D-Jota

You know, some days it feels like our entire community is being propped up by one, perhaps two dozen artists. Business has slowed right down to the point where one might dare to question: Is our hobby dying?

Anyway, for the past five years or so, I have been servicing my eternal adoration for Star Trek: The Next Generation by recreating the sets (and more) from that show. I appreciate that amongst the community such a project is hardly original but at least it is a project that I've remained committed to and despite the fragility of my skills and my rates of progress typically taking me an age, chapter by chapter, I have continued to press ahead with it... and I'm not done yet!

All of my output has been presented over on F3D but I have been a member of SciFi-Meshes since before the big crash of '06 and yet seldom do I ever present anything here... and I'm not all that sure why.

I love this hobby; it's something I think about often. I feel a desire to establish more of presence here.

Happy New Year!

Hey Rekkert! - Your Trek art has consistently blown my mind on every new project and definitely something for me to strive for (...you keep it up!). Between you and me, I'm kinda chuffed you actually checked me out and quite glad you like what you see!

Yeah that main shuttlebay was a bit of a back breaker if I'm honest; It went on for so long that it often had me wondering If I'd ever see it completed and from there, finished to the point where I could install it into Prologic9's Enterprise-D model. It all worked out in the end.





The warp core/antimatter pod facility was also pretty heavy but I stayed on it every week without stopping for breath and so it didn't take me quite so long.

As for the docking solution for the Captain's Yacht: It's not readily obvious. I have some concept artwork (by Andy Probert) of the yacht docking with the bay so I'll be inclined to start with what I see in that image because... you know... Andy says it's like that! But at this point I'm thinking retractable latches. I'm thinking elevators, escalators and extendable gangways. - We'll see.

Freak wrote: »

Stunning work.
I love that you modelled the area at the bottom of the Warp Core.

Lizzy777 wrote: »

Oh wow! Warp Core is the bit that really stood out to me. I was aware of the section around the main engineering and the upper level from the show, but I had no idea the scope of that entire section.

This entire collection is outstanding!

Cheers Freak/Lizzy777 - Yeah, that one sorta snowballed! I knew that the warp core is supposed stand twelve decks tall so I was always curious to explore what you would see if you were to stand say at the base of the thing and look up (or top of the thing and look down!). Originally I was going to call it a day at just the warp core plus the most local space around the injector on deck 42; but I just kept adding stuff and adding stuff (all based on Rick Sternbach's blueprints) until I hit that "enough already" spot. - Interesting project though.




Thank you for checking in everyone and for your positive vibes! - I appreciate that.

Even though this project is really long-lived by this point, I intend to fill it to the max before calling it a day. Obviously all the standing sets will get some attention at some point but there's also a handful of single-use sets that I want to do as well. I've got a dozen concept sketches by Andy Probert archived that I'd like to have a go at, specifically the computer core services, oceanography and astrometrics (which looks like an early draft of the stella cartography from Generations). There's plenty of material in both the Next Gen. Tech Manual and Sternbach's blueprints to work from as well.

I've still got some closing rituals to perform on the living quarters that I've just finished; as for what's next, I'm seriously thinking about creating either the docking bay for the Captain's yacht or the warp core control room (ref. episode: "Eye of the Beholder").

seanr - Glad you like the pics. I suspect the segmentation is down to the density of polygons thinning out a little too much in the ceiling from which the cuts and extrusions had been made.



We shouldn't be too hard on it as it represents one of my first serious attempts at modelling something Trek (back in about 2014) and at the time, perhaps only the third... fourth... fifth modelling exercise I had ever committed to to completion.

Also if you consider the context in which that model was created:




...once installed into Prologic9's Enterprise-D model, it could be argued that I might have gone a little overboard with the detail.



...or even a little more than overboard!

Brandenberg wrote: »

Whoah!! Holy eye candy.

scifieric wrote: »

This is quite simply amazing work!

srspicer wrote: »

Beeeeautifull work!

Thank you!

Rekkert wrote: »

Man, that last shot of all three shuttlebays open is amazing, and they match up beautifully with the exterior!

