I put up some street lights.  These are the same as I used in the Starbase 11 shot based directly on the matte painting used in TOS.I was planning on making something more updated and possibly more boxy, but these were ready to scale and available, so I thought I would try them out.  There are a number of ideas out there I am considering, but for now I have the SB 11 lamps and some lights set up with them to begin glowing the ground a little more.

I also put some exterior spotlights on that flattened facility near the wall (I think it was a mineral refinery in the New Worlds game)  and a light over maintenance door 2 on the mushroom hub’s base.   On the mushroom hub’s “stem”  I managed some new interior structures, so there is new glow in that area.  I’ll try and get some new interior stuff for the base and top soon.

I probably need to add some shuttles and auxiliary craft near the landing pad/hanger area.  That would be a nice spot to put some fairly intense spot lights and show off the neighborhood a little more.  With some minor atmosphere or fog it could really make that area interesting.  Unfortunately, my experiments with fog recently ended less than successful.  I’ll have to dig in and figure out how that works actually.

I really need some happy blinkie lights on the tops of the tallest structures too.   Not to mention park benches, trees… people…

Rough render with no anti-aliasing, but it produced some interestingly subtle features.

A fully refined render

Blending of top two with some blurring for effect

Original back ground graphic

For a night time shot, I created some low poly interiors for the TOS space needle, went back to make some adjustments to the Bryce background settings, and finally I tweaked the Lightwave lighting in order to make things seem more realistically dark than my previous attempt (below).

I may have overdone things, but at least I now know my upper and lower limits.I really like the darker background but it looks pretty silly with too bright a setting for the principal light, in this case a dim spotlight representing an off screen moon.  Also, the colony itself simply doesn’t have enough self-illumination yet to make it look realistic enough, and  I might even need to add a little fog or haze in the foreground to help match the background’s atmospheric qualities.

I did a slighter earlier test render with just some settings changed on the space needle’s windows, mainly so they glowed on their own.

I actually thought it looked pretty silly, though honestly, not any sillier than the Starbase 11 buildings appeared in the actual TOS episodes where they were depicted; specifically, when viewed out a window at night.  And though that does possess a certain charm in the background…

It’s a little hard to take seriously as a full fledged establishing shot.

New sign for the Federation Administration Building: Self illuminated

Saturday, I was having fun adding details and upgrading various elements to my surface side starbase.  I even starting getting all kinds of crazy ideas about the level of detail I was going to venture…

And then my Mac Mini decided to pull on my leash, with a terrible crash and several stalled attempts at a restart as it beeped and whirred.  Hoping it was just an overworked processor, I pulled the power and let her cool down overnight.  Horrified and paranoid, I went to sleep.

Thankfully, the morning gave reprieve and the system started up without incident.  I was able to do some minor model work and a few renders on Sunday.  Still not sure what happened, and I’ll have to look into it.

I was able to manage some new details to the mushroom hub building, the central command of all-things-Starfleet.  I also completed a large emblem sign (see above) for what I’ve designated as the base’s Federation Administration Building (below).

Updated sunset with new colony details

I was even thinking of naming it the Nancy Hedford building in honor of that fiesty diplomat who gave her life (wink wink) in service to the Federation.

With the new glowy sign, I thought I would like to see some night time shots.  Of course, most of the buildings have very little in the way of interiors or lighting, to say nothing of lamp posts.  I guess that’ll be stage 2 or… 10.  Somewhere down the line.  I’m not too fond of the Bryce night time shots either, but I’ll keep experimenting there too.  If I get a decent shot it might be worth incorporating a nice ring world in the background.

Vague attempt at moonlight

An experimental attempt to capture some sky charm.

Though based on matte paintings for Starbase 11 from Star Trek: The Original Series’, I’ve recently wondered if maybe this colonial outpost (which I’ve tinkered with on and off for 11 years) could be the surface of the world which Star Station India will finally orbit.  Until I decide however, I figured I could revisit the starbase/colony scenes I’d dabbled in earlier, and play around with some new fractal landscape renderings I’ve been experimenting with, given some newly downloaded software.

This above image’s background is actually one of my earlier Terragen shots from 5 or 6 years ago, but I still love those shots even though they are a bit small in the pixel range.  The image quality survived a bit of resizing to fit a newer, larger, Lightwave render though, so afterward I decided to embellish the weak clouds in Pixelmator while adding in a screen overlay of  a newly rendered ring world.  I wasn’t really sure how apparent such a ring system would be on its dark side, at least in normal visible light.  But since the Cassini probe has provided several remarkable images of Saturn’s rings opposite the sun’s pouring light, I figured I would invoke the artistic license.  The above image seems admittedly dark in the shade, even for the long rays of a sun approaching sunset, but it manages to highlight the rings.

