I haven't touched this thing in days, because I was doing other things. I'm off work today, so I cracked open the file and redid the back of the nacelles. I didn't like the shape of them before, plus they were inaccurate compared to this image:
So, I redid them and the shape is much closer to that photo:
The pylons are pretty much done. Since the model was never completed, nor were Jefferies' drawings, I'm content leaving them like this. Besides, they have basically the same detail as the TMP pylons minus the parts that make them blend into the engineering hull.
I have to go to work in a bit, but here's a bit of an update. I added the lines to the engineering hull (more on those in a moment) and the space-energy field attraction sensors. (according to Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, that's what the boxes on the side and bottom of the deflector area are called)
Now, in regard to the lines. They're on every schematic for the ship that exists but neither they or the space-energy field attraction sensors were on the incomplete model when it was scrapped, but the sensors were definitely planned because there's a place for them to go. For the lines, it's hard to say. There was one model that was completed for the show, and it was this one:
Obviously, that's an enlarged section of the secondary hull for the travel pod sequence, which first appeared in an early draft of "In Thy Image." So, Magicam built that model early. There's enough of the secondary hull here to support *not* having the lines. However, as I said on my last Constitution class build, I don't like having the lines on only the saucer. In fact, for the Phase II model, there weren't lines on the lower saucer either, but I already did those. But, as I said, that model was incomplete, so I'm not using it as a definitive source.
Windows on the secondary hull and neck. These are the only windows that are on the Jefferies drawings, so I used the side view to get them where he drew them.
One thing odd on the drawings is that Jefferies apparently drew one that's right by the hyphen in NCC-1701. I didn't put that one on there for obvious reasons. Also, there's a circle towards the fantail, but I'm going to make that a signal light like the one that's on the side of the TOS ship.
Since many of the details of the ship weren't worked out before it was turned into a movie, I'm trying to find a balance between TOS and TMP for the details that aren't there on the drawings or incomplete model. I don't want to lean too much in one direction. Matt Jefferies thought not much on the ship should change, in fact he initially thought they were going to reuse the 11-foot model from TOS, so he only drew new warp engines and pylons at first. Of course, that wasn't the case as the original model was in the Smithsonian by then and they had no plans to use it anyway. Instead, a new model about half the size was being constructed for the new show. When he found that out, Jefferies continued work on the drawings to update the look, but he was starting go get to the point where Michael Landon was going to force him to choose between his work on Little House on the Prairie and Star Trek, so he quit Star Trek before it got to that point. As such, his drawings were never complete and the model was only 3/4 finished and was missing a lot of details when it was decided that the model wasn't up to the demands of motion picture work and that the design needed refined and a new model constructed.
So, when it comes to missing details, I have to make a judgement call. I'm mostly going towards TOS, as Jefferies thought not much should change on the design. So, with the navigational deflector, which isn't on either the drawings or the model, I went with one that's more TOS style. However, to show that evolution to the TMP design, I set it almost flush with the housing and I made the pointy bit in the center shorter than it is on the TOS model. I did add the "rings" in the surface of the dish, both as a nod to TOS and to give it more detail without adding too much. I may experiment with lighting the dish when I get to the material stage.
Shuttlebay deets. The doors do function. (I have plans) I put the landing lights up high because I plan to put the ship's name across the back, like on the TMP design.
On a somewhat related note, adding an emission to a material apparently makes my desktop take a while longer to render. Previously, I was using my gaming computer, but I decided to move that to my living room so I can play PC games on my TV. The gaming computer has an RTX 3060 in it, but the desktop has a GTX 1660 Super. For WIP renders, it won't be an issue with the 1660 Super, but getting into doing scenes, I may have to upgrade the desktop. I've been looking at components anyway, and I may have to make a move on my next paycheck. I got paid today, but most of that will be going to rent next week. Fortunately, graphics cards aren't a expensive as they were last year. In fact, the reason I have two computers is because I wanted to upgrade my computer for 4K gaming, but the cards were so expensive that I just bought another computer for gaming. I'm looking at an MSI RTX 3060 right now on Amazon and it's only $350. That's considerably cheaper than they were this time last year. It has good reviews, plus my gaming machine is an MSI, as is my motherboard in my desktop. I have a pretty good track record overall with MSI, I've been using their boards for years.
