Well, until I get some more time and experiments with the 'diorama behind the viewport' solution, I am making small boxes of approximately the right size and the boolean cutting them to fit, taking the outside faces so they don't interfere with the hull... They all look a bit bare but kind of real... most are linked and mirrored, I'll unlink some of them so I can turn the lights off... :-D
So, here's the upper part of the hull, including the CO's and XO's quarters in deck 4, on the starboard and port side gunwales, respectively, and the nice Upper Forward Observation Lounge in deck 3. There's a weird artifact with the glass material I am using, though, which makes it ugly to use from afar (it's okay when you are very close, though).
So I switched to a different material (that I call "fake viewports") which are completely transparent. They have some sheen, some reflectivity, but I cannot honestly say I see much of that, I'll have to work on materials and this kind of effects. In any case, there are no distorsions or weird reflections (or any reflection at all, apparently!) and you can see some more details and even some walls! :-)
Same image without suns. You can appreciate the rooms a bit better and the see-through blue light on deck 6, because I haven't yet gotten to that part... :-) It makes for an interesting self-illumination view, though...
Well, I got an idea for the rest of the bigger viewports, let's see if it works!
Finally someone describes this correctly. When you look at photos of the international space station in light from our sun and reflection from earth, it is really lit up. Bright. But in deep space, all you would see are the light from the windows and any running lights or engine light. But yes, in sci-fi, we want to see our beloved ships so some ambient light is added. Actually it isn't too bad because ships go into warp and then arrive at a planet that lights them up.
Finally someone describes this correctly. When you look at photos of the international space station in light from our sun and reflection from earth, it is really lit up. Bright. But in deep space, all you would see are the light from the windows and any running lights or engine light. But yes, in sci-fi, we want to see our beloved ships so some ambient light is added. Actually it isn't too bad because ships go into warp and then arrive at a planet that lights them up.
Yup! Another thing to be aware of is distances: oin screen, ships are always ridiculously close to each other, sometimes less than 200m, which for 500+m length ships is very close. A more realistic distance would be several kilometers. I'd say 10km is very close, ideally 100 or more would be safer. But there¡s no way they fit on a screen and be visible! That's why running lights are so important: they make it easier to detect you and calculate the orbit/flight path against the dark sky or against the planetary background.
One of the reasons I've moved to self-illuminating registry numbers and names: more light to be seen and it's way more efficient that pointing a lamp to the hull... ^_^
Still working on the interiors of the ship, but some details were begging attention... :-)
I changed the sensor plating material, and redid the main deflector because I wasn't satisfied with the checker pattern. Let me know if you like this one more... :-)
Still working on multiple fronts, so not really solved the rooms problem completely. I have a couple of ideas, might be wild, maybe not. In the meantime, I thought this could be interesting: a cut of the ship so you can appreciate the quarters and corridors.
You can see the individual quarters, the bigger mess hall and stuff and the port side auxiliary hangar bay control room well lit. Aft has a few rooms and long corridors with nice views
Thanks! I find the design of this class very challenging as I have to balance the expectations of a Starfleet (and decidedly Human-centric) more "classical" design with the innovations that Vulcans and Ferengi can bring to the design table, plus Engineering challenges and the sheer size of it (and the reason I will never model the Enterprise-D, I won't do that many viewports!! ). I'm having fun, no doubt, and I am learning many things, which is a win-win situation! :-D
While (slowly) advancing on other parts of the ship, I'm also tackling the Hangar bays, starting with Hangars 1 and 2 (port and starboard respectively) on the upper "saucer" and then I'll move to the main hangar down in the "beack", Hangar 3.
Not much for the time being, just enough space to comfortably hold 3 or 4 large shuttles and perform maintenance and basic repairs without the need to move them to the main hangar.
Hangar Bay 2, general view:
And detail on little details there's over there... :-)
Well, redid the auxiliary bays because they connect with the main hangar via some elevators and thus the interior maintenance doors needed to be on the forward instead of the original position.
Now we have the auxiliary bays, with 3 large shuttles and one D-Warp shuttle, and the doors to the maintenance area on the forward section.
And the main hangar, with capacity for many ships, plus the lift to the auxiliary bays so craft can be transported from one to another internally (at the forward-most part, where the square is painted on the floor, that's where the lift moves from the ceiling). There's room for, at least, 2 Runabouts, 8 large shuttles and 8 small shuttles and 4 D-Warp shuttles, plus maintenance pods, workerbees and repairs, although most smaller craft will be four decks below, on the smaller access bays.