I remember we had to jerry-rig our version of shuttlebay 1 by making the ceiling on Nightfever's exterior mesh taller, and then again we had to close the door before opening the other shuttlebays, as we couldn't get all the decks to load properly together.

...and thank you sir!

Installing the shuttlebays into Pro9's model was a pretty interesting exercise. At the point at which the interiors meet the doorways to the exterior you learn that the relationship between the two breaks down so I had to "invent" some soft mods to force the two to live together.



There was also the inconvenient revelation that the ceiling to the main shuttlebay rolls off the further aft of the bay you go, resulting in my completed two storey model punching through the hull. The challenge at that turn was to make adjustments to the bay so as to make it fit but in a way that meant I didn't have to sacrifice too much. The original layout had been informed by the only on-screen shot of the bay we were given in the episode "Cause & Effect." It was far from ideal that the only shot of the bay that scored any seconds of screen time was the the very same part of the bay that I had to carve up, but at least I was able to preserve all the elements; nothing was wasted.

Evolution of the main shuttlebay:

References (some of):


Reproduction of the original shooting model:


Completed model based on Rick Sternbach's blueprints:


Adjusted model to fit Prologic9's Enterprise-D model:


Shall we say that took a solid year for me to complete all that? - with breaks admittedly.

Ah, I miss Stage9 so much. What it had achieved and where it was heading; it promised so much. Its shut down is a huge blow to the community and artistically speaking, it's pretty up there amongst the most broken of opportunities. I'm just glad I got the opportunity to experience it (in VR as well). The main bay actually was one of the stars of the show in my opinion.

The warp propulsion system:

I modelled the warp nacelle control room as seen in the episode: "Eye of the Beholder", so naturally that led to a need to model a set of warp coils for when the control room's main door is open. As that chapter drew to a close, I felt a desire to go off script a little and assemble the Enterprise's warp drive system; I already had the core, the antimatter pod facility. - I just needed to expand on the transfer conduits (as illustrated by the Sternbach blueprints) and recreate the large deuterium tank.

These renders are crazy big (<8K) but then it's a crazy big ship and it really is the only way to appreciate that the smaller components actually do have details that would be as good as invisible on a normal hi-def image.

Engage!

And what is going on inside those nacelles?

Nacelle control room:








Warp coils:









Drive plasma effect:









I honestly tried to reproduce the drive plasma effect from the episode but the time I spent on it was tremendous and the results so poor, I just resorted to layering a bunch of procedurals and tried to make the energy as angry as possible. - Far more tidy than my original attempt.

I have this if it's any use:

I wish to present to the community a personal milestone of mine; It's taken me about... 14 years!

I'd like to name drop Sean Robertson who was almost certainly the flashpoint of my inspiration for this project and who (along with a handful of other artists) had no idea that through the presentation of his art he'd be in some way responsible for motivating me to launch my exploration of the world of 3D art.

Rekkert wrote: »

Holy cow, these are amazing!

BolianAdmiral wrote: »

Hot damn, that Main Shuttlebay is simply AMAZING!!!

ashleytinger wrote: »

Gorgeous work.

Thanks for the positives; I really appreciate that!

markmassey wrote: »

This thread is incredible... Its not a helpful comment in any shape or form.. but i can't think of anything else to say...

I have to say the enterprise d aesthetic.. the colours etc really hold up today i think..

Thanks markmassey! - I appreciate your appreciation all the same! Yeah always loved the look of those sets, especially the bridge and main engineering; the Enterprise-D really was a chilled out looking ship!

erico wrote: »

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. A love letter to the D! One of my favorites as well. This inspires me to post a few pics from the Nebula variant I am playing with. Your view from the observation lounge is certainly faithful to what we see on the show, but the hull of the saucer behind the observation lounge (and the ready room for that matter) should have been quite visible outside. Not something they really needed to worry about for normal, non-obsessive viewers.

Cheers erico. Well this project is as much a study model as anything else so let's take a look out of those observation room windows!





Well that's one question answered. We see the sections of the saucer that are most local to the observation lounge windows but really not much else, even if you're standing on the table to look out.