The plans I have for this mesh involves possibly doing some animations based on TMP. Scenes like Kirk and Scott traveling to the Enterprise via a shuttle were planned from early drafts of the "In Thy Image" script. So, I thought it might be a fun project to do alternate versions of those scenes, as they may have been done in 1978, had the show not been changed to a theatrical movie. Plus, that means I'll get to model Mike Minor's concepts for the oribital office complex and travel pod. Joe Jennings was the art director on the show. But, with the Enterprise and drydock already being constructed, they hired Minor to do concept work for the pilot episode so that Jennings could focus on the rest of the series. And, I really like Minor's work.
Windows on the secondary hull and neck. These are the only windows that are on the Jefferies drawings, so I used the side view to get them where he drew them.
One thing odd on the drawings is that Jefferies apparently drew one that's right by the hyphen in NCC-1701. I didn't put that one on there for obvious reasons. Also, there's a circle towards the fantail, but I'm going to make that a signal light like the one that's on the side of the TOS ship.
Any tips for cutting out the windows? The single docking port and botanical garden windows I have done have already caused issues in my mesh.
Any tips for cutting out the windows? The single docking port and botanical garden windows I have done have already caused issues in my mesh.
You're using Blender, right? I'll show you how I do it.
I start by positioning a window cutter piece where I want it. For Trek windows, these are usually cylinders or rectangular cubes with slight edge bevels applied to round the corners.
After that, I select the piece I want the window cut in and I hit Shift+D to make a duplicate and Enter right away so Blender doesn't try to move it. (if it does move, you can correct the movement by changing all of the values in the pop up dialog box to zeroes) Next follows applying a Boolean modifier to both of the copies and selecting the window cutter as my Boolean object. On one of the copies, I set the Boolean modifier to "Intersect" and the other to "Difference."
After I apply the Boolean, I have two pieces. One has the window cutter cut out of it, and the other has a window shaped slice of the original piece. I don't need the extra faces created during the Boolean operation, so I select and delete those.
This leaves me with my piece with a window shaped hole through it and a piece that perfectly plugs the hole. In object mode, I select both pieces and hit "Ctrl+J" to join them together. Then, I go into edit mode, vert select mode and select all vertices by hitting "A" and hit "Ctrl+M" and merge them by distance.
This will merge the verts from the hole and the plug piece that occupy the same space, leaving me with a window shaped line of in my piece. I select the window faces and use the Inset Faces tool and the "Thickness" setting to inset them slightly.
Then I use the Inset Faces tool again and use "Depth" to add some depth to my window.
After that, I select the edge loops around the lip of the window and use Bevel to give them a bit of roundness.
That leaves me with a decent looking window in my curved hull in only a few steps.
For large areas with lots of windows like the secondary hull and neck, I'll position all of my window cutters at once, then join them using "Ctrl+J" and cut them all at once. Alternately, if you copy the pieces in Edit Mode and then move them where you want them, when you go back into Object Mode you'll have all of them as one piece without joining them. Another thing to be careful when doing this on complex curves is watching where your edges of your object intersect the window cut, as this can create verts in unfortunate places that can interfere with the inset operation. So, I usually inspect all of my cuts before I get to that part to make sure everything is going to go smoothly.
Also, this is extremely similar to how I used to do windows in Lightwave, except I used a different tool that put the window edges onto the hull without having to create a copy and then rejoin the pieces. But, my point is, this method can be adapted to different software as this is basically how I've been doing windows for years across two different programs.
Funnily enough, I did that tutorial and then I went back to rendering my latest progress on my ship. I couldn't figure out why the docking port details weren't showing up in the renders. I didn't think it could be a lighting problem, but that's what I was assuming. Then I got in for a close render and I realized that I accidentally left my cutter object for the docking port in the scene. It was invisible in the 3D viewport but visible to the camera. So, that's another thing with cutter objects, be sure to delete them when you don't need them anymore.
So, a few more updates. I'm probably going to call it a night. I'm going to have dinner and probably watch TV or play a game. I was off work today, but I have to be in at 7 AM tomorrow. Anyway, I added the pendants and registry to the side of the secondary hull. I noticed on both Jefferies' drawings and the enlarged docking port model that was built for the show that they were using TOS style pendants and lettering. For the registry, I used Charles Casimiro's Airborne fonts as usual. I noticed the 7 in NCC-1701 was in the style of "Airborne" but the 1 was in the style of "Airborne Pilot." So, I used both fonts, though I actually used the "Airborne II" set. But, I recreated the look of the lettering on both the drawing and the model. I also noticed my "neck" was really wide compared to the front view on the Jefferies drawings, so I shrank it down on the X axis. I also added some grid lines to the neck and started on the weapons emplacement.