There's something weird with the light and the material, I am getting shadows where there should be none, including that huge rectangular cuboid shadow in the second picture, or the far end aft corner of the first picture, that's illuminated like the sun light was bleeding through the hull... And the shadows come from I don't know where (or the shadows of the upper row of shuttles on the starboard side, which should not be there as light comes from the ceiling) cause there's no such object to make the shadow. Oh, well... Something weird, sure, to be investigated.
I hope to soon present my special project, it's almost ready. Basic because I don't think I can afford another extra million tris for that, so a low poly version, Very Soon Now!(tm) :-)
Well! We have a warp core! A special new dual model, designed to supply plasma to the rings in different modes, depending on the speed of flight and the duration (remember, this Vulcan Warp ring works in a similar but not quite like a 4-nacelle ship, where not all the nacelles are active at the same time. The first core prepares a first batch of M/AM collision and then sends the stream to the second one, where more M/AM happen (extra hardware and tubes not shown).
Actually, the normal mode is that every ring, in a rotation way, works by itself for a "pulse" and then next one, and so on. This makes heat dissipation very efficient, which makes the Warp coils and the whole thing much more enduring (it's harder to replace and more expensive in maintenance, so it's built to work for a very long time!). The distributing and controlling mechanism is not shown.
And this shows the position and the Antimatter loading bay on the belly of the Engineering hull. The whole Warp core system is designed to be ejected, in case of emergency, by separation from the conducting tubes and downwards.
You can also see the escape pods hatches. Yes! We have escape pods now! :-) More pictures coming!
Well, if you have looked carefully, besides the escape pods, you'll have noticed that there are more lights!
Yes, we have escape pods and more lights! :-) Escape pods, we have 70 10-person escape pods, covering the whole 468 crew members and passengers and 80 Marines, and then some more temporary guests, plus all the crafts available.
And then we have more lights, because I have finished lighting things up. It's far from perfect, but I think it makes the intended effect--I just have to adjust the Voronoi noise a bit more and it'll be perfect :-)
There are 30 escape pods on the upper primary hull, which where most of the crew works and lives, 10 on the lower primary hull, where the labs, many cargo holds and hangars are, and then 30 more on the secondary hull, 20 around Engineering, because they are kind of important, and 10 more on the tail section, to cover crew working on the sensors, weapons or other jobs in that part of the hull. There are no escape pods on the Warp ring because they are usually unattended. Even the control rooms on the "nacelles" with the Bussard ramscoops are usually empty. If someone's over there, doing maintenance or whatever while the ship is ordering a mass evacuation, they'll have to reach the available escape pods or be rescued by the shuttlecrafts transporters.
The Warp ring can be explosively 'detached' from the ship by carefully sited bolts and explosives that would automatically shut down plasma injection and forcefully break the support pylons. The main part of the ship can, then, move away via gravitic plane drive or jumping to D-Warp.
Well, next will be my special treat and then working on the main mess hall, although it's gonna be painful, lol.
I have several other project in mind, I might as well interweave. Oh, well, so much fun! :-)
Well, we got gardens! A bit lame, I know, but, hey! This is starship spacedocks, not rec&parks! ;-) Fun fact: the whole thing is called 'Arboretum' in the blender file, I am that optimistic, lol. It has 4, 5 trees, ahem... Gardens it is! :-)
Nice views outside, when orbiting a plane or nearby a cool star... :-)
Two levels, the upper has nice views of the lower one and two staircases to go up and down. We have the trees in the middle, and then one small pond (maybe with a fountain some day?), a kind of Vulcan/Zen garden with a big weird rock in the middle and not wavy thing cause I cannot make the geometry nodes to work :_P And then some zones for picnics and nice talks, grass, flowers, small paths to walk in the middle of nature... There'll probably be birds and insects and other bugs as well, but that's to be discussed with Operations and Medical... :-)
The tall walls are a bit too clean, there'll probably be some view ports around there so people can watch from outside, and maybe some hanging plants and other cool things and, well, doors to actually get in and out in both levels... but who has time to model all that stuff, huh? I'll need time, I got some more things in hands. :-P
Hope you guys can appreciate the work the grass waives and is littered with flowers (that look like, well, littered garbage, but hey!)... That was fun to do on the node editor... :-)
And I have managed to lose almost 3 million tris, I'm actually very happy...
I'll be back with the Ek'Duv class, but for the next weeks I'll be working on something cool, and then I'll work on something very cool that I need for ASR, so really cool stuff...
