Another thing I just thought of with the idea that some decks face the other way is the issue with the turbolfits. We know they go both vertically and horizontally, but having them go to decks that face the other way is a problem. The car would have to have its own artificial gravity generator and be able to flip around in the tube. Not counting any weird stuff on Dicsovery, etc. with floating cars in a giant chasm, we've seen turboshafts more than once in Star Trek. In the TNG episode Disaster, Picard and some kids had to climb the shaft. And they've also been shown on Voyager. With the way the cars ride in the track, there would have to be something like a switch track to flip the car.
Then there's the problem of the jefferies tubes. Varying gravity fields would mess up anyone climbing a vertical tube.
It's not that the idea of having decks facing different ways in the ship is a bad one, it's just that Star Trek hasn't established anything of the kind, and some of the stuff they have established actually counters the idea. They have established, however, that people apparently like windows in the floor.
As far as the turbolifts inverting they do have inertial dampeners. I don't know. It was just a thought because the windows on the bottom of 1701 D have always been a big question for me.
As far as the turbolifts inverting they do have inertial dampeners. I don't know. It was just a thought because the windows on the bottom of 1701 D have always been a big question for me.
Yeah, the windows are weird. But, at the same time, the windows do offer a vantage point that you wouldn't get otherwise. There was an early episode of TNG (Justice) where Picard had Geordi go to a lounge and look out a window to have a real look at something, rather than looking at it on the viewscreen, which of course wasn't a window. In that case, he just went down a deck or two to look out the window because the object was directly in front of the Enterprise. But, say an object was sort of below the ship and someone needed a real look at it, those windows would do the trick. *shrugs*
As I think about it, deck by deck gravity plating, if powerful enough to hold someone down at their normal weight would probably make it possible to walk on the ceiling of the floor below it. I dunno. We haven't invented it yet so maybe it can be directional.
As I think about it, deck by deck gravity plating, if powerful enough to hold someone down at their normal weight would probably make it possible to walk on the ceiling of the floor below it. I dunno. We haven't invented it yet so maybe it can be directional.
It's been established that there's an artificial gravity field generator that creates the AG in the ship. In the Enterprise pilot episode "Broken Bow," Trip finds Travis upside down in what he called the ship's "Sweet spot," which is supposed to be halfway between the AG generator and the bow plate. (one of those "oh yeah, we're in space" moments.) So, I think it's supposed to be more of a field effect that affects all of the decks the same way. But, who really knows? Like I said, it's not something that's really brought up a lot in Trek. I think it's one of those things the writers were probably told to stay away from due to the expense of making people float.
Since this ship is closer to the size of Voyager than the Enterprise-D, I'm adding details based on Voyager. I did some coloration on the spine (behind the bridge) based on Voyager. Voyager also has those bumps around its grid lines, which I thought would be great to add to this ship. I also did the broken red lines around the phaser strips and I added a bunch of little access panels to the hull. I'll be adding more "decals" like the access panels as I continue to do this.
Very nice. Just having talked about the necessity of doing tyni details I think it really adds value to your model.
One question, how did you lit your bussards so evenly red? Thats what I initially wanted for the bussards on the Endeavour. I'm happy with what I came up in the end and I don't plan to change it but still would be nice to know how it could be achieved.
Very nice. Just having talked about the necessity of doing tyni details I think it really adds value to your model.
One question, how did you lit your bussards so evenly red? Thats what I initially wanted for the bussards on the Endeavour. I'm happy with what I came up in the end and I don't plan to change it but still would be nice to know how it could be achieved.
Mostly just dumb luck.
Here's a peek at my incredibly simple dome material:
And this is what the inside looks like:
The "metal" bits are just shiny metallic materials.
Also, I don't know how much it makes a difference, but the dome isn't just a flat faced modified sphere, it has some dimension and inward facing faces:
Worthwhile stuff Chris. It's really coming alive. It's a great design and deserves it. She's a keeper.
Thanks a lot. I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out, especially since I've never done a ship in the TNG style before. I've mainly done Pre-TOS, TOS, TOS-movie and Post-TNG ships.
Looking real good. You've really brought life to the ship. Are you going to do anything with the nacelle connectors? They look a little bare now compared to the rest of the ship.