On a fun side note about the weapons emplacement, this obviously became the home of the photon torpedoes from TMP onward. However, according to memos and the series writers' bible reproduced in the book I have about Phase II, this was actually going to be the main phaser. It would have drastically changed Trek from what it became if the phasers fired from there and not from all over the ship.
Glad they made it a torpedo and not a phaser, having a phaser in that position severely limits its firing arc.
Yeah, fortunately they put phasers all over the TMP version. In TWOK, we see the Enterprise fire its port phasers on the lower saucer. That kind of effects shot would have been less convincing with one phaser on the neck.
Work has been hectic lately. We had inventory last week, and there's always a lot of prep work for that. Fortunately, it went well. But, right on the heels of inventory we had a regional visit for yesterday. Again, a lot of stuff to do to get ready for that. In fact, my days off this week were supposed to be Monday and Tuesday, and it's rare that I get two off in a row. However, what I figured was going to happen on Monday happened, my boss texted me and asked me to switch my other day off from Tuesday to today. So, I worked over twelve hours on Tuesday. Anyway, things should be slowing down now and I may have some time for some CGI.
I loaded this model up into Lightwave and exported it to .fbx format so that I could import it into Blender:
As you can see, the export/import went really well and I have a nice looking mesh to which I can redo the materials for Blender. I did have to do the export twice as, when I imported the model into Blender the first time, I noticed there were some faces missing, particularly around some of my window cuts. So, I went into Lightwave again and I selected all of the ngons and converted them to triangles, exported it to .fbx again and the import was clean on that version. I'm hoping my mapping fared better than the ngons did, but we'll see. If I have to remap the ship for the spec maps, it's not the end of the world.
On a Lightwave note, I did find out something about my old favorite software, it was sold. I've actually known about this since weeks before the sale was final, because I got an e-mail from Vizrt, the company that bought Newtek in 2019, in early April. I likely got the e-mail because I'm a multiple Lightwave license holder and I think I also was subscribed to their newsletter. Prior to that, there had been no news about Lightwave for years, as Vizrt kept their plans for the software to themselves. Apparently, they were shopping for a new owner for a few years, before deciding to sell to Andrew Bishop, a veteran UK-based Lightwave artist. Bishop and his team finalized the sale late last month and they're working on transferring everything over. (I got an invite to their Discord sever in that e-mail) The software will be called Lightwave Digital and they've got plans to release Lightwave 2023 late this year. So, that's very interesting.
Honestly, I don't know how to feel about it. I used Lightwave for years, but I kind of wrote them off when there was no news from Vizrt for about four years as to their plans for the software. I've switched to Blender and there are a LOT of things I like better about it. I tried rendering the mesh I just converted in Lightwave 2018 and I got frustrated trying to kill all of the fireflies. I know I successfully did it in the past, but I couldn't figure it out a couple days ago. Add to that the fact that LW2018 doesn't support GPU Compute for rendering, meaning I have to render with my Ryzen 5 instead of my RTX 3060. I also find Blender's materials to be superior, particularly when it comes to transmitting light through a colored object with transparency, such as the domes on the bussard collectors. I may check out the features on LW2023 when it releases, but it will likely just be out of curiosity.
UV mapping was lost with the conversion, but I pretty easily got it back:
Obviously, this isn't the color the ship will actually be. In fact, these are just specular maps to add paneling in indirect lighting. The rest of the ship will be as it always was, just done with colors. I find adding paneling to everything just makes it look cluttered, so I go with about the amount of paneling they had on the TMP Enterprise.
I would like to say that finding help with Blender can be a real PITA. Sure, there's lots of help out there to be had, but sometimes you have to sift through half answers or answers that don't pertain to the version you're using. Figuring out how to do simple mapping was no different. The manual was no help, as it tends to tell you how to do 20 different things related to what you want, but none of which are what you really want. Fortunately, I'm predominately self taught in CGI, so I turned to a simple web search. I found an answer that at least got me in the right direction, then I did what I always do: trial and error. I started messing around with the mapping controls and UV editor until I got what I needed. It was actually very simple once I figured it out.