Well, and while I take a small rest from the Ek'Duv class cruiser--it's got so big that rendering sometimes crashes Blender--this is my next project, although I should really be working on a different one. I'll give it a go as well in the next days, probably.
The Wellington class light cruiser is an aging design and already retired from production, but still serving the Fleet as patrol ship and solar system defense heavy hitter. It's the latest iteration of the Ambassador class, and I have decided to base it off Probert's Ambassador design. I am using several different images off the internet, including some cool Narendra-class images by Enethrin off DevianArt.
Something to note is that many existing Wellington class cruisers have been receiving upgrades for the last 20 years or so and, while old, they are not significantly less powerful that similar, more modern designs. There's an experimental ship, the USS Akagi that's received many changes, including an adaptation of Sovereign-type nacelles from the Kirov class (the ILN-600 series) which make her considerably faster at Warp than other ships of the class. While there's an experimental D-Warp design that should be easy to retrofit on the Wellington class, it has never been deemed productive. As a consequence, they don't have D-Warp and, therefore, gravitic planing drive for impulse speeds, so we'll see the first design with old style impulse engines... :-)
We will be depicting the USS Tovarish, NCC-4621, Captain Yin Xiangyun commanding, currently assigned to Starbase Magellan, home of the Task Force Horizon in the Kryadala system, investigating and protecting the Iconian orbital door around Akata III. Enjoy! :-)
OK, impulse engine(s) ready (I am assuming saucer separation is built in in these very late models, so one for the saucer and another for the stardrive section) and also a first rough sketch of the bridge module and both main (saucer) and auxiliary (stardrive) hangar bays.
The two shuttles on the aux hangar bay are small personal shuttles, while the four ones on the main hangar are actually shuttlepods. The main hangar will be big enough to harbor a Runabout if necessary, but it's not part of the standard craft complement of the ships, although it may vary with the missions.
And another angle to be able to appreciate the beauty of this design... :-)
Ah! That's pretty cool! Yeah, I can imagine Jeff Robb based his design on Probert's original design as well, but he did add some interesting changes, very well done!
Thanks for your comment and the links, very much appreciated!
OK, I'm trying a new workflow with this model, trying to be systematic in the geometry and then refining on each iteration. So! The dreaded paneling! I'm using the edge+solid+bevel trick with hard edges, it's pretty cool on the saucer! The stardrive section will be a bit more problematic, but hey! What's life without a challenge, huh? :-)
Also, the navigational deflector and sensor dish. This one was tricky, but I think it's quite acceptable so far!
Now more paneling so I can concentrate in the next round of details!
Well, we have panels and phasers! Although I'm not happy with the saucer, we'll see... As for the phasers, the trick has saved me several millions faces, I'm stupefied.
Worked on the bridge and the planetary sensor dome under the saucer as well, it was fun... :-)
Well, let's go to the top! Bridge! Adapted from several different Ambassador class bridges all over the Net, mostly inspired by the USS Powell's bridge on Cygnus-x1. I still think most blueprints depict a huge Whovian bridge that's bigger on the inside... Mine kind of fits, but I see so much wasted space it looks unnatural... Oh, well...
The starboard door by the turbolift will lead to the Captain's Day Cabin and the Briefing room, which can also be reached from the port side turbolift directly. The port side door lead to the bridge head.
We have the CO and XO dominating the center of the bridge, then Helm and Navigation, on the sides Operations and Communications, behind them Tactical, and then Sciences and Engineering stations, plus a number of auxiliary systems on the walls all around the bridge.
The thing in the middle of the front is a multi display with holographic projectors, that can be used to show 3d information, calls and other stuff.
And yes, the carpet is green. I might change it but I think green is soothing and fresh, it should make long shifts less tiring... :-)
Posts
So, here's the upper part of the hull, including the CO's and XO's quarters in deck 4, on the starboard and port side gunwales, respectively, and the nice Upper Forward Observation Lounge in deck 3. There's a weird artifact with the glass material I am using, though, which makes it ugly to use from afar (it's okay when you are very close, though).
So I switched to a different material (that I call "fake viewports") which are completely transparent. They have some sheen, some reflectivity, but I cannot honestly say I see much of that, I'll have to work on materials and this kind of effects. In any case, there are no distorsions or weird reflections (or any reflection at all, apparently!) and you can see some more details and even some walls! :-)
Same image without suns. You can appreciate the rooms a bit better and the see-through blue light on deck 6, because I haven't yet gotten to that part... :-) It makes for an interesting self-illumination view, though...
Well, I got an idea for the rest of the bigger viewports, let's see if it works!