I installed a different Linux distribution, one I've never tried before. It's a Dutch distribution called EndeavourOS and it's pretty cool so far. It's the third most popular Linux OS on Distro Watch in the last 6 months. It's based on Arch Linux, so I'm trying it on my PC that has the Intel GPU in it, since I find that works with Blender on Arch-based distributions, like Manjaro. I got it all installed and I've been having "fun" installing software. It doesn't use graphical package management, so I have to use the terminal to install software, which is far from my favorite thing. After being miffed about that at first, I've decided to stick with it because, as a good Linux user, I know I should really do more with the terminal anyway.
The problem is, my Blender files, including the up to date Rycon, are on my other computer, so I have to boot that one back up to get the files. But, if things keep going well with EndeavourOS, I'll probably switch that computer from Fedora to EndeavourOS as well. It's not that I don't like Fedora, but using a nice rolling release distribution like Arch means that I don't have to reinstall every time a new version comes out.
Looking real good. You've really brought life to the ship. Are you going to do anything with the nacelle connectors? They look a little bare now compared to the rest of the ship.
Yeah, I might have to put some vents or something on them. Definitely some access hatches and other little bits.
Yeah, but you have to realize how highly critical I am of my own work. I've been known to start hating a project as I'm working on it and people are telling me it looks great.
I like the "case in point" ship. Yeah, maybe a few too many panel gaps (like you said in this thread) but the overall design was a winner. And you appeared to be removing some of the gaps anyway. I hope you didn't destroy the model.
I don't think I told you but I started trying to make a Constellation Class, even though it wasn't my favorite ship. I did it for two reasons. 1) like I've said on this forum before, I will often not appreciate a ship until I make one myself and the design kinda wins me over. And 2) I really liked yours and that was significant player in winning me over.
My Luna Class (Titan) was a ship I started a long time ago (just the saucer and roughed in engines). I finally jumped in to finish it. Same with the Constellation Class. I started one and then fell away for a while. I also have a Discovery like ship called the Glen that I wanted to make. I guess it is called the "Crossfield Class." Typically what happens is I get to a difficult portion of the model and bail because it is just too hard. I come back later when I think of an easier way to do the difficult portion. For instance with the Luna class, those banana shaped arms on top of the saucer on either side of the bridge first seemed like a barrier. Now that I'm past them, "Well that wasn't that bad."
My Luna Class (Titan) was a ship I started a long time ago (just the saucer and roughed in engines). I finally jumped in to finish it. Same with the Constellation Class. I started one and then fell away for a while. I also have a Discovery like ship called the Glen that I wanted to make. I guess it is called the "Crossfield Class." Typically what happens is I get to a difficult portion of the model and bail because it is just too hard. I come back later when I think of an easier way to do the difficult portion. For instance with the Luna class, those banana shaped arms on top of the saucer on either side of the bridge first seemed like a barrier. Now that I'm past them, "Well that wasn't that bad."
I do that sometimes too, start on something and then let it "simmer" for a while. Here's one I worked on for a few days last year, never showed anyone, and it's sat for a while:
I've built the ship before, but it was a long time ago in Truespace. I need to work on that some more.
Man, Constellation-class. One of my favorites. I need to do a new one sometime. I'd love to see yours.
I actually have that ship. You shared it with me, although no doubt an older one. It would be a real pleasure to watch you finish the one above.
I checked my Constellation and it's just a roughed in saucer and some 1701 refit engines without the changes the Constellation has on the back end of the engines.
I'm going to post some images of the Glenn in my Star Trek thread where the Luna is.
I actually have that ship. You shared it with me, although no doubt an older one. It would be a real pleasure to watch you finish the one above.
It's actually still available over on 3D Gladiators, along with some of my other older Truespace stuff.
In fact, I might need to raid their models section just to get some of my old stuff back. I might be able to convert them to Blender somehow, at least to use as the basis for some new models.
After I reset my password on 3D Gladiators, I nabbed a couple of my old models. Then the fun began.
