Modified TOS Enterprise

[General Phoenix]

It all sounds good to me.

Nor for an animation of them in action.

Lookin' good Vektor, nice to see you back. I like your ideas for the torpedos, it'll be cool to see an animation of the firing sequence.

Originally posted by EBOLII
Very happy to see you back...how about [just a thought] tiny hinges at the top then?....to add to realism? or maybe not

Nah, the hinges are strictly internal. The idea is for the hatches to virtually disappear when closed.

Love your design for the torpedo tubes. One of the few problems I had with the TOS Enterprise was that there were no ports for the phasers and torpedo launchers. The recoil of the launchers gives the idea that the photon torpedoes might still be something new at the time of the TOS. They have a lot of power behind them when the launch. Very cool.

Well, I've been down with a raging cold most of the day, but I did manage to finally redo the name and registry numbers in the correct font.





If I feel better tomorrow, I'm hoping to more or less finish those torp launchers.

Tight close-up on the new and improved torpedo launchers:



A fairly standard quarter-view showing the sensor domes lit:



Another standard angle, but here I'm playing around with a glossier raytraced hull finish:



Gonna be starting on the warp nacelles soon.

Enterprise fires a torpedo!

Okay, here's a special little treat, a short fly-by animation with both torpedo tubes firing and recoiling:

http://www.vektorsdomain.com/TorpTest.avi

The file is 716KB, no sound, but it looks damn cool if I do say so! You'll also need DivX 5 or later.

Originally posted by Stu
The recoil of the launchers gives the idea that the photon torpedoes might still be something new at the time of the TOS. They have a lot of power behind them when the launch. Very cool.

Also gives me the impression that they probably don't have as much ability to sustain their own speed, so they have to be blasted out of the ship as fast as possible

Very cool, Vektor! When can we see the opening of the torp hatches integrated into the firing sequence?

Okay, everybody hang on to your hats because I think I finally perfected the bussard collector effect!





Okay, probably not everyone will agree that this is "perfection," but it's as close to it as I have ever managed to get!

Quick explanation of how it's done: Twelve multi-colored omni lights behind the bussard dome. The dome itself has a double-sided texture applied with a 50% blend amount, which lets the illumination on the inner surface show through. I used a falloff map in the diffuse color slot for the inner surface and added a B/W GIF of the rotating blades on the black side of the falloff map. Finally, I put the same GIF of those blades in the Specular Level slot of the texture on the outer surface.

Basically, the lights inside the dome light up it's inner surface, less so where the dark pixels of the rotating blades are mapped. The falloff map makes the blades fade out a little at the horizon of the dome. All of that gets transmitted to the outer surface by the double-sided texture, and the blade map in the specular level slot lets the blades pick up some ambient highlights on the outside.

Voilla! TOS bussard collectors!

OOOHHH!!!

Please note, I have made a few adjustments the color and general appearance of the bussard collectors in those last three images since they were first posted. Refresh your browser to see the latest versions.

[Melvin the Dork]

Well Vektor I think they are the best TOS bussard collectors I have seen on a fan ship. Not to put others down, but you reall have the look of them. So many out there are just red domes. Very cool, but I think you may already know that.

Mel

Well, I think this is as close as I'm going to get.



Now all I have to do is figure out how to animate 'em!

They look great Vektor

Well, I scraped together an hour and a half today and managed to add some more details to the warp nacelles:




Yes, I know the intercoolers are supposed to have a solid panel inside them, I just didn't get that far tonight. I still need to shape the aft cowls as well.

And now, seeing as how I've reached WIP image #100, I thought I'd splurge on Web space and post it at 800x600. Enjoy.

My first pass at a modified aft nacelle cowl:




As you can see, I've put a straight angle on the trailing edge of the cowl instead of the classic s-curve and I have hollowed out the inside a la FJ's Constitution. I think the straight angle is a slightly more modern look than the s-curve but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it. Perhaps I'll do both.

I'm probably gonna have to increase the density of the corrugation on the outside of the cowl, too. Max would only let me do 100 points for a full circle and I really need more than that to be accurate.

Let me know what you all think.

Okay, the s-curve is back, but the cowl is still hollow and I've added some more geometric detail.



Here's a close-up:


Here's a slight variation on the shape of the opening surrounding the sphere:


And finally, here's a version to match the actual filming model:


I'd have to say my own preference is for #1, even though it doesn't look exactly like what we saw on the show. It's certainly no more radical a departure than what I did to those three boxes surrounding the deflector dish.

Care to take a vote?

Okay, I just collapsed all the modifier stacks and purged all the hidden objects to try to get some idea of the face count on this baby. Anybody care to take a guess what it is?

By the way, by "face count" I mean the total nummber of triangles comprising the entire model. Bear in mind that a rectangular face actually consists of two triangles.

8!

I don't even want to try and guess.. I wouldn't know where to begin!

Well, I'm finally getting 3D S Max, and it's all your fault, Vektor! After wasting three years on a bloody Marine Geography course I'm going back into art - a Computer Animation and Video Game Design BA - and all because I want to someday reach THIS level of excellence. Of course, this means I'll have to spend yet another three years as a penniless student, so damn you Vektor, damn you all to hell!

BTW, as much as I like the detailing you've put into those 'artistically licensed' nacelle endcaps, I always thought those glowy ball things were a bit.. tacky? I always preferred those radiator-grill type caps that were used at one point; maybe because I can imagine a faint blue glow being emitted from deep inside... Have you considered installing any such feature at all?

Humble and worshipful regards,

Blip

Where the hell can you get a BA in computer animation and VG design? Can I get a masters??
Sign me up!

Okay, I guess I'll do away with the suspense. The current face count for the entire model is 95,251. Yup, that's right, I'm still under my target of 100,000 faces, though there's still quite a bit of detail left to be added. The interior of the shuttle bay, for example.

Just for kicks, I decided to run some hi-res renderings just to see how well she holds up in close-up:







I've been playing around with lighting and rendering effects to try to enhance the realism of these images. All of these have some extra contrast added along with a fairly heavy film grain and a small amount of gaussian blur. The problem with a lot of CG images is that they're just too perfect to be realistic, so most of what I've done here is add imperfections to try to make it look more like somebody snapped these images with a digital camera through the window of a shuttlepod.

I've also doscovered that brightening the images a bit and adding even more film grain before the gaussian blur gives an effect very similar to the F/X style of TOS, which was an important discovery since I plan to try to recreate those effects eventually and I want them to blend in as much as possible.

PLEASE NOTE: I really don't have the Web space available to host images this size permanently. These will be up for a limited period of time so get them while they're hot.

Originally posted by Blip
Well, I'm finally getting 3D S Max, and it's all your fault, Vektor!

LOL! Sorry about that, but I cannot be held responsible for the obsessive insanity of others, only my own.

BTW, as much as I like the detailing you've put into those 'artistically licensed' nacelle endcaps, I always thought those glowy ball things were a bit.. tacky? I always preferred those radiator-grill type caps that were used at one point; maybe because I can imagine a faint blue glow being emitted from deep inside... Have you considered installing any such feature at all?

Yeah, I've thought about it, but I actually like the glowing spheres. Better than the radiator-type grills, anyway. Truth be told, I will probably wind up modeling both, and at least a couple variations of each.

mercutiojb:

The course has just been proposed to start this September coming up, at the Southampton Institute of Higher Education... Southampton, Hants (since you're apparently from New Tokyo, I thought I'd best include that)!

I'm gonna be so OLD compared to everyone else starting there... time really IS the fire in which we burn, etcetera


Vektor:
Glad you'll be looking into all variations of the endcaps.. what would you say those glowy sphere thingymabobs are exactly, anyway? That's part of my reason for disliking the things - I can't rationalise their existence next to all other ships, in particular the refit!

As for the face count, how many did the Connie reach in the end? I was looking at the orthographic shots of her yesterday and she still looks MIGHTY fine...

[Starship]

Originally posted by Vektor
...
I'd have to say my own preference is for #1, even though it doesn't look exactly like what we saw on the show. It's certainly no more radical a departure than what I did to those three boxes surrounding the deflector dish.

Care to take a vote? [/B]

You're right. The #1 is the right choice.

Going to do the other nacelle ends? Are you going to make a Pilot version of the Enterprise?

Originally posted by Blip
mercutiojb:
Glad you'll be looking into all variations of the endcaps.. what would you say those glowy sphere thingymabobs are exactly, anyway? That's part of my reason for disliking the things - I can't rationalise their existence next to all other ships, in particular the refit!

As for the face count, how many did the Connie reach in the end? I was looking at the orthographic shots of her yesterday and she still looks MIGHTY fine...

I don't know what they are. The old Tech Manual referred to the whole assembly as a space/matter restoration cowl or some such. I just think they add a little more visual interest than the plain endcaps with some holes drilled in them. And no, I don't think putting a glow behind those holes would really help all that much. Just my humble opinion.

As for the Constitution, her final face count was around 46,000. The Connie looks pretty good but she wasn't built to stand up to the level of close scrutiny the Enterprise has been. She also relied a lot more heavily on textured rather than modeled details.

Originally posted by Boh_iNfecTeD
Are you going to make a Pilot version of the Enterprise?

I don't know. I'm already thinking about adding optional versions of various parts and pieces to make the ship look exactly like the filming model in addition to my own modified interpretation. I really didn't like the pilot version very much and I'm not highly motivated to recreate it, especially since it wasn't featured in any of the episodes I plan to redo the F/X for.