Cheers!
Yup! Another thing to be aware of is distances: oin screen, ships are always ridiculously close to each other, sometimes less than 200m, which for 500+m length ships is very close. A more realistic distance would be several kilometers. I'd say 10km is very close, ideally 100 or more would be safer. But there¡s no way they fit on a screen and be visible! That's why running lights are so important: they make it easier to detect you and calculate the orbit/flight path against the dark sky or against the planetary background.
One of the reasons I've moved to self-illuminating registry numbers and names: more light to be seen and it's way more efficient that pointing a lamp to the hull... ^_^
I changed the sensor plating material, and redid the main deflector because I wasn't satisfied with the checker pattern. Let me know if you like this one more... :-)
Cheers!
Self lighting for the upper part of the primary hull and the big Mess Hall with the views :-)
And carpets for the quarters! They are definitely spartan, but hey!
Here we can see the upper part of the Engineering hull with the illuminated rooms and corridors.
I'm working on a cool thing (I think!) and I'll be able to show it, I hope you'll like it!
In the meantime... Cheers!
You can see the individual quarters, the bigger mess hall and stuff and the port side auxiliary hangar bay control room well lit. Aft has a few rooms and long corridors with nice views
General view:
Engineering hull, port side:
And Engineering hull, starboard side:
Cheers!
Thanks! I find the design of this class very challenging as I have to balance the expectations of a Starfleet (and decidedly Human-centric) more "classical" design with the innovations that Vulcans and Ferengi can bring to the design table, plus Engineering challenges and the sheer size of it (and the reason I will never model the Enterprise-D, I won't do that many viewports!!
Cheers!
Not much for the time being, just enough space to comfortably hold 3 or 4 large shuttles and perform maintenance and basic repairs without the need to move them to the main hangar.
Hangar Bay 2, general view:
And detail on little details there's over there... :-)
Cheers!
Now we have the auxiliary bays, with 3 large shuttles and one D-Warp shuttle, and the doors to the maintenance area on the forward section.
And the main hangar, with capacity for many ships, plus the lift to the auxiliary bays so craft can be transported from one to another internally (at the forward-most part, where the square is painted on the floor, that's where the lift moves from the ceiling). There's room for, at least, 2 Runabouts, 8 large shuttles and 8 small shuttles and 4 D-Warp shuttles, plus maintenance pods, workerbees and repairs, although most smaller craft will be four decks below, on the smaller access bays.
There's something weird with the light and the material, I am getting shadows where there should be none, including that huge rectangular cuboid shadow in the second picture, or the far end aft corner of the first picture, that's illuminated like the sun light was bleeding through the hull... And the shadows come from I don't know where (or the shadows of the upper row of shuttles on the starboard side, which should not be there as light comes from the ceiling) cause there's no such object to make the shadow. Oh, well... Something weird, sure, to be investigated.
I hope to soon present my special project, it's almost ready. Basic because I don't think I can afford another extra million tris for that, so a low poly version, Very Soon Now!(tm) :-)
Cheers!
Actually, the normal mode is that every ring, in a rotation way, works by itself for a "pulse" and then next one, and so on. This makes heat dissipation very efficient, which makes the Warp coils and the whole thing much more enduring (it's harder to replace and more expensive in maintenance, so it's built to work for a very long time!). The distributing and controlling mechanism is not shown.
And this shows the position and the Antimatter loading bay on the belly of the Engineering hull. The whole Warp core system is designed to be ejected, in case of emergency, by separation from the conducting tubes and downwards.
You can also see the escape pods hatches. Yes! We have escape pods now! :-) More pictures coming!
Cheers!
Yes, we have escape pods and more lights! :-) Escape pods, we have 70 10-person escape pods, covering the whole 468 crew members and passengers and 80 Marines, and then some more temporary guests, plus all the crafts available.
And then we have more lights, because I have finished lighting things up. It's far from perfect, but I think it makes the intended effect--I just have to adjust the Voronoi noise a bit more and it'll be perfect :-)
There are 30 escape pods on the upper primary hull, which where most of the crew works and lives, 10 on the lower primary hull, where the labs, many cargo holds and hangars are, and then 30 more on the secondary hull, 20 around Engineering, because they are kind of important, and 10 more on the tail section, to cover crew working on the sensors, weapons or other jobs in that part of the hull. There are no escape pods on the Warp ring because they are usually unattended. Even the control rooms on the "nacelles" with the Bussard ramscoops are usually empty. If someone's over there, doing maintenance or whatever while the ship is ordering a mass evacuation, they'll have to reach the available escape pods or be rescued by the shuttlecrafts transporters.