To say it was a long road getting from there to here is a massive understatement. For starters, for those who don't know, no program on Earth likes importing Truespace objects. It just doesn't happen. So, you have to load them into Truespace and export them to a format that something can import. So, I actually managed to find a site with a download of the .exe of Truespace 7.6, the last version ever released. I have an era appropriate computer with Windows XP on it, so I managed to get the program installed on there:
Incidentally, it's been years since I last used Truespace and 7.6 is by far the worst version. I managed to find my dongle for Lightwave 9 and 10, so I installed Lightwave because I know I've imported TS stuff into Lightwave before. But, it turns out that I don't remember how the hell I did that. There aren't a lot of export options in TS, it think I may have used .obj format before, but that was on an older (and superior) version of TS. No .obj in TS7.6. I tried .3DS, but no joy there. TS kept telling me it was "out of memory." (on a system with 4GB of DDR3, which is the maximum for a 32-bit operating system) After that, I decided to try an old ass version of Blender, because I remember a version of Blender at one point having a .cob import option. So, I tied Blender 2.49b, no luck there. (obviously, the XP computer doesn't have internet, so I had to do any downloading on Linux) I did notice it claimed it would import AutoCAD DXF format, which was also an export option in Truespace. Well, the import into 2.49b didn't go so well, but I threw the files onto a flash drive and transferred them to my Linux computer, and it turns out Blender 4.1 imported them just fine.
And, after all of that, it's not like I'm even going to use these models as models. I plan to use them as references for building more models. I especially find with the Constellation-class that I don't want to figure out some of those shapes again for the umpteenth time (I've seriously built that ship at least 4 times) and having a 3D model where I figured it out already to use as a reference will be helpful. The other ship is one I was thinking of recently that I couldn't remember how I designed it.
I've had it for a few years now and it's a nice computer. I actually paid about $30 more than they're selling them for now. It also has XP on it, but I use my XP specific machine for XP. The XP computer I built has a Gigabyte AM3+ motherboard, an AMD FX-6300 processor, 4GB DDR3 and I just added an EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 750 TI to it. Needless to say, it would melt that WYSE computer. But, the WYSE computer works great for what I use it for, which is running Windows 98 and earlier software that won't run on XP. One thing I like about the WYSE thin clients over era appropriate technology is that it's new technology. The person who set it up and sells them does certain things to them to make them run Windows 98. (read the product description) Anyway, I love that little computer. In order to run CD-Rom software, I have a Dell external DVD drive that hooks up via USB. And, for games that work better with a controller, I have a classic Microsoft Sidewinder Plug and Play USB controller.
Not even a Windows user and that menu is making me jealous. Had a couple of those Star Trek games (I still technically have them, the CD-ROMs are still in a binder b/c I never thought to sell them).
Not even a Windows user and that menu is making me jealous. Had a couple of those Star Trek games (I still technically have them, the CD-ROMs are still in a binder b/c I never thought to sell them).
I only like old Windows. XP and 98 are both good. And, I mainly like them for the classic software. Some of the stuff I've had for over 25 years, others I've gotten more recently from Ebay.
I was messing around with Star Trek: Captain's Chair earlier on the Win98 machine. That's one I've had for eons. Simon & Schuster Interactive, from 1997. It uses Apple QuickTime and you can mess around on the bridges of the 1701, 1701-D, 1701-E, Defiant and Voyager. You can press buttons and do all kinds of things. I don't care how much more advanced software has gotten, that program is still good fun.
Here's a peek at my incredibly simple dome material:
(...)
Also, I don't know how much it makes a difference, but the dome isn't just a flat faced modified sphere, it has some dimension and inward facing faces:
Thanks a lot for your response. It does indeed look pretty much like what I tried. But I just got white spots from the light sources. Which sequencer do you use? And what do you mean by 'dimension'? 'Cause inward facing faces I do have as well.
I noticed that Blender adds a distortion effect behind the curved glass with the default glass settings, which I wasn't fond of. I played with settings and got rid of it.
I've found that Blender's glass shader doesn't work properly with a single sided object. I think it calculates the refraction based on normals, and if you only have one side of faces it effectively doubles the refraction strength because the rays don't have a second surface to refract with. Try the default settings after adding a solidify modifier to the windows.
Here's a peek at my incredibly simple dome material:
(...)
Also, I don't know how much it makes a difference, but the dome isn't just a flat faced modified sphere, it has some dimension and inward facing faces:
Thanks a lot for your response. It does indeed look pretty much like what I tried. But I just got white spots from the light sources. Which sequencer do you use? And what do you mean by 'dimension'? 'Cause inward facing faces I do have as well.
Sequencer? I don't know what you mean. Unless you mean render engine, I use Cycles.
By dimension, I only mean that I have a bit of "thickness" to the object, it's not just a series of flat faces. There's an inside like there is with a real piece of glass.
I noticed that Blender adds a distortion effect behind the curved glass with the default glass settings, which I wasn't fond of. I played with settings and got rid of it.