(Minor Update: 

Rendered again with a slightly brighter skydome.  Looks a bit better, but there’s so much contrast lost, the effect is a lot of washout.  Of course there isn’t a great deal of detailing or texture variation either, so that will have to be worked on.)

One thing that has swayed me away from Starbase 11 portrayals (aside from just needing a planet for my station), is the nature of the ringed world in the sky itself.  In both the original and remastered versions of the TOS episodes where the SB 11 locale is depicted, the ringed world is a firm terrestrial with a visibly hard and cratered surface.  My versions have always been of a larger gaseous planet: a Jovian or perhaps lesser ice giant.  Another issue is the use of structures.  My first renderings of any surface designs were based more on the PC game Star Trek: New Worlds than any other inspiration.  With that game’s ideas and my first 3D rendering softwares, I depicted these some 11 years ago:

These earliest renderings (done with KPT Bryce backgrounds and Raydream Designer foreground structures) were a blast to work on, but the outcome was very primitive even for the time.  I still have a fondness for them though.

At the time, I actually felt the TV depictions of Starbase 11 were rather dated, though my attitude since has altered drastically.  Years later, after my first use of Terragen scenery generator, I jumped onto my Lightwave platform to recreate all the buildings I had previously constructed in Raydream designer and then some.  The tall angled towers reminiscent of a space needle from the TOS series had grown on me by then, so with a combination of my purplely-pink  alien landscapes, and a need for filler architecture, Starbase 11 just seemed a natural subject.

Starbase 11

But now I need a planet, and one could argue that Federation “style” is prominent on any colonial world.

Some other recent renderings are now sporting landscapes from the Bryce 7.0 software I recently downloaded.  Though I tend to prefer the Terragen method, the freeware version I have is somewhat limited.   Since my first landscape software (which I bought mainly for space scenes) was actually a Bryce product some 14 years ago,  I thought I would download the latest version and give it a 21st century test spin.

Making use of a new Bryce landscape render.

An older render of the ringed planet incorporated into another new Bryce landscape render. 

Most of the models are extremely simple and meant to be seen at a good distance.  As a result, most of the models are undergoing upgrades, and I’d like to improve the textures all around (still not my strong suit).  A number of the designs are borrowed from the Trek franchise either directly or stylistically in general, while some are based on actual buildings I’ve seen near home or on travels.  The building closest on the right (above) was inspired by a building used as an establishing shot for a scene in a Smallville episode I saw years ago (or was it Lois & Clark? – It’s been so long).  I rushed to construct it at the time, but never did anything with it.  Later I thought it would make a nice complement to the long pyramid buildings across the way, themselves inspired by Federation Headquarters in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.  Here it was when I first modeled it in Lightwave, next to the pyramid buildings.

UPDATE 1/16:  While skimming the web for images of potentially interesting architecture, I discovered this building was in fact based on the City Hall in Dallas, Texas, and that the TV show I remembered it from was in fact Lois & Clark (see, it was wiggling my memory ).  The building was apparently a stand in for S.T.A.R. Labs on the series.  Amazingly, there is a whole interesting backside of the building I’ve never seen.

A number of the buildings are based on the PC game Star Trek: New Worlds which I used to enjoy.  It was an opportunity to develop colony worlds for the Federation (or Klingons, or Romulans if one wanted).

Star Trek: New Worlds screenshot

I don’t think it was very popular, and though I thought the overall plot and storyline were pretty silly, I simply enjoyed playing it as if it were a Trek version of Sim City.    The music was pretty cool too.

The buildings I derived from that game’s Federation play are the central hub (which looks like a giant mushroom when completed), a hanger bay, a mineral refinery, and some shield generators.  I always meant to build a few more of the game’s interesting structures but I’ve never gotten around to it.  I’m currently upgrading my earlier version of the central hub.

I’m very pleased with the way things are progressing, but it’s going to take a lot more detail in all elements to help bring these images to life.

Most of these images have older rendered versions in several different software media.  Of course, some only ever made it as rough low-res experiments even as my software improved.  These two shots were the basis of a few above.