One important thing when rigging spots is to not make them overpowering. The whole idea, introduced in TMP, was to light the ship in totally dark scenes. However, in fully lit scenes, the spots really shouldn't be that visible. I think I found that balance pretty well:
Also, obviously, the spots aren't really coming from the modeled sources, anymore than they are on any other Star Trek ship from TMP through Enterprise. I could argue that the lighting rigs they do for the newer Star Trek don't work any better than the older ones, but I can't be bothered. Either way, I didn't want to go that style, with a bunch of tiny lights in an attempt to make it look real, as this ship is designed to go with original Star Trek. It's literally just the TOS Enterprise based on Alan Sinclair's blueprints with some extra details added.
I have some other stuff I did in Lightwave that I want to bring to Blender, but those will probably be rebuilds. I'll load the meshes into Lightwave and take a look at them and then decide. Even if I don't convert them, I'll still need to render orthos in LW that I can load into Blender to do new meshes. This Enterprise mesh is only 4 years old, so it still holds up to my current standards, but the other meshes I'm talking about are several years older. (circa 2013-2014)
Posts
Even on the bridge of the wrong ship.
I'm thinking about doing the blue bussard collectors from the early TMP poster for my model.
So, I redid them and the shape is much closer to that photo:
Now, in regard to the lines. They're on every schematic for the ship that exists but neither they or the space-energy field attraction sensors were on the incomplete model when it was scrapped, but the sensors were definitely planned because there's a place for them to go. For the lines, it's hard to say. There was one model that was completed for the show, and it was this one:
Obviously, that's an enlarged section of the secondary hull for the travel pod sequence, which first appeared in an early draft of "In Thy Image." So, Magicam built that model early. There's enough of the secondary hull here to support *not* having the lines. However, as I said on my last Constitution class build, I don't like having the lines on only the saucer. In fact, for the Phase II model, there weren't lines on the lower saucer either, but I already did those. But, as I said, that model was incomplete, so I'm not using it as a definitive source.
One thing odd on the drawings is that Jefferies apparently drew one that's right by the hyphen in NCC-1701. I didn't put that one on there for obvious reasons. Also, there's a circle towards the fantail, but I'm going to make that a signal light like the one that's on the side of the TOS ship.
Yeah, it's a bit of an odd choice.
As did UGH! Models
I remember Shaw's model, it was sweet.
Since many of the details of the ship weren't worked out before it was turned into a movie, I'm trying to find a balance between TOS and TMP for the details that aren't there on the drawings or incomplete model. I don't want to lean too much in one direction. Matt Jefferies thought not much on the ship should change, in fact he initially thought they were going to reuse the 11-foot model from TOS, so he only drew new warp engines and pylons at first. Of course, that wasn't the case as the original model was in the Smithsonian by then and they had no plans to use it anyway. Instead, a new model about half the size was being constructed for the new show. When he found that out, Jefferies continued work on the drawings to update the look, but he was starting go get to the point where Michael Landon was going to force him to choose between his work on Little House on the Prairie and Star Trek, so he quit Star Trek before it got to that point. As such, his drawings were never complete and the model was only 3/4 finished and was missing a lot of details when it was decided that the model wasn't up to the demands of motion picture work and that the design needed refined and a new model constructed.
So, when it comes to missing details, I have to make a judgement call. I'm mostly going towards TOS, as Jefferies thought not much should change on the design. So, with the navigational deflector, which isn't on either the drawings or the model, I went with one that's more TOS style. However, to show that evolution to the TMP design, I set it almost flush with the housing and I made the pointy bit in the center shorter than it is on the TOS model. I did add the "rings" in the surface of the dish, both as a nod to TOS and to give it more detail without adding too much. I may experiment with lighting the dish when I get to the material stage.
Shuttlebay deets. The doors do function. (I have plans) I put the landing lights up high because I plan to put the ship's name across the back, like on the TMP design.
On a somewhat related note, adding an emission to a material apparently makes my desktop take a while longer to render. Previously, I was using my gaming computer, but I decided to move that to my living room so I can play PC games on my TV. The gaming computer has an RTX 3060 in it, but the desktop has a GTX 1660 Super. For WIP renders, it won't be an issue with the 1660 Super, but getting into doing scenes, I may have to upgrade the desktop. I've been looking at components anyway, and I may have to make a move on my next paycheck. I got paid today, but most of that will be going to rent next week. Fortunately, graphics cards aren't a expensive as they were last year. In fact, the reason I have two computers is because I wanted to upgrade my computer for 4K gaming, but the cards were so expensive that I just bought another computer for gaming. I'm looking at an MSI RTX 3060 right now on Amazon and it's only $350. That's considerably cheaper than they were this time last year. It has good reviews, plus my gaming machine is an MSI, as is my motherboard in my desktop. I have a pretty good track record overall with MSI, I've been using their boards for years.
