Eh, lol I need to find my pod mesh to check clearances. Maybe Ill just give up on having a port on this deck. I can move bits about to increase clearances or give more headroom. (second image shows a pushed up ceiling space)
I mean I could do a angled hatchway with a squared up inner seal and have some sort of extending tube to solve the angle issue but that adds a lot of bulk and other goofy stuff "explaining" how it works. So in the end keeping it to something simple with lower moving parts, least for me is the better direction.
Sorry I missed the posts the forum has not been updating posts when I make my post I have to refresh to see them and forget to check, exp when the page count goes up for me. (set to max posts per page) I just appends my new post to what I already see.
That looks good. Plus, I know you'll detail up that hull to where it looks like it was always meant to be there.
Im thinking of detailing it out like that one Eaves STO concept but I will see how it goes when I get to plating up those bulkheads. . .
Im thinking of doing something like the detail below the bridge area.
UPDATE, struts that are part of the secondary hull. Kinda not liking how they disrupt the secondary hulls flow exp wioth all the added loops and the nicely flat hull wanting to pucker from the right angles of the struts. But it is probably easier than hand aligning the struts with a flare to match up to the hull. . . . maybe. . . . . . fffff
ah blast the HDRI really isnt set up to show this area very well.
Also one render show the lower strut add ons Idea is these would flow onto the lower hull to create a area for detail to uh, gather. also to split up that large lump of hull. BUT I dunno. Again, seat of the pants with this ship.
Im still working it so Ill have some other renders later but time has run out for now so gotta put it away.
Erm more dunno, I do not think this strut layer idea is working out. Either way, I think I have the3 struts and hull working the way I want it to made some of the hull shaping a bit softer than I wanted and angles are a bit different as I had to shove the strut root further down to avoid the main flat area of the upper secondary hull.
For the layer struts I think I will just have them vanish into the hull and later do something with them there matching the curve of the welded struts is ugh, made worse with the way max shows backface edges and wireframe vs say 2010 or I think even 2017. Why they changed this to something that slows workflow I dunno.
Ok wipe all that text lol as I DID integrate the split struts into the engineering section. I will probably manually round things at this point as there would be just too many loops to deal with that could cause issues.
Some wireframes for no reason, not much to see though as much of it is in subdiv. I kinda miss when a model is collapsed as the sundiv often shows the shapes a lot more as the minimal wires swoop about.
I'm sure it was a pain to merge those struts into the hull without causing massive errors with the Sub-D, but the benefits are obvious. They look great.
Heh it was more of a being rusty and getting subdiv to do what I want with poor planning >_>
EDIT, well the material on the bridge/ notch things was a bug I guess shifted the hdri by 1deg and it renders fine now. . . . . . . .
Again I am going to reference mostly Eave's concept imagery for the detail work on this ship. SO the typical early STO things some of the stuff from the blog days and a few things pulled from the TNG films etc. I am probably missing a large chunk of stuff too as I know he did some custom or extra things for fans on the blog at one time. I have been really bad this last few years about maintaining a reference directory. Maybe getting old or something does not seen enough time in a day to get anything done anymore.
Rough bridge render (ignore the sfx mats as I was not willing to wait for them to render out.) Still fenced about if I will chamfer weld this into the rest of the hull or leave it with the step down so it looks more socketed instead.
rest of these are renders with the more reflective material applied.
It does not seem to really do much for this model, or this HDRI.
Interior rooms and layout hallway is 8ft/2.5m wide. blue turbo lifts lt blue hallway pink w/e and fuchsia is the bridge is set down for head clearance, so I have 2ft to ramp or step down from between it and the aft rooms. This does not account for any sunken floor areas. Bridge area is roughly 35X40ft (10X12m). The green/yellow area could be open area so I could have a walk through onto the bridge with a deeper sunken area. I was mostly concerned with keeping that 8ftish head clearance. Still feel this dome is a bit of a cop out though lol. Also tempting to abandon the dual lift thing too. Really not much up here to really justify it. 4 offices a crapper and storage room and the bridge. . . .
Paneling is getting a bit clunky so I might zap it all and start over.
That hardpoint thing might go away though I am not keen on the idea of it going onto the secondary hull as having a arm or other fixed doo-dah reaching down between the nacelles is kind of a bad idea.
Collapsed and optimized the c/d deck so started marking out and laying out of stuff. Tried looking for my travel pod but I dunno what I did with it. It was pretty old so it might still be in old max format mats. (predating MR) I might just build a TNG era one as I doubt they would still be using the same design from TMP some 100yrs later. Anyhow dark stripe is to show some sort of plating to be on that deck to protect the hull from any Troyisms or would that be Tuckers? Also looking at window styles on these lower decks. Kinda like the idea of the overlap windows but they are a PITA as extruding them makes for a mess in the corner and alignment of all the jamb details. What sucks is I really want to work on that deck the docks is in but that is part of the entire neck/lower saucer assembly and I have yet to finalize some things with that OR decide if I want some specific details of it.
oh yeah, ignore the crap between the turbolift caps.
Real rough lifeboat locations, pre weeding. I do not look forward to aligning these pos things on the secondary hull. heh.