I haven’t come close to working with human forms or any such dedicated software yet (I currently have DAZ 3D), hence all the little, red, stand-in figures for scale in the images, both old and new.

This was a another attempt at some familiar Starbase 11 angles, but was mostly an early experiment in grass with the Lightwave plug-in, Sasquatch.  I enjoyed cranking out the fountain, sculpture and wall, and this scene is the reason I constructed the space needle buildings.  The background clouds were a complete flop however, and I never managed to try another render.  I’m sure I will eventually.

And the last of the Starbase 11 experiments,  a simple light test, before I began the final rendering attempts at the classic sunset angle.  Heck, there isn’t even a ground surface in this one.

This is some old stuff, but it was a fun toy box to play in.

Some other older images I posted a few years back can be seen here including Starbase 11.

I started on the San Francisco air tram a short while ago.  Seen only briefly in Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the Starfleet Headquarters scene, I’ve always loved its smooth sleek appearance.

It’s totally incomplete of course, but I was impressed by how much I was able to get done in such a short time, so thought I would put it up on the blog.  I’m not exactly sure why I even started it, since I don’t have any real plans for a scene with it.   I was actually aiming toward creating a new shuttle craft for Star Station India (for landing on the upper pier surfaces at the shuttle pad/elevator sites as I’ve always intended)  But while I was researching various designs, the air tram just stood out for me.  The front appeared very simple, while the aft seemed rather complex, so I just had to try it out.  I was under the impression the air tram was an atmospheric craft, so it probably wouldn’t even come in to handy on the space station.  I have been looking at some of my old surface colony/starbase images though, and I might start tinkering with them in the not too distant future, so this could come in handy there.

I still need to finish/correct some hull details and add the doors, lights, and markings, but it’s getting there.  I also felt some artistic license since the filming miniature and the full-scale exterior mock-up are ever so slightly different, so I felt I could pick and choose some details I preferred.  I might even grace this one with an interior if everything goes well.

And Happy New Year!

Based on a rather standard roller clamp (used for flow regulation in intravenous drips), I thought I would try this structure as a fueling rig in the pier’s central area, which itself is begging for details.  I had a drip on a hospital stay quite a few years back and thought the clamp looked cool, so I kept it.  I’ve been wanting such a structure on my station since first imagining it years ago.  It can be seen (center right) in some of my old sketches…

Along with other disposable doo-dads collected from a multitude of sources (one of which I’ve already used as the station’s tractor moorings ) , this one seemed particularly “pier-like.”  Maybe it just looks like a coat hook or a place to hang your hat.  Either way, it was in a lot of my early concept drawings, and I especially intended to use it as a form of gangway, but I eventually needed something that wasn’t quite so static, so I had to shelve it until I could find another use for it.  Now that I look at it as part of the station, I realize it may have partially inspired the shape of the large piers themselves.

Sadly this might not make the grade as a useful fueling rig.  It’s meant to have extendable pipes and such at various surface hatches, but at this scale it doesn’t appear long enough or mount low enough to be useful in fueling some of the larger Starfleet vessels as I intended.  This is as large as I am willing to make the structure in relation to the station, as any bigger would compromise the wide open berth I was intending.  With the extender pipes and other equipment, it could work on some lower profile classes like the Miranda and Kevin Riley’s Loknar, but that could get gangly and silly looking real fast.  I loaded up Dennis Bailey’s Constitution refit last night and placed her in the berth only to find that her secondary hull simply hangs too low and far out to make a useful connection to this structure.

I’ll have to decide if I really want this structure where I’ve placed it (possibly for some other function) or remove it to another location and entirely rethink the refueling thing.  Who knows, it may come in useful as a secondary gangway for non-Starfleet vessels, somewhere else on the station.

Along the pier’s main interior wall, I tightened up and further beveled some more rounded view ports, thus thickening the hull’s appearance in those areas.  I also added a few more sprinkle greebles (mini-pipes and tanks).  My main focus however, was to try breaking up the monotony nestled in the furthest recesses of this inner pier’s layout.