The plans I have for this mesh involves possibly doing some animations based on TMP. Scenes like Kirk and Scott traveling to the Enterprise via a shuttle were planned from early drafts of the "In Thy Image" script. So, I thought it might be a fun project to do alternate versions of those scenes, as they may have been done in 1978, had the show not been changed to a theatrical movie. Plus, that means I'll get to model Mike Minor's concepts for the oribital office complex and travel pod. Joe Jennings was the art director on the show. But, with the Enterprise and drydock already being constructed, they hired Minor to do concept work for the pilot episode so that Jennings could focus on the rest of the series. And, I really like Minor's work.
(I was too lazy to put a camera there, so you can put up with a viewport render )
I did the docking port as accurately as I could based off of this image:
Any tips for cutting out the windows? The single docking port and botanical garden windows I have done have already caused issues in my mesh.
You're using Blender, right? I'll show you how I do it.
I start by positioning a window cutter piece where I want it. For Trek windows, these are usually cylinders or rectangular cubes with slight edge bevels applied to round the corners.
After that, I select the piece I want the window cut in and I hit Shift+D to make a duplicate and Enter right away so Blender doesn't try to move it. (if it does move, you can correct the movement by changing all of the values in the pop up dialog box to zeroes) Next follows applying a Boolean modifier to both of the copies and selecting the window cutter as my Boolean object. On one of the copies, I set the Boolean modifier to "Intersect" and the other to "Difference."
After I apply the Boolean, I have two pieces. One has the window cutter cut out of it, and the other has a window shaped slice of the original piece. I don't need the extra faces created during the Boolean operation, so I select and delete those.
This leaves me with my piece with a window shaped hole through it and a piece that perfectly plugs the hole. In object mode, I select both pieces and hit "Ctrl+J" to join them together. Then, I go into edit mode, vert select mode and select all vertices by hitting "A" and hit "Ctrl+M" and merge them by distance.
This will merge the verts from the hole and the plug piece that occupy the same space, leaving me with a window shaped line of in my piece. I select the window faces and use the Inset Faces tool and the "Thickness" setting to inset them slightly.
Then I use the Inset Faces tool again and use "Depth" to add some depth to my window.
After that, I select the edge loops around the lip of the window and use Bevel to give them a bit of roundness.
That leaves me with a decent looking window in my curved hull in only a few steps.
For large areas with lots of windows like the secondary hull and neck, I'll position all of my window cutters at once, then join them using "Ctrl+J" and cut them all at once. Alternately, if you copy the pieces in Edit Mode and then move them where you want them, when you go back into Object Mode you'll have all of them as one piece without joining them. Another thing to be careful when doing this on complex curves is watching where your edges of your object intersect the window cut, as this can create verts in unfortunate places that can interfere with the inset operation. So, I usually inspect all of my cuts before I get to that part to make sure everything is going to go smoothly.
Also, this is extremely similar to how I used to do windows in Lightwave, except I used a different tool that put the window edges onto the hull without having to create a copy and then rejoin the pieces. But, my point is, this method can be adapted to different software as this is basically how I've been doing windows for years across two different programs.
So, a few more updates. I'm probably going to call it a night. I'm going to have dinner and probably watch TV or play a game. I was off work today, but I have to be in at 7 AM tomorrow. Anyway, I added the pendants and registry to the side of the secondary hull. I noticed on both Jefferies' drawings and the enlarged docking port model that was built for the show that they were using TOS style pendants and lettering. For the registry, I used Charles Casimiro's Airborne fonts as usual. I noticed the 7 in NCC-1701 was in the style of "Airborne" but the 1 was in the style of "Airborne Pilot." So, I used both fonts, though I actually used the "Airborne II" set. But, I recreated the look of the lettering on both the drawing and the model. I also noticed my "neck" was really wide compared to the front view on the Jefferies drawings, so I shrank it down on the X axis. I also added some grid lines to the neck and started on the weapons emplacement.
On a fun side note about the weapons emplacement, this obviously became the home of the photon torpedoes from TMP onward. However, according to memos and the series writers' bible reproduced in the book I have about Phase II, this was actually going to be the main phaser. It would have drastically changed Trek from what it became if the phasers fired from there and not from all over the ship.
