evil_genius_180

The nacelles are in place. The only thing they're lacking are the pendants, which I'll do later. I'm starting to lose steam on this build, so I may work on something else for a while and come back to this later.

Really quickly, before I go to work, I changed the name of the ship:



The reasoning for this was simple, I didn't like the name I chose. I was going to go with USS Heracles, which I've used a lot in the past. However, I decided to take one of the registry numbers from the tech manual that were retconned to be incorrect. The USS Excalibur has the registry number NCC-1664, thanks to TOS-R. However, in the tech manual, it has NCC-1705. So, I swiped that number for my ship. Since I like the name Excalibur, but I wanted to avoid using canon names, I went with Xavier. Yes, it is indeed named after the founder of the X-Men, Prof. Charles Xavier. Fitting, I think, since Patrick Stewart played him in the movies. But, that's not why I chose the name. I chose it because X-Men is my favorite Marvel Comics property and because I like the name.

Thanks guys.

Since many of the details of the ship weren't worked out before it was turned into a movie, I'm trying to find a balance between TOS and TMP for the details that aren't there on the drawings or incomplete model. I don't want to lean too much in one direction. Matt Jefferies thought not much on the ship should change, in fact he initially thought they were going to reuse the 11-foot model from TOS, so he only drew new warp engines and pylons at first. Of course, that wasn't the case as the original model was in the Smithsonian by then and they had no plans to use it anyway. Instead, a new model about half the size was being constructed for the new show. When he found that out, Jefferies continued work on the drawings to update the look, but he was starting go get to the point where Michael Landon was going to force him to choose between his work on Little House on the Prairie and Star Trek, so he quit Star Trek before it got to that point. As such, his drawings were never complete and the model was only 3/4 finished and was missing a lot of details when it was decided that the model wasn't up to the demands of motion picture work and that the design needed refined and a new model constructed.

So, when it comes to missing details, I have to make a judgement call. I'm mostly going towards TOS, as Jefferies thought not much should change on the design. So, with the navigational deflector, which isn't on either the drawings or the model, I went with one that's more TOS style. However, to show that evolution to the TMP design, I set it almost flush with the housing and I made the pointy bit in the center shorter than it is on the TOS model. I did add the "rings" in the surface of the dish, both as a nod to TOS and to give it more detail without adding too much. I may experiment with lighting the dish when I get to the material stage.

OK, I modified some of the glowy bits:

I haven't touched this thing in days, because I was doing other things. I'm off work today, so I cracked open the file and redid the back of the nacelles. I didn't like the shape of them before, plus they were inaccurate compared to this image:



So, I redid them and the shape is much closer to that photo:

This is supposed to be a planet with a lot of volcanic activity.

Thanks guys.

Working on some pod details.

Helot wrote: »

Why I paint in windows 90% of time. I always get scale wrong! Loving this.

I can't do it, I have to model almost everything. This ship has no textures, everything you see is modeled.

Windows on the B/C deck, along with the rectangle. Also, sensor domes and weapons.





Now we get to one of the issues I have with these blueprints. In TOS, the photon torpedoes always fired from the lower saucer, either the exact same spot as the phasers or at least very close:


(original effect from The Ultimate Computer, where the M5 Multitronic Unit destroys the Woden)

However, the blueprints have the torpedo launchers on C deck:



I think we can all agree that that's an error. I know from reading an interview with Franz Joseph that he was watching TOS in syndication as part of his research for the blueprints and technical manual. So, I don't know why he has the torpedo launchers there. I put mine on J deck (Deck 10) so they line up to be just over the floor on the deck, as is consistent with the torpedoes being loaded into the launchers via the track in the floor in TWOK. I think this works better:



As far as I'm concerned, those windows could represent the weapons room seen in Balance of Terror. In fact, I'm about to go eat lunch and watch that episode.

I started on a new ship yesterday:









Originally, I intended this to be a scout. However, the ship is actually quite large, by TOS standards. It's 202 meters long, just about 86 meters shy of the Enterprise. In fact, I actually used the saucer, engineering hull and nacelles of the Enterprise as reference and just scaled them down. The saucer and nacelles are slightly smaller, and the engineering section, which I sort of mashed into the saucer, is thinner, but the hanger bay is about the same size. The opening for sure is the same size. So, I decided to make it a light cruiser, as I always figure scouts are smaller ships. This sort of fits with canon, as indicated by the dialog from Star Trek III:

Chekov: I could swear there was something there, sir.
Kirk: What did you see?
Chekov: For an instance, a Scout-class wessel.
Kirk: Could be Grissom.

What Chekov actually saw on his scanners was the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, which was a smaller B'Rel-class ship, just before it cloaked. He thought it was a scout ship. Kirk said from that description that it could be the Grissom, which was a smaller ship. Basically, Kirk was saying the Grissom was Scout-class.

Anywho, my ship is something I'm designing as I go, but it's obviously based on some existing designs. Also, I'm giving it more details than TOS had, because I like to do that. Despite what they say, about "modernizing" designs, all you really need to make TOS look more like modern stuff is to give it some extra details. Speaking of that, I found my old "upgraded" TOS Enterprise on a drive:









I did this ship 3 years ago, and I basically took the TOS design and added bits like thrusters, weapons, docking ports and more glowy bits. I also gave it hull paneling, but I need to change my texture settings as it's only in the specular channel. But, that's easy to fix. I just have to do a setting more like what I used on my most recent model. I already changed the bussard domes and some other glowy bits to materials similar to my most recent build.