Star Trek Stuff

[evil_genius_180]

This is a ship I started on several months ago. I'm taking a week off of work, so I'm enjoying a staycation and I decided to get back to work on it. The idea behind the ship is that it's a frigate designed after the battle of Wolf 359. It's designed to be a warship, but it can be used for other purposes, such as patrols, escort missions and scouting.

Where I'm at with the model, the main pieces are pretty finalized and I'm working on the tedious hull lines. I still have a few places left to hit with lines, but it's mostly done.




(yes, I see the smoothing error on the back of the saucer, I’m just not worried about it as that part isn’t finished)





So, yeah, plenty more to do on this ship. Once I’m done with the tedious and time consuming grid lines, I’ll probably do the tedious and time consuming windows. Though, the ship isn’t going to have a huge amount of windows, as it is a warship.

[ulimann644]

I like the look of this ship.

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks.

[evil_genius_180]

I just couldn’t wait to add some windows, so I didn’t wait. Trying to remember how to do things that are out of the norm for the projects I do can be rough. For example, I mainly deal in circular saucers. That’s great, but this is an extreme half oval. So, rotating window cutters into place isn’t a simple matter of using the rotate tool. I have to use other tools. There’s a handy tool in Lightwave called Rail Clone, which is great for creating duplicates of an object along a path. Similarly, Rail Extrude extrudes objects along a path (comes in handy for phaser strips and other bits.) However, the problem was trying to remember how to convert a line of verts into a path. Well, I finally got it and I got my first row of windows in place. The Rail Clone tool got me partly there, with some fiddling with the cutters by hand to get them exactly how I want them. Of course, the complex curves made it a bit of work, but I think the results speak for themselves. The windows are shaped like the ones on Voyager, Equinox, etc. Basically, just slightly rounded rectangles. The later shows and movies essentially did away with the round and pill shaped windows, until Enterprise brought them back.





So yeah, these are basically skylights. The extreme angle of the saucer makes it so they couldn’t be anything else. I’ll probably only do a couple more rows of these on the saucer top and then some windows you can look normally out of on the saucer edge. I may do something similar to a Ten forward. I’d do some of those window insets that various ships in the TNG era had, but the extreme curve again makes it so they’d be really odd to do. This ship has more of a “blade” type of saucer than ships like Voyager and Equinox, which had less extreme of a curve that allowed for more details like that. But, that’s because this is supposed to be a fast and maneuverable fighting ship. I don’t know how making a ship short and sleek helps in space, but I think it would alter the center of gravity, making tight maneuvers possible. I’m pretty sure that’s why the Defiant was designed how it was.

[gmd3d]

Nice look ship. fits nicely with the TNG / Voyager look

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks Ger.

[evil_genius_180]

More windows, some phasers, photon torpedo launchers and a couple sensor arrays.

[ulimann644]

I love this little details.
SUNSTREAKER is a cool name for a spaceship. I heard it in TRANSFORMERS.

This design could be a successor-design of my EXETER-CLASS, released in the 2347. In my Fanon one ship of the EXETER-CLASS, the USS MIDWAY, fought in the Battle of Wolf 359.

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks Uli.

Originally Posted by ulimann644

SUNSTREAKER is a cool name for a spaceship. I heard it in TRANSFORMERS.

You mean the sociopath brother of Sideswipe? Never heard of him.

__________________________________________________________

I decided to take a break from modeling and do some texture work. I created some paneling for the upper saucer. This is pretty easy to do. I took my saucer from an earlier file, without grid lines or windows, etc, and I applied different materials to the geometry to come up with a panel pattern that exactly matches my hull shape. Then I rendered that with an orthographic camera and used planar projection to map it to the upper saucer. I also made the name part of the texture, rather than being modeled text.

[evil_genius_180]

I didn’t like the distribution of light and dark panels. It was too much light in one spot and dark in another. So, I swapped two of the colors around all over the map and I think it looks much better.

[gmd3d]

Originally Posted by evil_genius_180

I didn’t like the distribution of light and dark panels. It was too much light in one spot and dark in another. So, I swapped two of the colors around all over the map and I think it looks much better.

yes the change makes a difference. love it

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks Ger.

[evil_genius_180]

Soooo… I had this all ready to post earlier and I realized I had my windows on a bad line. Due to the curvature of the saucer, they wouldn’t have been effective on the deck they were on, they only could have been skylights for the deck below with unusually large rooms. That made no sense, so I changed them to farther up the curve and, thus, farther up the deck. Now they can be windows in quarters like the ones on the Enterprise-D that you saw over Picard and Troi’s beds (probably others too, but I definitely remember those two.) So, this works better. Though, if you’ve never removed window cuts and rebuilt geometry by hand, I don’t recommend it.

Aside from that, I also added some escape pod hatches. They’re the same type on a lot of TNG-era ships. 3x3m, 6 people per pod, and there are currently 31 of them. That means the ship can currently evacuate 186 people. Of course, there will be more pods later. To get those in place, I created a flat hatch shape and positioned it over my saucer. Then I used Rail Clone to create duplicates along the curvature of the saucer and the heat shrink to put them right against the hull. Then I just had to extrude them and then round the edges and that all worked great. They’re on the same line where I had those windows, but having pods there makes more sense as they can used the extra space for launch systems.

Aside from windows and pods, I added some transporter emitters and some things to make us go.









And, to make life more fun, the right button is going out in my mouse. It will randomly decide I’m not still pressing it anymore. I’ll have to see what I have laying around until I get around to replacing it. I have some “mobile” mice, but I generally don’t like using them because they’re smaller. But, if I must I will.

[evil_genius_180]

I decided to try something different for the hull material and I think this looks better than the texture I had before.

[evil_genius_180]

I got the paneling done on the secondary hull. This is a long and tedious process, but no more so than making textures and fooling with UV mapping.

[evil_genius_180]

Stuff.

[evil_genius_180]

More stuff. And a name change. I got the name Sunstreaker from The Transformers. Sunstreaker is an Autobot who is vain and arrogant. He thinks he’s the best and lets everyone else know it. He also points out the shortcomings of others and doesn’t help others. Basically, he’s a d-bag. He’s a skilled warrior, which is why the Autobots put up with his attitude. Aside from being associated with a character who’s a d-bag, I don’t want to use a name from another franchise. So, I renamed the ship the USS Minerva. Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare. She’s not a violent battle craving psycho like God of War Mars, Minerva instead prefers to fight defensively. I feel that type of character fits the Federation a bit more than a sociopathic Autobot. Minerva’s Greek counterpart is Athena, which is what I was going to go with, but it’s used more frequently. I feel Minerva gets less use, so I went with that.

[gmd3d]

looking good. I like the name change and your reasons for it. top work

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks a lot, Ger.