Still debating if I wanna do anything silly with the saucer be it changes in the circular profile or cutting in notches or other stuff.
Weeded upper and lower. Locations might change all depends when I get to doing the phaser strips and go in and do physical room layouts. Plan is to have a strip running above the inboard lifeboats, mostly for clearance to that saucer rim indent. Design flaw really, but I kinda want those looking inward windows. I probably could to them on the top rim of the outer lifeboats but dunno. I had considered doing 2 rows with a staggered break but that is a lot of phasers for a 500m ship. But we will see it might look good and meh? lol
Something I screwed up and did not account for by looking at lifeboats early on was placements on the superstructures for crew in the core of the ship. (neck and central superstructures. I can fit a few on the aft neck spine but I think I might have to do a ejectable rooms like those flanking the collar. I am not going to do a bridge detachable as the amount of logistics is foolish to do such a thing. I did it with the onimaru as that was a large ship and I sorta had plans for it's use but never got there in the end. And in reality I doubt such a thing would ever be built into a ship. If such a easy get away or ideals of escape I would expect the ship t be a hive collection of independent bits that could reconfigure and a vastly differing culture base. Truthfully I have the same reaction to detachable saucers bendy bits of ship and what not. I can see blowing off nacelles in a destructive manner, warp core ejections and other ship saving methods. ANYHOW going off on a tangent here.
I am also really tempted to go back to my old style of hull material too this reflective hull is doing some strange things. Be it bad settings or a bit of code that has gone wonk. (had this happen ages ago a material beyond a certain setting would clip the gloss to black.)
Posts
Sorry I missed the posts the forum has not been updating posts when I make my post I have to refresh to see them and forget to check, exp when the page count goes up for me. (set to max posts per page) I just appends my new post to what I already see.
Im thinking of detailing it out like that one Eaves STO concept but I will see how it goes when I get to plating up those bulkheads. . .
Im thinking of doing something like the detail below the bridge area.
UPDATE, struts that are part of the secondary hull. Kinda not liking how they disrupt the secondary hulls flow exp wioth all the added loops and the nicely flat hull wanting to pucker from the right angles of the struts. But it is probably easier than hand aligning the struts with a flare to match up to the hull. . . . maybe. . . . . . fffff
ah blast the HDRI really isnt set up to show this area very well.
Also one render show the lower strut add ons Idea is these would flow onto the lower hull to create a area for detail to uh, gather. also to split up that large lump of hull. BUT I dunno. Again, seat of the pants with this ship.
Im still working it so Ill have some other renders later but time has run out for now so gotta put it away.
For the layer struts I think I will just have them vanish into the hull and later do something with them there matching the curve of the welded struts is ugh, made worse with the way max shows backface edges and wireframe vs say 2010 or I think even 2017. Why they changed this to something that slows workflow I dunno.
EDIT, well the material on the bridge/ notch things was a bug I guess shifted the hdri by 1deg and it renders fine now. . . . . . . .
Again I am going to reference mostly Eave's concept imagery for the detail work on this ship. SO the typical early STO things some of the stuff from the blog days and a few things pulled from the TNG films etc. I am probably missing a large chunk of stuff too as I know he did some custom or extra things for fans on the blog at one time. I have been really bad this last few years about maintaining a reference directory. Maybe getting old or something does not seen enough time in a day to get anything done anymore.
Rough bridge render (ignore the sfx mats as I was not willing to wait for them to render out.) Still fenced about if I will chamfer weld this into the rest of the hull or leave it with the step down so it looks more socketed instead.
rest of these are renders with the more reflective material applied.
It does not seem to really do much for this model, or this HDRI.
Feels like an improvement of the Titan-A without many of the upscaled TMP elements that felt out of place.
old sensor placement
centered sensor.
That hardpoint thing might go away though I am not keen on the idea of it going onto the secondary hull as having a arm or other fixed doo-dah reaching down between the nacelles is kind of a bad idea.
I could see a uni-nacelle under that…an escape ship like a thin destroyer..torpsprobe below the saucer
DO think the stuff between the turbolifts needs work vs just ending in some nostrils.
oh yeah, ignore the crap between the turbolift caps.
Still debating if I wanna do anything silly with the saucer be it changes in the circular profile or cutting in notches or other stuff.
Something I screwed up and did not account for by looking at lifeboats early on was placements on the superstructures for crew in the core of the ship. (neck and central superstructures. I can fit a few on the aft neck spine but I think I might have to do a ejectable rooms like those flanking the collar. I am not going to do a bridge detachable as the amount of logistics is foolish to do such a thing. I did it with the onimaru as that was a large ship and I sorta had plans for it's use but never got there in the end. And in reality I doubt such a thing would ever be built into a ship. If such a easy get away or ideals of escape I would expect the ship t be a hive collection of independent bits that could reconfigure and a vastly differing culture base. Truthfully I have the same reaction to detachable saucers bendy bits of ship and what not. I can see blowing off nacelles in a destructive manner, warp core ejections and other ship saving methods. ANYHOW going off on a tangent here.
I am also really tempted to go back to my old style of hull material too this reflective hull is doing some strange things. Be it bad settings or a bit of code that has gone wonk. (had this happen ages ago a material beyond a certain setting would clip the gloss to black.)