• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Guy makes 3D model of the entire USS Enterprise, inside and out.

Status
Not open for further replies.
Interesting to see you're still working on it. It'll be impressive if every room will have small details like that and it's accurate to the ships design plans.

Why are you doing this anyway? Just for fun? I suppose you could be recognized as "the guy who made the star trek ship" and get work as a result.
 
POWERSPHERE said:
Wait, there are blueprints of a pretend spacecraft?
Ever since Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings just so he'd have a use for his detailed fictional language, nerds have been creating detailed plans for fictional things.
 
I have a Star Wars question but maybe this is the right thread to ask it in...what was the orientation of the floors on the Death Star?

When the Millennium Falcon was pulled into the Death Star, it was like it was pulled into a window on the Death Star's equator, so I would imagine the many floors or levels being stacked above and below the equator, with the top floor on the north pole and the bottom floor on the south pole. Yet, in so many of the final Death Star battle scenes, it appeared as though the surface of the DS was covered with buildings, towers, and turrets all reaching skyward, which would lead me to conclude the floors on the DS were like layers of an onion with the top floor being the surface of the sphere, and all the lower floors descending toward the center of the sphere. But that clearly contradicts the docking bay scenes, so which is right? (God, I feel like that kid in Galaxy Quest...)
 
Lucky Forward said:
I have a Star Wars question but maybe this is the right thread to ask it in...what was the orientation of the floors on the Death Star?

When the Millennium Falcon was pulled into the Death Star, it was like it was pulled into a window on the Death Star's equator, so I would imagine the many floors or levels being stacked above and below the equator, with the top floor on the north pole and the bottom floor on the south pole. Yet, in so many of the final Death Star battle scenes, it appeared as though the surface of the DS was covered with buildings, towers, and turrets all reaching skyward, which would lead me to conclude the floors on the DS were like layers of an onion with the top floor being the surface of the sphere, and all the lower floors descending toward the center of the sphere. But that clearly contradicts the docking bay scenes, so which is right? (God, I feel like that kid in Galaxy Quest...)

An onion with an equator floor running level? That would work. I think...
 
j_k_redtail said:
Let's get this out of the way:


2d27qmv.jpg


I was expecting either of the two in the top left. This is cool, though.

I'm not a fan of ST, but one of the things I really appreciated was the consistency in the ship design.
Indeed. To all of it.
 
Lucky Forward said:
I have a question about the classic Enterprise (NCC-1701) and TMP Enterprise (NCC-1701A). Is the A supposed to be an entirely new ship, or is it the same classic Enterprise that's been given a major overhaul including new engines and deflector dish?

It was referred to as a refit, so that would mean it's the same old ship but just upgraded.
 
The model is fucking impressive, but the people who can draw the 2D cutaways blow my mind just as much, if not more because of the fixed perspective.

Again though I LOVE that model.

POWERSPHERE said:
Wait, there are blueprints of a pretend spacecraft?
nv9lxx.jpg


This is a fucking awesome book

though when you look at engineering you have to wonder why they thought a metal grate was enough to work as a plasma shield

Lucky Forward said:
I have a Star Wars question but maybe this is the right thread to ask it in...what was the orientation of the floors on the Death Star?

When the Millennium Falcon was pulled into the Death Star, it was like it was pulled into a window on the Death Star's equator, so I would imagine the many floors or levels being stacked above and below the equator, with the top floor on the north pole and the bottom floor on the south pole. Yet, in so many of the final Death Star battle scenes, it appeared as though the surface of the DS was covered with buildings, towers, and turrets all reaching skyward, which would lead me to conclude the floors on the DS were like layers of an onion with the top floor being the surface of the sphere, and all the lower floors descending toward the center of the sphere. But that clearly contradicts the docking bay scenes, so which is right? (God, I feel like that kid in Galaxy Quest...)
it's a bunch of floors standing upright starting from the bottom of the Death Star itself, it's not built in a sphere lol

well it is a sphere but the everything is pointed towards the top rather than built like a planetoid or something
 
BattleMonkey said:
It was referred to as a refit, so that would mean it's the same old ship but just upgraded.
Which may have been inspired by the aircraft carrier also getting a planned major refit in the late 70s, as the superstructure looked noticeably different afterwards.
 
superbank said:
Interesting to see you're still working on it. It'll be impressive if every room will have small details like that and it's accurate to the ships design plans.

