22nd Century Starship pt. 08 (AKA: Error Correction)

There were a few guesses as to what the error was that I spoke of in my last post. However, Eric Reinholt (AKA, scifieric) got it correct:

“My best guess would be the two straight lines under the saucer that match the edges of the rounded cut and move forward. The look a little odd when the rest of the lines are radial lines.”

Illustrated here:

Basically, those lines shouldn’t exist on the bottom, or at least they shouldn’t go back that far. I needed them on the top and partly on the bottom so that the lines could have a nice edge and not go all the way into the thing in the center. So, I selected the faces where I needed a line and knifed it in. Unfortunately, I also did it all the way along the bottom. So, I put in the paneling and then rendered it and realized my mistake. I had a few options, I could have deleted what I did and used the “clean” version to redo that part. However, I decided to simply knife in another line and panel between them. However, (again) I decided I don’t like that, so I went with option one and just redid the paneling.

22nd Century Starship pt. 07

It should be fairly obvious what I’ve been working on. Needless to say, the saucer grids were very time consuming, but worth it in the end. The cut-outs on the side also took a bit of time, more than they should because there were extra verts in there interfering with the rounder. I had to find and eliminate those to get the edges rounded.

And now it’s time for a fun game: Spot the Error.

I made a mistake somewhere that has now been corrected. It’s blindingly obvious to me, but I want to see if anybody else can spot it. So, if anybody on either my blog or the three forums on which I post my work can tell me where and what it is, I’ll admit to it and tell everyone. If not, there is no mistake and it looks exactly as it was intended to look. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. I’ll give you a hint: it has something to do with the saucer grid lines. (the big part of the saucer)

22nd Century Starship pt. 06

And the ship is now a single unit, more or less. I built the structure that goes in the center of the saucer. Obviously, both that and the saucer itself are thicker than on John’s Drawing. But, you have to take a bit of creative license when doing things off of a single sketch. Indeed, they did so when they built Intrepid, it’s not exactly like the design. For one thing, both ships have really thin saucers. Neither one is a deck thick at its edge, as many Trek saucers are. Some are two decks thick, but all are at least one deck thick at the edge. I thickened the whole saucer and gave it a more rounded design to fit better with other ships of the time.

So, here’s the ship as it stands. I included a render that’s close to the same view as the sketch, to give an idea of how it compares. Obviously, as I already stated, there are some slight differences. But, overall, I’m happy with how it’s progressing.

22nd Century Starship Pt. 05

Starting on the saucer was the next logical step. I need it in order to get the other parts laid out. It may look simple, but the saucer is actually not just a standard saucer. The edge is round, like the saucer on Enterprise and Intrepid, but the center parts are ovals. It’s not difficult to do, but it’s a bit time consuming. But, it’s worth it because it’s coming out exactly how I want it to look.

Fun facts about the ship:

Length: 240 meters
Width: 154.55 meters
Height: 36.38 meters (there’s a possibility that will change)
Decks: 5

How I got there:

The specs on Enterprise are as follows:

Length: 225 meters
Width: 135.8 meters
Height: 34.4 meters

When I built Intrepid, I noticed that it has the same saucer as Enterprise, it’s just been modified. However, the base saucer is the same. The windows are the same size and are in the same places. That’s because Pierre Drolet kitbashed the NX to save time. So, that means it’s a more compact version of Enterprise, much like how the Nebula-class is a more compact version of the Galaxy-class. So, using that, I scaled Intrepid to these specs:

Length: 177.44 meters
Width: 136.16 meters
Height: 34.96 meters

(Intrepid has impulse engines that stick out slightly on the sides of its saucer, that’s why it’s slightly wider.)

These specs are fairly accurate, they might be off a hair, but not much. I’ve seen similar sizes on other sites, so I think I did a fairly good job.

So, bearing all of that in mind, you’ll notice in John Eaves’ original drawings that the ship I’m building is around the same size as Intrepid, it’s just more “stretched,” making it longer:

Comparing the nacelle sizes, I realized they were pretty darn close to the same size. So, I used the orthos that I have from Doug Drexler’s old blog of Intrepid as a size scale for the nacelles. Using those as a scale and laying out the ship in what appears to be the correct configuration, that’s what I came up with. And, indeed, it’s been confirmed by building the saucer. That’s the size the ship will be.

Sorry for the long winded explanation on that, but I don’t want anyone asking how it’s the size it is, so I explained it.

Originally, I’d planned this ship to be older than Enterprise, but I don’t see how that’s possible if it’s longer. Yes, they could have made longer ships in the past and the ship certainly won’t have the internal volume of Enterprise, but I still don’t like it being longer if it’s older. It’s safe to assume that Enterprise was the largest ship built by Starfleet to date, it was certainly the most advanced (as was Gene Roddenberry’s intent for ships named Enterprise, they were supposed to represent the latest Starfleet tech.) So, having a ship that’s longer that predates the NX is problematic and I can just see Trekkie colons clinching at the thought of it, so the ship post-dates Enterprise. I’m thinking this is something that was built during the war with the Romulans, when Starfleet needed new ships. So, its service time would be from the late 2150s to around 2190 to 2200. That way, it’s possible for the ship to be larger, faster, etc. than Enterprise, which was decommissioned after the war. That means I’ll also be adding phase cannon ports, as opposed to the originally planned plasma cannons.

