so I can start the ol' wheels a turnin' and start on those tomorrow after work. If I am lucky, I'll get through it without feeling that I have to rebuild the base of the pylons