The Warp ring can be explosively 'detached' from the ship by carefully sited bolts and explosives that would automatically shut down plasma injection and forcefully break the support pylons. The main part of the ship can, then, move away via gravitic plane drive or jumping to D-Warp.
Well, next will be my special treat and then working on the main mess hall, although it's gonna be painful, lol.
I have several other project in mind, I might as well interweave. Oh, well, so much fun! :-)
Cheers!
Nice views outside, when orbiting a plane or nearby a cool star... :-)
Two levels, the upper has nice views of the lower one and two staircases to go up and down. We have the trees in the middle, and then one small pond (maybe with a fountain some day?), a kind of Vulcan/Zen garden with a big weird rock in the middle and not wavy thing cause I cannot make the geometry nodes to work :_P And then some zones for picnics and nice talks, grass, flowers, small paths to walk in the middle of nature... There'll probably be birds and insects and other bugs as well, but that's to be discussed with Operations and Medical... :-)
The tall walls are a bit too clean, there'll probably be some view ports around there so people can watch from outside, and maybe some hanging plants and other cool things and, well, doors to actually get in and out in both levels... but who has time to model all that stuff, huh? I'll need time, I got some more things in hands. :-P
Hope you guys can appreciate the work the grass waives and is littered with flowers (that look like, well, littered garbage, but hey!)... That was fun to do on the node editor... :-)
And I have managed to lose almost 3 million tris, I'm actually very happy...
I'll be back with the Ek'Duv class, but for the next weeks I'll be working on something cool, and then I'll work on something very cool that I need for ASR, so really cool stuff...
Cheers!
The Wellington class light cruiser is an aging design and already retired from production, but still serving the Fleet as patrol ship and solar system defense heavy hitter. It's the latest iteration of the Ambassador class, and I have decided to base it off Probert's Ambassador design. I am using several different images off the internet, including some cool Narendra-class images by Enethrin off DevianArt.
Something to note is that many existing Wellington class cruisers have been receiving upgrades for the last 20 years or so and, while old, they are not significantly less powerful that similar, more modern designs. There's an experimental ship, the USS Akagi that's received many changes, including an adaptation of Sovereign-type nacelles from the Kirov class (the ILN-600 series) which make her considerably faster at Warp than other ships of the class. While there's an experimental D-Warp design that should be easy to retrofit on the Wellington class, it has never been deemed productive. As a consequence, they don't have D-Warp and, therefore, gravitic planing drive for impulse speeds, so we'll see the first design with old style impulse engines... :-)
We will be depicting the USS Tovarish, NCC-4621, Captain Yin Xiangyun commanding, currently assigned to Starbase Magellan, home of the Task Force Horizon in the Kryadala system, investigating and protecting the Iconian orbital door around Akata III. Enjoy! :-)
The two shuttles on the aux hangar bay are small personal shuttles, while the four ones on the main hangar are actually shuttlepods. The main hangar will be big enough to harbor a Runabout if necessary, but it's not part of the standard craft complement of the ships, although it may vary with the missions.
And another angle to be able to appreciate the beauty of this design... :-)
Cheers!
https://www.treknology.org/new/council-jef1.jpg
https://www.treknology.org/new/council-jef2.jpg
https://www.treknology.org/history3.htm
Ah! That's pretty cool! Yeah, I can imagine Jeff Robb based his design on Probert's original design as well, but he did add some interesting changes, very well done!
Thanks for your comment and the links, very much appreciated!
Yeah, she is! :-)
Thanks for your comment!
Also, the navigational deflector and sensor dish. This one was tricky, but I think it's quite acceptable so far!
Now more paneling so I can concentrate in the next round of details!
Cheers!
Worked on the bridge and the planetary sensor dome under the saucer as well, it was fun... :-)
Oh, well :-)
Cheers!
The starboard door by the turbolift will lead to the Captain's Day Cabin and the Briefing room, which can also be reached from the port side turbolift directly. The port side door lead to the bridge head.
We have the CO and XO dominating the center of the bridge, then Helm and Navigation, on the sides Operations and Communications, behind them Tactical, and then Sciences and Engineering stations, plus a number of auxiliary systems on the walls all around the bridge.
The thing in the middle of the front is a multi display with holographic projectors, that can be used to show 3d information, calls and other stuff.
And yes, the carpet is green. I might change it but I think green is soothing and fresh, it should make long shifts less tiring... :-)
Cheers!