I think they might be intended to be arboretums like the one the orbital office complex from TMP (and all its various reuses) had. The original CG model has some green blobs that might be intended to be trees there.
Either that or just big windows for lounges, after all if each platform is a single deck high they aren't that big, I think.
Post edited by Rekkert on
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Big lounges make the most sense. One would expect the arboretum to be more towards the central part of the station, like it is on the orbital office complex. Lounges would make a good place to sit and wait for a transport vessel.
Looks like a hotel lobby, be it a place for all those surrounding rooms and any crew in berthed ships? I could see this being a long strip down the middle of the deck with the rooms ringing and the inner rings without windows as facilities, be it shops food stations etc. Then that central strip being a small park lobby/gathering area for any crew with a berthed ship that do not want to stay in their ship quarters.
Dunno about scale on this thing, gonna guess the red brackets match the ones on DS9 and would park a runabout on them. Also given the inner window heights it looks like the larger platforms are a good 3/5 decks high, maybe more. That is if each row of windows on the inner ring really are windows. Either case it should be a great deal of room to play with.
I forget but was this used elsewhere other than the ride? eg referenced in any novels?
what surprises me on this is the lack of larger ship docking collars, guessing they would just transporter in or shuttle over.
Yeah, those windows on the central ring don't make sense, they're far too small when compared to the shuttles and CG people, hence my assumption about the platforms being only a deck tall.
And no, unfortunately neither Copernicus or the CG model were used again as far as I know.
Post edited by Rekkert on
For all my finished Trek fan art, please visit my portfolio
Looks like a hotel lobby, be it a place for all those surrounding rooms and any crew in berthed ships? I could see this being a long strip down the middle of the deck with the rooms ringing and the inner rings without windows as facilities, be it shops food stations etc. Then that central strip being a small park lobby/gathering area for any crew with a berthed ship that do not want to stay in their ship quarters.
Dunno about scale on this thing, gonna guess the red brackets match the ones on DS9 and would park a runabout on them. Also given the inner window heights it looks like the larger platforms are a good 3/5 decks high, maybe more. That is if each row of windows on the inner ring really are windows. Either case it should be a great deal of room to play with.
I was thinking a hotel lobby or even like you say an open area between shops and businesses in some kind of mall. It would make some sense to randomly add windows the same size as the main station on the outer pads, just to support the feeling of a consistent scale.
Yeah, those windows on the central ring don't make sense, they're far too small when compared to the shuttles and CG people, hence my assumption about the platforms being only a deck tall.
I'm finding I want to scale any shuttles and people to be consistent with the central station windows. I like the fact that they give the station such big scale, which is why I'm really lost as to what they intended with the big windows on the outer platforms. One other thought about the big windows is that like DS-9 maybe the red bracketed landing pads on the outer platforms actually sink into the platform with overhead doors so that a runabout is safely housed inside. However, it still doesn't work well with the pad being a hanger, because I see no reason for those really large windows at the outer edge. It's not like the hanger is some showroom for new runabouts (for sale) that people see as they drive by.
Big lounges make the most sense. One would expect the arboretum to be more towards the central part of the station, like it is on the orbital office complex. Lounges would make a good place to sit and wait for a transport vessel.
Very much in line with what people have said. Open Mall or lounge area with a very high ceiling so people don't get claustrophobic with extended life on the station. They could also be a sporting area. Basketball or again swimming in a pool.
There are 6 of them. 1) a mall, 2) a hotel lobby 3) a sporting complex 4) Runabout storage 5) office space with walkways in between 6) Food court?
For the six landing pads I went with a hotel lobby, a pool, 2 hydroponics farms, a tennis court, a basketball court. I figured baseball and football were too big. There are shuttles here and there.
Pools and waterfalls on the left top landing pad. Hotel lobby on the bottom smaller pad just to the right of the former. One hydroponic growing area is in one of the small, lower pads, and one is in one of the upper, bigger pads. The tennis and basketball courts are in the two other smaller pads and there is another hotel lobby in one of the upper, larger pads.
I've got a current ortho of the station at the Deviant art site you can jump to from here.
very nice, i love the station!
u even did interiors? ..
After a fashion. There is a backdrop with carefully spliced images of the particular content (Lobby, Pools, Hydroponic etc.) and then some modeled 3d elements in the foreground close to the windows. Ultimately I had to be practical. I couldn't get the modeled elements to show very well, whereas I could use "Luminous" to brighten the backdrops so they could be seen.