I've found that Blender's glass shader doesn't work properly with a single sided object. I think it calculates the refraction based on normals, and if you only have one side of faces it effectively doubles the refraction strength because the rays don't have a second surface to refract with. Try the default settings after adding a solidify modifier to the windows.
Heh, my windows are very much a part of my hull. So, if I add a solidify modifier to them, I have to add it to the whole piece.
However, I most certainly appreciate the suggestion. I'm always willing to learn more stuff, especially from someone who knows as much about Blender as you do.
For my starship windows, I find that lowering the IOR setting makes the piece more transparent and gets rid of the distortion. Since you never really see the glass on Star Trek windows (production secret, the sets actually have no glass to avoid unwanted reflections) I don't worry about it actually looking like glass, it just has to be transparent. So, lowering the IOR down to 1.010 and the Roughness down to 0 creates a piece that's almost totally see through. With a IOR of 1, it would disappear entirely. This makes the windows totally transparent. Though, at that point, I could just about delete the glass entirely, if I could get past the idea of my ship just having a bunch of holes in it.
Now, if I were to do something like a glass container, car windshield or cockpit canopy, I will definitely re-visit your suggestion, as in that case I would definitely want to see the glass.
Posts
Then there's the problem of the jefferies tubes. Varying gravity fields would mess up anyone climbing a vertical tube.
It's not that the idea of having decks facing different ways in the ship is a bad one, it's just that Star Trek hasn't established anything of the kind, and some of the stuff they have established actually counters the idea. They have established, however, that people apparently like windows in the floor.
Yeah, the windows are weird. But, at the same time, the windows do offer a vantage point that you wouldn't get otherwise. There was an early episode of TNG (Justice) where Picard had Geordi go to a lounge and look out a window to have a real look at something, rather than looking at it on the viewscreen, which of course wasn't a window. In that case, he just went down a deck or two to look out the window because the object was directly in front of the Enterprise. But, say an object was sort of below the ship and someone needed a real look at it, those windows would do the trick. *shrugs*
It's been established that there's an artificial gravity field generator that creates the AG in the ship. In the Enterprise pilot episode "Broken Bow," Trip finds Travis upside down in what he called the ship's "Sweet spot," which is supposed to be halfway between the AG generator and the bow plate. (one of those "oh yeah, we're in space" moments.) So, I think it's supposed to be more of a field effect that affects all of the decks the same way. But, who really knows? Like I said, it's not something that's really brought up a lot in Trek. I think it's one of those things the writers were probably told to stay away from due to the expense of making people float.
One question, how did you lit your bussards so evenly red? Thats what I initially wanted for the bussards on the Endeavour. I'm happy with what I came up in the end and I don't plan to change it but still would be nice to know how it could be achieved.
Mostly just dumb luck.
Here's a peek at my incredibly simple dome material:
And this is what the inside looks like:
The "metal" bits are just shiny metallic materials.
Also, I don't know how much it makes a difference, but the dome isn't just a flat faced modified sphere, it has some dimension and inward facing faces:
Thanks a lot. I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out, especially since I've never done a ship in the TNG style before. I've mainly done Pre-TOS, TOS, TOS-movie and Post-TNG ships.
The problem is, my Blender files, including the up to date Rycon, are on my other computer, so I have to boot that one back up to get the files.
Yeah, I might have to put some vents or something on them. Definitely some access hatches and other little bits.
Uh... yeah! We all are.
Yeah, but you have to realize how highly critical I am of my own work. I've been known to start hating a project as I'm working on it and people are telling me it looks great.
Case in point:
https://forums.scifi-meshes.com/discussion/10001327/constitution-ish#latest
I don't think I told you but I started trying to make a Constellation Class, even though it wasn't my favorite ship. I did it for two reasons. 1) like I've said on this forum before, I will often not appreciate a ship until I make one myself and the design kinda wins me over. And 2) I really liked yours and that was significant player in winning me over.
Nah, it still exists:
It's in the same state it was in the last time I worked on it.
I do that sometimes too, start on something and then let it "simmer" for a while. Here's one I worked on for a few days last year, never showed anyone, and it's sat for a while:
I've built the ship before, but it was a long time ago in Truespace. I need to work on that some more.
Man, Constellation-class. One of my favorites. I need to do a new one sometime. I'd love to see yours.
I checked my Constellation and it's just a roughed in saucer and some 1701 refit engines without the changes the Constellation has on the back end of the engines.
I'm going to post some images of the Glenn in my Star Trek thread where the Luna is.