Why are you doing this anyway? Just for fun? I suppose you could be recognized as "the guy who made the star trek ship" and get work as a result.

I started off working on modding Thief III with an eye toward modding Oblivion. Figured out pretty quickly that there was a lot I couldn't do with BSPs and stock meshes. Decided to try my hand at making my own meshes. Figured I'd do the Bridge of the ship for something familiar that would keep my interest. Just seemed to enjoy Mesh building so much that I kept expanding the build. It's interesting. It's fresh and when I started, it had never been done. And where the detail level is concerned, there is still no one that I'm aware of that has pushed it as far as I have or as far as I intend to.

Ultimately, portions of this will end up in a mod.

Bottom line, I'm an artist. I love creating. Don't care if it's with GreenStuff, Sculpy, Wire, wood, or drawing/painting. Been scratchbuilding since I was 6 years old. Started off with toothpicks and balsa making airplanes. Didn't really consider making a profession of it.
Guess I would if the money and terms were right; but, don't know.
 
MisterHero said:
The model is fucking impressive, but the people who can draw the 2D cutaways blow my mind just as much, if not more because of the fixed perspective.

Again though I LOVE that model.

The 2d stuff is what drew me in originally. I had a set of the FJ plans for years. When I started translating them to 3d, I found out how unrealistic his plans are. Looks good on paper; but, there have been a lot of fixups now and there will be more to come. There are
some things that 2d artists just don't at times seem to think through. So while the drawings are impressive, if they don't actually work, what's the point? A chunk of my job in building this model has been simply trying to fix what FJ did and make it work without changing the plans too dreadfully much.

Don't yet have the book you referenced. Looks like it would be interesting with Okuda involved. That said, were I starting from scratch again, I think I'd build the Jeffries/Drexler
version. Though I'd have to say there would need to be some further fleshing out of the interior spaces.
 
Nice.

I recently learned of a somewhat similar project, though they seem to be going more for interactivity than ultra-detailed model.
LuckyForward said:
I have a question about the classic Enterprise (NCC-1701) and TMP Enterprise (NCC-1701A). Is the A supposed to be an entirely new ship, or is it the same classic Enterprise that's been given a major overhaul including new engines and deflector dish?
It's a bit more complicated than that. The -A wasn't the ship from The Motion Picture--that was just supposed to be a heavily modified original Enterprise. The -A was the new one they used in Star Trek V and VI, after Kirk blew up the original in Star Trek III.
 
MisterHero said:
though when you look at engineering you have to wonder why they thought a metal grate was enough to work as a plasma shield
Plasmas are easily manipulated by magnetic fields. *shrug*
 
I don't care for Star Trek at all, but this is pretty awesome.
Must have taken a lot of work, the thought of having to model this would drive me insane.
How much time is in it?
 
MisterHero said:
though when you look at engineering you have to wonder why they thought a metal grate was enough to work as a plasma shield

You know the metal grate in a microwave oven stops the microwaves escaping. The plastic screens are just for show. I'd say at the time Star trek was written there's a least a weak scientific link to using grates.
 
That's an amazing effort. Fascinating stuff. I hope you finish it within your lifetime!

Shogmaster said:
So... Is it even money that this guy's a pedo?

Really? "Look at him! Look at what he does! What a pedo!"

A shame you weren't banned for this.
 
Arjen said:
I don't care for Star Trek at all, but this is pretty awesome.
Must have taken a lot of work, the thought of having to model this would drive me insane.
How much time is in it?

