It's time to start my own thread. Since a longt time, I had the dream to create my own Star Trek interiors and I have always admired artists like Tadeo D’Oria, Sean Robertson or Donny Versiga and their perfect works. A while ago I finally started learning Blender myself, believing that I would never be able to model an entire bridge. I initially followed an online course and then needed something more “trekkier” to try my hand at. I finally found Sean's TFF bridge part model in the release section of this forum and started having fun with it. Learning by doing, I finally worked my way from detail to detail and learned something new with each object. At this point, thank you Sean for providing your model, which basically opened the world of 3D modeling to me!
My first bridge should be based quite closely on Sean's model and I found a Phobos class ship to be quite suitable for it. I chose the USS Deimos, a sister ship to the prototype. For it’s bridge I chose an Excelsior-like design, which I wanted to give a slight lost era feel to by adding some carpet in a TFF shape. The TUC-like ceiling was completely modeled from scratch.
While the Ergoform chairs are also from Sean, I used the captain's chair from Falke. The movie Okudagrams come from
http://www.lcars.org.uk/. These displays were created by Adge Cutler, who kindly allowed me to use them for my work.
Long story short, here are the first results of my work. I hope you like it and look forward to feedback!
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Sean is definitely a great guy to learn from. He's always been very generous with sharing his work.
One suggestion I'd have is to use a WeightedNormal modifier on all pieces, you can see on the sixth image the central ceiling spoke having what I think are some wonky normals.
lol, definitely don't consider my work perfect, I don't; I appreciate the sentiment though. Looking forward to what you do next!
Interesting concept, this directly gives me new ideas about what to do next ;-)
However, there are also many examples in the Trek canon where the color code of the interiors would not fit into these classifications.
Thanks, that was exactly the idea behind the selection of colors and materials.
Thank you for the compliment!
Regarding the ceiling spoke: I noticed the error too, but I had no idea what could be causing the artifact. But I knew that at least you would notice it ;-)
Thanks for the tip, I will try to fix the error.
Feel free to comment.
We call those smoothing errors and they do crop up. They can be caused by a number of things. Sometimes it's just non planar faces, other times it's just due to having a mixture of flat and rounded surfaces. If it's the latter, one thing you can do to quickly squash those is, in object mode, select your part, hit the "object" menu and select "Shade Smooth by Angle." This usually defaults to 30 degrees, but you can customize the amount of degrees if it still doesn't look right. If it's caused by non planar faces, sometimes triangulating the faces will help, other times you've got to do things like use that Weighted Normals modifier that Rekkert mentioned.
Thanks, this really helps. At the moment I do not have time to dive into this, but I will definately try to fix this.
That's nice of you! But I don't want to take credit for other people's work here. Please remember that most of the modeling work was done by Sean. I've created comparison renders that show the set from the same angle to demonstrate where I started over a year ago.
I’ve also changed the rendering resolution to a 16:9 format and increased the render quality, which better highlights many details.
You're right. The bridge would also fit well with the Lexington.
I already have an idea for a bridge of the USS Lexington from the old Starfleet Command game (http://www.ussalbion.co.uk/lexington.html) The ships are quite similar.
Thanks a lot!
After completing the Deimos Bridge (at least for now), I wanted to evolve the aesthetic a little more towards TUC. I initially considered doing the Enterprise-A bridge, but decided to keep the basic TFF layout for now. I removed the carpet, modeled the TUC captains platform and the outer side of the lower circle. The TUC/TFF helm console was created from scratch - quite a nightmare and still not perfect, but I'm happy with the result. I also modeled the TUC front railing and adapted the viewscreen area fitting to the Ent-A. In Addition, I changed the TUC bulkheads between the side station with the TFF console dividers which are also used in the rear area.
The result is a TUC bridge in the TFF layout. In my head canon this is the bridge of the USS Churchil in the year 2290:
With your Lexington-class bridge, out of curiosity, would it have the TFF / TUC Ent-A helm/nav or the Excelsior/TNG helm/nav? I'd prefer the latter for that. I'm a bit surprised you went with that for the Phobos - I was more expecting the Ent-A one.
Yes, I remember that bridge and thought the open conference room concept was pretty cool. I didn't remember it being the Churchill though. Basically, this current TFF/TUC bridge could fit any other Starfleet ship of that era. I think every Trekkie has his own idea of which bridge fits which ship ;-)
The Lexington bridge would definitely have Exc/TNG stations and would have many similarities to the TUC Excelsior and my Deimos bridge.
Regarding the Deimos bridge: I wanted to combine as many different styles as possible and make the bridge modern (early Lost era). The idea was that the USS Deimos is a sister ship of the Phobos, which was commissioned later. The prototype USS Phobos could then be easily equipped with the classic Ent-A helmet console. Basically comparable to "my" Churchill bridge...maybe just in a different color and with TFF central platforms. What do you imagine for the Phobos?
I agree, green is a nice change of pace. It's under used on Starfleet ships. But, when it's used correctly, it's very striking, like the (obvious fabric wrap) green that they used for the tactical console of the USS Yamato in the episode Contagion:
Since the Phobos is a bit older than the Deimos but otherwise identical, I left the turbo lifts as they are for now. But I plan to build a Miranda bridge with just one lift later. I turned the ceiling struts by 45° and also removed the side elements on the viewscreen (both in line with TFF). I left the rest of the TUC ceiling as it is but removed the small lamps.
I colored the upholstery, the console panels, the console handles and the helm carpet matt dark green. However, I chose gray for the doors because otherwise the bridge would have looked too green.
I'm not 100% satisfied with the result yet, but as I said: green is really difficult to make a good impression. At the moment I find the color scheme of the bridge a bit too boring. What do you think?