Thanks guys. Good to have feedback, as always. Wasn't sure at first, but have decided I'm sticking with these pylons. I think they're a much better fit than the previous ones.
Aresius, those extrusions below the pylons are the impulse engines. I was originally going to have them on the saucer, but couldn't do them in a way that I liked. There isn't any room anywhere else for them.
Evil Genius, you have said, looking good or looking fantastic for 10 pages lol.
I always prefered the Rode Island to the Equinox and Nova due to the silly cutout on the saucer. To me its just wasted space. Space that could have doubled the size of the torpedo magazine.
The phaser arrays at the rear of the saucer are on the turn down to cover the rear, firing under the nacelles. You have relocated the only phasers capable of firing straight aft.
The torpedo launchers fire a torpedo less than 4 foot wide and less than 2 foot high. Surrounding the torpedo are the acceleration coils to launch the torpedo but your openings are still very large.
I've always had a soft spot for this ship, Would like to see S31 version, where they can use otherwise banned technology, quantum singularity drive to do away with antimatter. Quantum, genesis, trilithium, gravimetric etc torpedoes. Phase stealth. Etc. Then after Voyager returns, isokinetic cannon, borg adaptive regenerative shields, transphasis torpedoes and so on.
But I am flying off into fantasy land again lol. Keep up the good work. Evil Genius, keep up the always +ve feedback hehe.
If the phasers fired straight aft, they'd hit the pylons. I have some plans for aft weaponry anyway, but as the Defiant is mainly a forward hitter, I'm not gonna overpower the aft too much.
It's been slow going and I've not felt like I've really been getting much done. That said, two sets of sensor palettes are now done and I'm re-working the main ones on the saucer. Not gonna show to much because I want the RCS in place as well for the next set of renders.
I'm still tinkering with the idea of rebuilding the nacelles. When I made the grilles I found some issues. Nothing topology wise, just not perfectly straight rows of vertices. I've pushed some around and got a fairly decent result, but the nacelle sides are a little flatter and I was aiming for more rounds on the front like the Sov. Can't get myself to rebuild them, though. May just have to vertice push a little more. I think CGI is too mathematically perfect and that's why it isn't always believable. I've tried to do a lot of this just by eye and pushing around, so hopefully it'll have that hand build model kind of feel to it.
These dorsal sensors are based on the Defiant's. I couldn't get them to work on the main set, so moved them. I think this worked out better. The main set I'm now basing off of the Nova.
Image dump time. Sensors in place and more panel work done. No RCS yet, just haven't got around to it, but figured it was time to update the thread again.
Just to prove that the project isn't dead, though you'll find not much has changed.
I had an idea for the nacelles but what was in my head didn't translate to 3D very well. Maybe on a future ship.
Anyway, having decided to keep these nacelles, I've finally gone ahead and finished shaping the back ends of them. The fins are now separate objects, giving me better control over them. I think that they still need work. Adding materials has given them a lot more life, and I have started to built in some bussard lights. I don't think that I'm going to build coils into them, at least not right away.
Some beautiful and clean work on this! Seeing this unfold is helping me rethink and properly scale elements on my Sedna. I agree, that the second deflector on the Novas was silly. No reason for a second one on a ship so small, let alone a ship that cannot separate.
Thanks guys, feels good to be doing something again. I kind of had "modellers block", lol. I've just finished reworking the bridge cap and escape pod hatches on it. Not enough of a change yet to be worth a render. I want to try and get the phasers looking better. Gonna have to try and learn conformal geometry, I think. Also, I feel that there's too much open space on those sensors on the saucer edge. Need to do something about that. Either scale up, or more clutter. Not sure yet.
@Bolian: 1) I MUST stop reading that as Boolean. xD
2) Bigger ships like the Sov and Galaxy can generally get away without having too much attention to detail, but I find that for ships this small, it definitely matters. Of course, it's also nice when people do it on the bigger ships just for better immersion.
I was thinking about this one a couple of weeks ago. Not matter what I did, I wasn't liking the results with the sensor pallets, so I started to think about ditching them. A ship this small built for tactical, it seemed redundant anyway. The same day I thought that was when Trekyards put up their Rhode Island episode with Rob Bonchune. He said that he would have got rid of them if he had had the time, so I decided to take that as a sign.
That resulted in being able to change how the escape pods work. They were always located on deck 2, but the hatches were on deck 1. The pods shall now be launching out of the side of the primary hull, making better use of space. I then decided that the phaser arrays could go where the old pod hatches were. That space wouldn't be usable as a deck anyway, but it'd be a good place to house the phaser banks. Here's where I'm hitting a problem.