New greebles, barely visible in the pier’s darkest corners

Originally designed to add interest to an inner pier section, the angled areas nested deepest into the port’s structure were starting to appear mostly barren to me.  When I first built it, I mainly intended to break up the flat blocky nature of the piers by reducing the number of 90 degree angles anywhere I could, but I also wanted to allow continuance of the concourse windows around the inner structure in some fashion.  Though fully ensconced in the station’s structure, I wanted these inner corner areas to seem something like the crossover bridges used by hospitals and office buildings to connect separate super structures to one another.  Once I had established all of the necessities (concourse view ports, docking rings) I realized just how much empty space there still was left to fill in, even though the overall area is smaller in comparison to the larger pier features.  Jamming it with random hanger doors and arbitrary view ports was not a good idea, as I had to take into account the large cargo bay which fills the entire deck it inhabits and takes up a large swath of that portion of the recessed hull not already dominated by concourse.  The primary doors for this bay were already established as well.

An earlier render with only the corner greebles established

I had earlier begun to add a cluster of minor greebles into the sharp 90 degree corner of the recess, but it was clearly still lacking.  I decided to break up the area by distinguishing the lower angled section with a complete difference in color and smooth shifted it a little.  This area is below the main cargo deck.  To the right I added a small bay for workbees and their accessories.  This port’s door serves a double function.  The entire door can slide open to access larger equipment in the bay, or the individual workbees (up to 4) can temporarily park in what I’ve dubbed the “doggy doors.”  Like some of Andrew Probert’s original concept art, this provides quick access/egress to the pilots for lunch breaks or what have you.  The workbee bay is in its own mini nook with equipment greebles and pipes just below it.  There is even a small exterior airlock exclusively for quick maintenance access for thruster suited mechanics.  Figuring the entire lower area could serve best housing large machinery and equipment for life support and cargo bay functions, I added external plates for maintenance access all around, and it now serves as a maintenance area dedicated to pier functions.

Another angle…  still dark

The overall darkness of these images is a curse, as every time I manage a new test render with the illumination ramped up a little more, I have to reload the entire scene due to memory issues.  These particular images all branched off from my attempt to render the McCook docked at the station with operating travel pods.  I suppose if I want to concentrate on showing off the station elements, I could dump the McCook from this scene and focus on these new areas.  It would certainly help with the memory issue.

Update since beginning this entry.  I saved the scene anew and discarded all nonessential meshes.  I was able to tweak  some details and refine the lighting a bit to render these slightly closer views.

A little brighter and closer to the detail

I’ve also began chopping up some of the support pylons that run to and through the lower ring structure.  I put some piping running up the inner structure and a grill type pattern on the outer facing.  The inner structure even has a little greeble box at the bottom of the piping with a maintenance hatch.  I’ve even begun creating a frame structure for the fuel pods that up until now have been hanging free in space with no connection to the main station.  They are primitive so far, and barely visible in the upper images.

I think my next area of focus will be on the center of the inner pier itself.  For a while now, I’ve been debating how and where the refueling of ships will take place.  In the Trek-verse, antimatter containment pods are probably delivered directly in bundles, but the slush deuterium that handles the matter side of things would most likely be pumped into a vessel’s reservoir by conventional means.  I wrestled with whether or not it was necessary for every pier to have refueling appendages for all docked vessels.  This could make things pretty complex since (curse or blessing) Starfleet ships have widely varying morphologies (for lack of a better word), and I was worried about taking things to that level.  Another alternative was for ships to simply link up to a separate facility built into the lower core in order to refuel as an independent maneuver.  Perhaps they would dock for a few days at their pier for maintenance and reloading of supplies, and then refuel down below as a final task before departure.  This seems a bit inefficient but was where I was leaning.  My initial intent was to build fueling stations into the lower core pylons or atop the lower ring.  Those two ideas might still be viable options, but I’ve come to the conclusion that even if the outer piers don’t have refueling capabilities, the inner piers should at least have the option, especially since the fuel can run directly up through the pylons to the center of the pier.  The rather barren area directly between the large tractor beam mounts looks ripe for final placement of some sort of large refueling rig or boom.

The fun challenge will be coming up with a construct that will be universal to some degree, but offer the flexibility required by the distinct styling motifs of Starfleet ships.

A quick little post about what little I accomplished this holiday weekend.  I finally built some storage tanks and a storage box I’ve been putting off for years.  Technically, these are props rather than greebles, but they have a nice “greeblie” factor to them that helps up the detail in any given scene.  I’ve been wanting these storage tanks for years to serve as background in a number of my interior modeling, but kept putting it off thinking that it would be harder than I imagined.  Alas, it was pretty easy with only a few speed bumps.  I built them in the GNDN style (Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing) of the great prop masters, as that appears to be how they were built.