Glad they made it a torpedo and not a phaser, having a phaser in that position severely limits its firing arc.
Yeah, fortunately they put phasers all over the TMP version. In TWOK, we see the Enterprise fire its port phasers on the lower saucer. That kind of effects shot would have been less convincing with one phaser on the neck.
A semi-circular structure instead of just a tube.
Windows?
I loaded this model up into Lightwave and exported it to .fbx format so that I could import it into Blender:
As you can see, the export/import went really well and I have a nice looking mesh to which I can redo the materials for Blender. I did have to do the export twice as, when I imported the model into Blender the first time, I noticed there were some faces missing, particularly around some of my window cuts. So, I went into Lightwave again and I selected all of the ngons and converted them to triangles, exported it to .fbx again and the import was clean on that version. I'm hoping my mapping fared better than the ngons did, but we'll see. If I have to remap the ship for the spec maps, it's not the end of the world.
On a Lightwave note, I did find out something about my old favorite software, it was sold. I've actually known about this since weeks before the sale was final, because I got an e-mail from Vizrt, the company that bought Newtek in 2019, in early April. I likely got the e-mail because I'm a multiple Lightwave license holder and I think I also was subscribed to their newsletter. Prior to that, there had been no news about Lightwave for years, as Vizrt kept their plans for the software to themselves. Apparently, they were shopping for a new owner for a few years, before deciding to sell to Andrew Bishop, a veteran UK-based Lightwave artist. Bishop and his team finalized the sale late last month and they're working on transferring everything over. (I got an invite to their Discord sever in that e-mail) The software will be called Lightwave Digital and they've got plans to release Lightwave 2023 late this year. So, that's very interesting.
Honestly, I don't know how to feel about it. I used Lightwave for years, but I kind of wrote them off when there was no news from Vizrt for about four years as to their plans for the software. I've switched to Blender and there are a LOT of things I like better about it. I tried rendering the mesh I just converted in Lightwave 2018 and I got frustrated trying to kill all of the fireflies. I know I successfully did it in the past, but I couldn't figure it out a couple days ago. Add to that the fact that LW2018 doesn't support GPU Compute for rendering, meaning I have to render with my Ryzen 5 instead of my RTX 3060. I also find Blender's materials to be superior, particularly when it comes to transmitting light through a colored object with transparency, such as the domes on the bussard collectors. I may check out the features on LW2023 when it releases, but it will likely just be out of curiosity.
Obviously, this isn't the color the ship will actually be. In fact, these are just specular maps to add paneling in indirect lighting. The rest of the ship will be as it always was, just done with colors. I find adding paneling to everything just makes it look cluttered, so I go with about the amount of paneling they had on the TMP Enterprise.
I would like to say that finding help with Blender can be a real PITA. Sure, there's lots of help out there to be had, but sometimes you have to sift through half answers or answers that don't pertain to the version you're using. Figuring out how to do simple mapping was no different. The manual was no help, as it tends to tell you how to do 20 different things related to what you want, but none of which are what you really want. Fortunately, I'm predominately self taught in CGI, so I turned to a simple web search. I found an answer that at least got me in the right direction, then I did what I always do: trial and error. I started messing around with the mapping controls and UV editor until I got what I needed. It was actually very simple once I figured it out.
One important thing when rigging spots is to not make them overpowering. The whole idea, introduced in TMP, was to light the ship in totally dark scenes. However, in fully lit scenes, the spots really shouldn't be that visible. I think I found that balance pretty well:
Also, obviously, the spots aren't really coming from the modeled sources, anymore than they are on any other Star Trek ship from TMP through Enterprise. I could argue that the lighting rigs they do for the newer Star Trek don't work any better than the older ones, but I can't be bothered. Either way, I didn't want to go that style, with a bunch of tiny lights in an attempt to make it look real, as this ship is designed to go with original Star Trek. It's literally just the TOS Enterprise based on Alan Sinclair's blueprints with some extra details added.
I have some other stuff I did in Lightwave that I want to bring to Blender, but those will probably be rebuilds. I'll load the meshes into Lightwave and take a look at them and then decide. Even if I don't convert them, I'll still need to render orthos in LW that I can load into Blender to do new meshes. This Enterprise mesh is only 4 years old, so it still holds up to my current standards, but the other meshes I'm talking about are several years older. (circa 2013-2014)