It's actually still available over on 3D Gladiators, along with some of my other older Truespace stuff.
In fact, I might need to raid their models section just to get some of my old stuff back.
To say it was a long road getting from there to here is a massive understatement. For starters, for those who don't know, no program on Earth likes importing Truespace objects. It just doesn't happen. So, you have to load them into Truespace and export them to a format that something can import. So, I actually managed to find a site with a download of the .exe of Truespace 7.6, the last version ever released. I have an era appropriate computer with Windows XP on it, so I managed to get the program installed on there:
Incidentally, it's been years since I last used Truespace and 7.6 is by far the worst version. I managed to find my dongle for Lightwave 9 and 10, so I installed Lightwave because I know I've imported TS stuff into Lightwave before. But, it turns out that I don't remember how the hell I did that. There aren't a lot of export options in TS, it think I may have used .obj format before, but that was on an older (and superior) version of TS. No .obj in TS7.6. I tried .3DS, but no joy there. TS kept telling me it was "out of memory." (on a system with 4GB of DDR3, which is the maximum for a 32-bit operating system) After that, I decided to try an old ass version of Blender, because I remember a version of Blender at one point having a .cob import option. So, I tied Blender 2.49b, no luck there. (obviously, the XP computer doesn't have internet, so I had to do any downloading on Linux) I did notice it claimed it would import AutoCAD DXF format, which was also an export option in Truespace. Well, the import into 2.49b didn't go so well, but I threw the files onto a flash drive and transferred them to my Linux computer, and it turns out Blender 4.1 imported them just fine.
And, after all of that, it's not like I'm even going to use these models as models. I plan to use them as references for building more models. I especially find with the Constellation-class that I don't want to figure out some of those shapes again for the umpteenth time (I've seriously built that ship at least 4 times) and having a 3D model where I figured it out already to use as a reference will be helpful. The other ship is one I was thinking of recently that I couldn't remember how I designed it.
(lots of classic Star Trek software on there)
If anybody is interested, this is what it is:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/352694961027
I've had it for a few years now and it's a nice computer. I actually paid about $30 more than they're selling them for now. It also has XP on it, but I use my XP specific machine for XP. The XP computer I built has a Gigabyte AM3+ motherboard, an AMD FX-6300 processor, 4GB DDR3 and I just added an EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 750 TI to it. Needless to say, it would melt that WYSE computer.
Not really, though I do appreciate the offer. They're actually pretty clean, just some flipped faces. I still want to rebuild them, though.
I only like old Windows. XP and 98 are both good. And, I mainly like them for the classic software. Some of the stuff I've had for over 25 years, others I've gotten more recently from Ebay.
I was messing around with Star Trek: Captain's Chair earlier on the Win98 machine. That's one I've had for eons. Simon & Schuster Interactive, from 1997. It uses Apple QuickTime and you can mess around on the bridges of the 1701, 1701-D, 1701-E, Defiant and Voyager. You can press buttons and do all kinds of things. I don't care how much more advanced software has gotten, that program is still good fun.
Thanks a lot for your response. It does indeed look pretty much like what I tried. But I just got white spots from the light sources. Which sequencer do you use? And what do you mean by 'dimension'? 'Cause inward facing faces I do have as well.
Sequencer? I don't know what you mean. Unless you mean render engine, I use Cycles.
By dimension, I only mean that I have a bit of "thickness" to the object, it's not just a series of flat faces. There's an inside like there is with a real piece of glass.
Heh, my windows are very much a part of my hull. So, if I add a solidify modifier to them, I have to add it to the whole piece.
However, I most certainly appreciate the suggestion. I'm always willing to learn more stuff, especially from someone who knows as much about Blender as you do.
For my starship windows, I find that lowering the IOR setting makes the piece more transparent and gets rid of the distortion. Since you never really see the glass on Star Trek windows (production secret, the sets actually have no glass to avoid unwanted reflections) I don't worry about it actually looking like glass, it just has to be transparent. So, lowering the IOR down to 1.010 and the Roughness down to 0 creates a piece that's almost totally see through. With a IOR of 1, it would disappear entirely. This makes the windows totally transparent. Though, at that point, I could just about delete the glass entirely, if I could get past the idea of my ship just having a bunch of holes in it.
Now, if I were to do something like a glass container, car windshield or cockpit canopy, I will definitely re-visit your suggestion, as in that case I would definitely want to see the glass.