I’ve always wanted them in and around landing bays, but I especially wanted them for my interior model of the McCook’s cargo staging bay.  Since some of the ship’s thruster machinery was very near that bay (McCook’s port-forward reaction control thrusters are just on the other side of that right bulkhead), I always wanted something like these tanks sticking out and taking up some of that empty room there in the back right corner, looking like they were doing their job.  I may return to this model shortly.

I first remember seeing these large storage tanks in The Wrath of Khan on board the Space Lab Regula One station.  That’s where I first got the idea to put them in the McCook.

They later showed up in The Voyage Home on Vulcan at the “Bounty’s” landing pad.  In addition to “Vulcanizing” the exteriors, it would seem TVH‘s prop department rearranged the pipes a little and added tubing running off screen to make them appear more functional, especially since they were being seen in full.  Seeing the tanks in these early TVH scenes, in use and surrounded by piles of cargo, made me want to put them anywhere I could muster.

The new cargo box was also seen on the Regula station.   Whatever it originally housed, it would eventually hold two worm-eared Starfleet officer’s as its guests.  Its labels warned of “thermowave hazard” and seemed strict about accessing it by cargo bay only (if I am reading that red sticker correctly).  I’ve always assumed that meant do not move it to and fro by transporter beam.  This is a good thing for the dockworkers after all, as it means there are some things that even a transporter still can’t move.   “Just try putting us outta work now Matter Energy converter.  We’ve got thermowaves to deliver. “

I especially liked this one because of the whole sliding door side, the shape of which sort of reminds me of a TOS shuttle craft design.  I threw it together late last night from memory, all because I was too lazy to check my reference images.  I figured it was such a simple design, any flaws could be readily corrected when I had more time to devote.  I was right, and my final product should be an easy fix.  The control boxes were just stand ins to begin with, it’s length is currently too short, and some of the labeling and detailing need tweaking.  Right now it looks like a paranoid hooty owl, but I really wanted it next to the tanks for a quick render.

Yard inspectors get to work

I’m not too prolific with my renderings.  I’m just a 3D hobbyist with a love of Star Trek and its stylized ships.  I model in what little free time I have and the renders are even fewer and farther between.  Still, I’ve been very pleased with some of the images I’ve done in the past, especially my drydock shots.  Of course they’ve have no real story or background.

After working on some minor animations and posting a few more shots of the McCook out on duty in the field, I started imagining a sort of chronology.  Nothing too specific, just a minimal timeline following an unspecified “incident” that describes the McCook’s return to Starbase and her subsequent repair efforts.  I thought it would be interesting to place some damage where those maintenance craft in the drydock scenes are working.  I was also eager to put the travel pod into service, even if a little premature of it’s completion.

I figured perhaps the ship got into a wee scuffle with some adversarial power (Klingons, pirates…?) near the Azure Nebula, but managed to drive off said foes for yet another day.  Already en route to Star Station India for resupply before such a diversion, she arrives a tad late and a little rough for wear.  As most of her crew disembarks to the station for some R & R, she’ll be inspected by yard workers and set up for repair and refit in one of the starbase’s many separate orbital drydock facilities.  This scenario would indicate that I’ve settled upon putting the station in planetary orbit rather than deep space, though I haven’t decided what that world should look like yet.

An early test render for blocking reveals just how barren the concourse still is, especially the upper deck.

This also gave me a chance to tweak my station a bit.  I haven’t tinkered with it in six months or more.  I simply added a few more details to the concourses, concentrating mostly on the lower section with a new seating area, and adding in a few new interior spaces behind some of the larger view ports.  I’m shrinking some of the larger view ports (other than the concourse), or else I would plant interiors behind all of them at once.

New seating area in lower concourse and the main gangway extends outward to accommodate the McCook

This is another test render, as only the station’s core plus one pier arm is even present in the scene for rendering.  I extended the gangway outward in order to reach the centrally parked McCook, but I suppose it would be feasible to park such a small vessel much closer to the main structure and squeeze another small vessel (an Oberth perhaps) on the opposite side of this closed in section of the “South” pier complex: not unlike a compact car section in a parking lot.  However, I’ve made “squeeze parking” a frowned upon practice in the station’s rather informal narrative, outside of some pressing scenario that is.  For the most part, there are plenty of gangways around the station to accommodate the port authority’s busy schedule, and given the magic of transporter technology, ships visiting the port don’t necessarily have to hard dock with the station at all.  Still, it might be neat to see two ships snuggled in together from inside the concourse.