Another few months will make it 3 years.
 
Teh Hamburglar said:
They never really gave you a sense of scale in the show. The Enterprise always seemed like a small ship. It moved around pretty fast. If that guy built it to scale accurately that ship was huge.

Star Trek Generations definitely showed the scale. I remember seeing how tiny the people looked on the hull.
 
wetwired said:
Should have used Maya

Or at least something a little newer than 3Ds Max 5. I don't think it even had the Editable Poly feature back then. He would have been missing quite a few tools.
 
If we have blueprints and information on how these ships work, how come we can't just build one now? It seems like all the work is already done.
 
Jack Scofield said:
If we have blueprints and information on how these ships work, how come we can't just build one now? It seems like all the work is already done.
I just drew a blueprint of a time machine.

gaftimemachinezma7.png


That was easy. Why didn't we have time travel hundreds of years ago? Just follow the plans.
 
havoc92 said:
The 2d stuff is what drew me in originally. I had a set of the FJ plans for years. When I started translating them to 3d, I found out how unrealistic his plans are. Looks good on paper; but, there have been a lot of fixups now and there will be more to come. There are
some things that 2d artists just don't at times seem to think through. So while the drawings are impressive, if they don't actually work, what's the point? A chunk of my job in building this model has been simply trying to fix what FJ did and make it work without changing the plans too dreadfully much.

Don't yet have the book you referenced. Looks like it would be interesting with Okuda involved. That said, were I starting from scratch again, I think I'd build the Jeffries/Drexler
version. Though I'd have to say there would need to be some further fleshing out of the interior spaces.
Indeed, I prefer visualizing things in 3D software as well. It does feel more 'complete'.

dreamcastmaster said:
You know the metal grate in a microwave oven stops the microwaves escaping. The plastic screens are just for show. I'd say at the time Star trek was written there's a least a weak scientific link to using grates.
Yeah it's just for show but it just felt so cheap even back then lol. Not that I'm really complaining though. :P
 
Jack Scofield said:
If we have blueprints and information on how these ships work, how come we can't just build one now? It seems like all the work is already done.

It's a fictional starship. We haven't actually invented things like working warp drives and artificial gravity generators yet.
 
Lucky Forward said:
I have a Star Wars question but maybe this is the right thread to ask it in...what was the orientation of the floors on the Death Star?

When the Millennium Falcon was pulled into the Death Star, it was like it was pulled into a window on the Death Star's equator, so I would imagine the many floors or levels being stacked above and below the equator, with the top floor on the north pole and the bottom floor on the south pole. Yet, in so many of the final Death Star battle scenes, it appeared as though the surface of the DS was covered with buildings, towers, and turrets all reaching skyward, which would lead me to conclude the floors on the DS were like layers of an onion with the top floor being the surface of the sphere, and all the lower floors descending toward the center of the sphere. But that clearly contradicts the docking bay scenes, so which is right? (God, I feel like that kid in Galaxy Quest...)

The Death Star's decks are stacked vertically inside the sphere. Presumably the towers and little cities on the surface are using the Death Star's natural gravity to orient themselves as though "down" was the core of the station, whereas the internal decks are using whatever magic gravity generating device all Star Wars ships seem to have on them.

ds1tj2.gif
 
Teh Hamburglar said:
They never really gave you a sense of scale in the show. The Enterprise always seemed like a small ship. It moved around pretty fast. If that guy built it to scale accurately that ship was huge.

The shows were always highly constrained by budgets, we often only saw the same set of rooms over and over even though the ships had hundreds of rooms. DS9 probably had the largest scale set wise, yet still showed only a small fraction of the station which was pretty massive (hey everything takes place near Quark's bar!).

And Trek ships tend to for the most part fall on the small side of sci fi ship scales. Most sci fi really fails at giving proper sense of scale.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom