A Few Chamfers

And an extra coffer

Minor detail updates.

Not much to add this past weekend.  I followed a fellow artist’s advice and tried rounding a few edges here and there (also referred to as chamfer or fillet in some other 3D programs).  Mostly an experimental procedure, I put them in and around the main socket surrounding the airlock’s  inner hatch, as well as the outer edges of those nearby coffers.  I also rounded the outer edges of all the wall and door coffers inside the airlock itself, but I didn’t have time to render anything from it.  There are actually quite a few rounded edges all over the model, but

Platform

Working out the kinks

Floor breakup begins.

I started breaking up the deck plates and added the bumpy floor mats to the concentric corridors (radial already had them).   I don’t think I’ll add the bump features to the deck lining in and around foyer entry though.  There were just some places on the TMP Enterprise (like the space suit locker room in fact) that just didn’t have the large bumps in their various forms (typically round or diamond patterns).  They did appear to have some texture in places though (kind of ridgy), and how to break up all that flatness and make it look more walked upon is a surface issue for down the line.

I took a stab at making the platform a temporary set-up for docking procedures.  I shortened the platform near the upper stairs and lengthened the whole set down to deck 7. 

For Demonstration Purposes Only

Do Not Attempt In Deep Space

External doors slid aside to reveal the primary docking interface with all inner airlock hatches wide open, generally considered a disaster.

From this angle… Well, first off: without an environment suit… you’re dead.

I chose to do some renders with various hatches in a somewhat (OK, totally) open motif. Typically this would only be done with a standardized Starfleet docking port mated to the exterior, but this view affords us a more revealing view of the inner airlock and the outer docking mechanisms (and makes life more of a chore for anyone located in the free and open volume of this gangway entry area). Maybe we’ll just close off some doors.

Grates and Rails

Details moving in

Added grating, rails, and some more details.

I worked this weekend on filling in the upper railing and turning the entry platform into the grated variety. The smaller stair set down to deck 7 has been there all along, but now you can actually see it! I also thought I would try a foyer version where the lower hull’s concavity was obscured by some bulkhead or partition covering.

A Gangway Delay

Scout ship takes a brief back-burner.

Rough draft: Dark, splotchy, but mainly just testing the overall blocking. 

I was again inspired by those fascinating cutaway drawings of a starship gangway study I posted a short time ago…

Gangway study by unknown (at present) artist.

As a result, I decided to set aside the refitted Ranger class-scout for a short time, and began work on those interior gangway details for a significantly larger ship.  However, the exterior gangway hatch and immediate airlock details might very easily come in handy on the Ranger class eventually.

The paint is still wet, but these first experimental renders are deeper within the ship’s hull where the main corridors meet up with the gangway airlock.  The posted 2D drawings try to make sense of the typically central, yet resultingly awkward placement of a ship’s exterior gangway, at least in regards to the two decks that are implied to run through the entire outer rim of the saucer.  By utilizing the split-level method, the drawing’s artist (I wish I knew who that was) tries to solve most of these problems,  and pretty successfully I might add.  The drawings also address the severe reduction of deck height in a region of the rim’s lowest deck due to the saucer’s large ventral concavity.  I figured this design could be a standard split level gangway entry for most of the larger Class I starships with two deck saucer rims, regardless of canon or fan based origins. 

Stubby Nacelles

Carving out the details begins

Not quite ready for warp.

Started chopping away on my warp nacelles, trying to create something distinct while managing to maintain that definitive Starfleet character.  I started with the basic box-cutter-inspired shape I began with and started trying to coax some details out of it.  In addition to my favorite cardboard cutlery, I was somewhat inspired by a particular design I’d seen on Scifi-Meshes a couple of years back: a nacelle formed by a 3D artist on those boards that goes by the moniker Madkoifish (aka Dan Uyeno).  His USS Mughi cargo ship sported a pair of nacelles which he himself had been inspired to flesh out based on another artist’s 2D drawing.  His final version was awesome, and gave the appearance of a genuinely authentic alternative to Starfleet’s typical space bending propulsion units.

Madkoifish’s beautiful warp nacelles sported by his equally beautiful cargo ship USS Mughi.

While they have many features I adore, ultimately, they seemed a bit too sleek for the somewhat stubby approach I was aiming for here.

Gangway

For a message board post

Some descriptive gangway drawings found online a few years back.

Someone on a message board mentioned a particular drawing seen online some time back and this image I found a few years ago immediately came to mind.  It seemed like a possible match, so I said I would post this to see if this was the image in question (I’ve been craving to build this internal  for some years now, but simply haven’t gotten around to it yet).

I do wish I knew who the artist was but I can’t even remember where I came across it.  I have file information indicating it goes back to at least 2003.  I have the originals (all three versions were individual images) and they were all gif format, but I don’t recall if I compiled them into one for convenience sake, or someone else did and posted it as such.  Does anyone know who the original artist is?