22nd Century Starship Pt. 04

More work on the ship. The part that looks like it should be part of the Batman emblem took a long time. I made something yesterday that I hated, so I had to redo it today. I’m fairly happy with how it came out after I rebuilt it. Originally, the back came to points like it does in John’s drawings, but I had some mesh errors that wouldn’t smooth out, so I cut it off and capped it. I’ll put some thrusters or something there. That’s also why there are “trenches” in the side, I’ll put some greebles in those. (the sub-patching is great, but it can leave errors) The other stuff is pretty basic, modified cylinders, spheres and cubes.

Also, I had to cut some off of my pylons because I realized AFTER I did all of those grid lines (of course) that I hadn’t rotated the part that connects to the ship like I did the part that connects to the nacelles. So, they weren’t lining up with the ship, so I sunk them in some and removed the part that got buried. It was either that or completely rebuild them, which I wasn’t doing.

22nd Century Starship Pt. 03

More work on the pylons. In fact, this will probably be all I do with them, modeling wise. For the top, I tried to duplicate John’s line pattern as best I could. It’s all done using the pylon’s existing geometry, so there are a few differences. For the bottom, I just did what I felt like.

22nd Century Starship Pt. 02A

I noticed (and so did someone at Scifi-Meshes) that the pylons didn’t have enough girth. Also, while I was initially pleased with them, I didn’t quite like the shape. so, I redid them and their connectors.

22nd Century Starship Pt. 02

Work continues on the ship. I mostly finished the nacelles. Though, after seeing the “blank” spot I have in front of the pylon connector, I think I need to add a greeble or something there. Also, I started on the pylons. Those went well, better than I’d hoped they would. Of course, I still have to detail them, but getting the shape right was the majority of the work on those. There are a couple tiny issues, but I’ll fix them later.

Close up on the pylon: (yes, I see the mesh errors.)

RCS thruster:

22nd Century Starship Pt. 01

Work continues on the nacelle. I was hoping to be completely done with it today so that I could move on to the pylon tomorrow, but that didn’t happen. I had to redo a couple things and I also spent some time fooling around with materials for the glowing bits. But, I only have a few more things to add on the nacelle. All I can think of right now that I still need to add are the RCS thrusters and navigation lights, neither of which should take that long.

It’s something….

It’s either a warp nacelle or a lightsaber, you make the call.

No, seriously, it’s one of the ships in this image:

As you can see from the text on the image, it’s a John Eaves design. As I’m sure a lot of people know, he designed several Starfleet ships for the Enterprise Season Two finale, The Expanse, and two were chosen. The one on the right was one of the ships used and, as many people probably know, I built that ship a few years ago. (it was called Intrepid on screen in the Season Three episode Twilight) In fact, I think an image of it circulates on the header from time to time. One of these days, I’m going to build that ship again in Lightwave, but not right now.

I decided the other day that I wanted to do something in the Enterprise-era, so I started looking through my references folder for NX-era stuff (which is, of course in a sub-folder. ) I was looking through images for inspiration when I came across that image, so I decided to do the ship on the left, which is a great design (in my opinion) but was never used on screen. As I’m sure a lot of people are aware, concept artists submit X amount of drawings, the powers-that-be pick what they like and they either ask for alterations or approve one on the spot. Fortunately, among other things, John likes to post his concept art from the various shows and movies he’s worked on, including Enterprise, on his blog, which I follow. So, I’ve saved various things he’s posted over the years to use as inspiration later. For this particular ship, later became now.

For the overall design, the ship will be pretty much as John has it drawn. I see no reason to change it because I really like the design, that’s why I’m building it. Though, of course, I’ll be doing more Enterprise-esque details so that it fits in with the other ships from the series. Fortunately, Enterprise was a bit of a Renaissance series, in that warp drive had been invented less than a century earlier and Earth was designing newer engines and ships, trying to push the technology forward. So, unlike the later (or earlier, depending on your point of view) shows and movies, no two ships really have the same details. Indeed, even the warp nacelle designs vary slightly from ship to ship. So, this leaves me a bit of leeway with the design.

I started with the nacelle because it’s easy to use for scale. I did a quick check using my fingers as calipers and the nacelles on both ships are the same size, or at least close enough. So, I loaded up the orthos I have for the Intrepid at the scale I figured out when I built that ship and used that to get the nacelle the proper size. Obviously, there’s much more to do on the nacelle before I can even start on the pylons, but I wanted to show my progress thus far. I would like to have been farther along before showing progress, but I’m still learning the software and much of what I’m doing I’m figuring out as I go. Though, as a proof of concept model, it’s going great. I never could have gotten the side cut-out or the part that goes inside and wraps around the hull to come out that smoothly in TrueSpace. Indeed, my Intrepid has some mesh errors in that area. Also, I figured out a great way to do the hull paneling using mutlishift and smooth shift, which took some trial and error to figure out (I used a sphere for testing.) But, it worked great. Also, I kept making mistakes earlier and had to keep going back and redoing stuff, so that didn’t help my progress. But, all in all, it’s going well.