I had an old Cardassian Galor class that I started and didn't finish. This is much closer. I'm trying to channel my inner Mad Koi Fish and doll this up.
I jumped in with both feet and started playing with node procedural textures to enhance edges, trying to make some chips in the paint, and put grime into crevices. I don't think I have the total hang of it yet but I'm starting to get there. The renders take noticeably longer. The following render also has more greeble and surface work to try to make the Galor class closer to the original. Some of the surface details I am in the process of redoing with greater detail. I'm working on the paint too.
I think you can see it is quite a bit different from the render above it.
Thanks to both of you. There is more to come. I'm really having a good time with the node shaders and for the first time feel like I am learning something that makes sense.
The two above renders bothered me that the ship appeared a little Lacquered and shiny. I thought I had done Specular and Roughness settings correctly and assumed there was something about the shader that were making the ship thick and shiny. Then I found the setting for roughness was wrong. Below you see an image with the roughness turned higher.
On another note, it has always made me wonder why there were no pod docking ports or any external doors on this ship. The front belly has a big cargo bay door according to blueprints. Chris, you're always in the "know" on these things. Did the Cardassians only use transporters to get in and out?
On another note, it has always made me wonder why there were no pod docking ports or any external doors on this ship. The front belly has a big cargo bay door according to blueprints. Chris, you're always in the "know" on these things. Did the Cardassians only use transporters to get in and out?
I don't know. I don't recall them ever using anything but a transporter. I don't recall any Cardassian ships docking with DS9. However, DS9 has a lot of docking ports, they have to be for something. Also, it makes no sense for any craft to not have doors. I'm guessing it's a detail that was left off of the model in order to get it done on a TV show schedule (it was built in about 3 weeks) and also probably was deemed not that important, given that you would never really see them.
I feel like they'd be able to dock with DS9... I suppose the models weren't designed to do that. Honestly, it feels like the tuning fork tail should be where the dock connection is, so the tiniest point is on the inside of the ring and the bigger end if pointing out. Also means the ships can keep an eye out.
You could see Galors docked with DS9. But as I recall they didn't really care if it would work back than. I mean the Defiant did dock with it's deflector. So I guess it's like @evil_genius_180 said, a small detail they left out due to time restraints and 'cause they never expected that it would be necessary to see it until the show suddenly required it to dock with DS9. But if you want to fix that, you can tell from this screenshot where to add a docking hatch.
Thanks, I was trying to find an episode where they did it but I was coming up short. Of course, it was also around midnight and I'd gotten up at 6 AM and worked 8 hours, so I think it's safe to say I was a little tired.
@Brandenberg Do the newer releases of Lightwave support GPU rendering? I sometimes miss Lightwave to the point where I think of going back, but the render times using my CPU compared to what Blender has spoiled me with are no joke. A Blender render using one of my budget GPUs can take around a minute, where the same render using my Ryzen 5 is around 15 minutes. So, it's not a small difference. It's an expensive license to go back to Lightwave with a modern version, but I could probably do it around income tax/bonus time early next year.
I'm seeing all kinds of stuff about Octane Rendering which does employ the GPU. In fact in playing with the nodes for my most recent renders I see a huge list of octane nodes and that's in Lightwave 2023. 2024 has been released. There are even some YouTube videos on it. See below, the information from the Lightwave Web page with a screen shot of the available nodes from my own copy of Lightwave.
@wibble I THOUGHT I remembered a Galor docked at DS-9. It's slightly hard to tell but I took and lightened the image and it looks like it might be docking with the side of the big module on the ship just behind the front platform where the bridge is located. They obviously chose that shot to hide that there is no door. The wing obscures the connection. But that's where I'll add my door. Thanks. The beauty is, one can now look at the end of those docking extensions on DS-9 and come up with what the door looks like. In theory anyway.
@wibble I THOUGHT I remembered a Galor docked at DS-9. It's slightly hard to tell but I took and lightened the image and it looks like it might be docking with the side of the big module on the ship just behind the front platform where the bridge is located. They obviously chose that shot to hide that there is no door. The wing obscures the connection. But that's where I'll add my door. Thanks. The beauty is, one can now look at the end of those docking extensions on DS-9 and come up with what the door looks like. In theory anyway.
I was thinking that indent in that area looks like a good place for a port. That may have been what they were going for. One thing they did with DS9 was get creative with ship docking, since no prior Star Trek show had really shown that many ships docked. There's no docking port on the saucer edge on the models of either the Galaxy or Nebula classes, but DS9 had both docked with the station via a phantom port on the saucer edges.
I apologize for this being vague, but I saw some article on the web by a guy who was excited about some new rendering development that could made Lightwave highly desirable. It had to do with Lightwave's structure having the rendering program (Lightwave Layout) written as a separate program and not part of modeler. The guy was making the point that suddenly it looks like that choice was a fabulous idea.
I apologize for this being vague, but I saw some article on the web by a guy who was excited about some new rendering development that could made Lightwave highly desirable. It had to do with Lightwave's structure having the rendering program (Lightwave Layout) written as a separate program and not part of modeler. The guy was making the point that suddenly it looks like that choice was a fabulous idea.
There are actually a few reasons why having Layout as a separate program is a good idea. For one thing, you can have something rendering in the background and be tinkering with something else in Modeler. Sure, you'll take system resources away from the render, but it's still an option. With most 3D software, you have to wait for the render to finish. Another great thing is that you don't have to have as many controls jammed into one program, and I think anyone who has used Lightwave will agree that both main programs have a lot of controls.
If I ever want to animate again, I definitely want to do it in Lightwave. Just looking into how to make a light blink in Blender a few months ago seemed like a whole ordeal made up of a lot of steps that seem counter intuitive. Comparatively, in Lightwave, I can just create a simple emission increase and decrease in an envelope and set it to repeat. Boom, blinking light in just a few steps.
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Either that or just big windows for lounges, after all if each platform is a single deck high they aren't that big, I think.
Dunno about scale on this thing, gonna guess the red brackets match the ones on DS9 and would park a runabout on them. Also given the inner window heights it looks like the larger platforms are a good 3/5 decks high, maybe more. That is if each row of windows on the inner ring really are windows. Either case it should be a great deal of room to play with.
I forget but was this used elsewhere other than the ride? eg referenced in any novels?
what surprises me on this is the lack of larger ship docking collars, guessing they would just transporter in or shuttle over.
And no, unfortunately neither Copernicus or the CG model were used again as far as I know.
Yes, I was working on adding some shuttles to my images and started to wonder about travel pod docking ports on the station.
There are 6 of them. 1) a mall, 2) a hotel lobby 3) a sporting complex 4) Runabout storage 5) office space with walkways in between 6) Food court?
I've got a current ortho of the station at the Deviant art site you can jump to from here.
u even did interiors? ..
And let's be honest - I don't have @Rekkert, @seanr, @ashleytinger @solaremes skill at doing interiors. Or maybe just their patience.
I think you can see it is quite a bit different from the render above it.
On another note, it has always made me wonder why there were no pod docking ports or any external doors on this ship. The front belly has a big cargo bay door according to blueprints. Chris, you're always in the "know" on these things. Did the Cardassians only use transporters to get in and out?
I don't know. I don't recall them ever using anything but a transporter. I don't recall any Cardassian ships docking with DS9. However, DS9 has a lot of docking ports, they have to be for something. Also, it makes no sense for any craft to not have doors. I'm guessing it's a detail that was left off of the model in order to get it done on a TV show schedule (it was built in about 3 weeks) and also probably was deemed not that important, given that you would never really see them.
Thanks, I was trying to find an episode where they did it but I was coming up short. Of course, it was also around midnight and I'd gotten up at 6 AM and worked 8 hours, so I think it's safe to say I was a little tired.
I was thinking that indent in that area looks like a good place for a port. That may have been what they were going for. One thing they did with DS9 was get creative with ship docking, since no prior Star Trek show had really shown that many ships docked. There's no docking port on the saucer edge on the models of either the Galaxy or Nebula classes, but DS9 had both docked with the station via a phantom port on the saucer edges.
There are actually a few reasons why having Layout as a separate program is a good idea. For one thing, you can have something rendering in the background and be tinkering with something else in Modeler. Sure, you'll take system resources away from the render, but it's still an option. With most 3D software, you have to wait for the render to finish. Another great thing is that you don't have to have as many controls jammed into one program, and I think anyone who has used Lightwave will agree that both main programs have a lot of controls.
If I ever want to animate again, I definitely want to do it in Lightwave. Just looking into how to make a light blink in Blender a few months ago seemed like a whole ordeal made up of a lot of steps that seem counter intuitive. Comparatively, in Lightwave, I can just create a simple emission increase and decrease in an envelope and set it to repeat. Boom, blinking light in just a few steps.