Before I redo the panelling on the ship, I want to get the phasers in place. Problem is, I can't figure out how to build the phasers and conform them to the hull. I've spent the last couple of days googling everything I can think of and haven't found anything. My original thought was to build a straight strip and then conform it to the hull. I've not been able to get that to happen. The best that I've managed so far is this:
Posts
Aresius, those extrusions below the pylons are the impulse engines. I was originally going to have them on the saucer, but couldn't do them in a way that I liked. There isn't any room anywhere else for them.
I always prefered the Rode Island to the Equinox and Nova due to the silly cutout on the saucer. To me its just wasted space. Space that could have doubled the size of the torpedo magazine.
The phaser arrays at the rear of the saucer are on the turn down to cover the rear, firing under the nacelles. You have relocated the only phasers capable of firing straight aft.
The torpedo launchers fire a torpedo less than 4 foot wide and less than 2 foot high. Surrounding the torpedo are the acceleration coils to launch the torpedo but your openings are still very large.
I've always had a soft spot for this ship, Would like to see S31 version, where they can use otherwise banned technology, quantum singularity drive to do away with antimatter. Quantum, genesis, trilithium, gravimetric etc torpedoes. Phase stealth. Etc. Then after Voyager returns, isokinetic cannon, borg adaptive regenerative shields, transphasis torpedoes and so on.
But I am flying off into fantasy land again lol. Keep up the good work. Evil Genius, keep up the always +ve feedback hehe.
That's because it is. It means I like what I'm seeing and can think of no way that it can be improved. If I think of something, I bring it up.
If the phasers fired straight aft, they'd hit the pylons. I have some plans for aft weaponry anyway, but as the Defiant is mainly a forward hitter, I'm not gonna overpower the aft too much.
It's been slow going and I've not felt like I've really been getting much done. That said, two sets of sensor palettes are now done and I'm re-working the main ones on the saucer. Not gonna show to much because I want the RCS in place as well for the next set of renders.
I'm still tinkering with the idea of rebuilding the nacelles. When I made the grilles I found some issues. Nothing topology wise, just not perfectly straight rows of vertices. I've pushed some around and got a fairly decent result, but the nacelle sides are a little flatter and I was aiming for more rounds on the front like the Sov. Can't get myself to rebuild them, though. May just have to vertice push a little more. I think CGI is too mathematically perfect and that's why it isn't always believable. I've tried to do a lot of this just by eye and pushing around, so hopefully it'll have that hand build model kind of feel to it.
These dorsal sensors are based on the Defiant's. I couldn't get them to work on the main set, so moved them. I think this worked out better. The main set I'm now basing off of the Nova.
:thumb:
:thumb:
I had an idea for the nacelles but what was in my head didn't translate to 3D very well. Maybe on a future ship.
Anyway, having decided to keep these nacelles, I've finally gone ahead and finished shaping the back ends of them. The fins are now separate objects, giving me better control over them. I think that they still need work. Adding materials has given them a lot more life, and I have started to built in some bussard lights. I don't think that I'm going to build coils into them, at least not right away.
@Bolian: 1) I MUST stop reading that as Boolean. xD
2) Bigger ships like the Sov and Galaxy can generally get away without having too much attention to detail, but I find that for ships this small, it definitely matters. Of course, it's also nice when people do it on the bigger ships just for better immersion.
I was thinking about this one a couple of weeks ago. Not matter what I did, I wasn't liking the results with the sensor pallets, so I started to think about ditching them. A ship this small built for tactical, it seemed redundant anyway. The same day I thought that was when Trekyards put up their Rhode Island episode with Rob Bonchune. He said that he would have got rid of them if he had had the time, so I decided to take that as a sign.
That resulted in being able to change how the escape pods work. They were always located on deck 2, but the hatches were on deck 1. The pods shall now be launching out of the side of the primary hull, making better use of space. I then decided that the phaser arrays could go where the old pod hatches were. That space wouldn't be usable as a deck anyway, but it'd be a good place to house the phaser banks. Here's where I'm hitting a problem.
Before I redo the panelling on the ship, I want to get the phasers in place. Problem is, I can't figure out how to build the phasers and conform them to the hull. I've spent the last couple of days googling everything I can think of and haven't found anything. My original thought was to build a straight strip and then conform it to the hull. I've not been able to get that to happen. The best that I've managed so far is this:
I did it using this method here: https://youtu.be/XEBCIV1cR7U?t=2m14s
I have no idea how I would round the ends off properly or build in the segmentation with this method, though.
Anyway, here's an update on the nacelles. Played with the glass materials and lit them up. The grilles may still need a bit of work.