Just playing with model and some volume lighting which didn’t turn out the way I intended, but was cool in and of itself…
Star Trek: A meandering look at an unproductive week…
I haven’t been feeling too inspired to work on any models lately. I’ve been picking at these over the past week, but I can’t seem to summon up any drive to work on them for anything more than a few minutes at a time. So, I thought maybe if I posted some pics, it might inspire me to get moving on some of them and replace them with pics that don’t completely suck. I apologize in advance…
First up is the Sineus Class, this is meant to be a medium cruiser in the TOS era. I was all gungho about this one for about a week a few months back. Things started to fizzle after I couldn’t figure out where to stick a hangar bay. I thought about in the pod slung underneath but I really wanted that to just be about the deflector and sensor machinery there. So then I thought in the strip of hull that the warp engines are attached to. Well that seems kinda cramped what with the warp engines there but I guess it could go there. The warp engines do angle up so they are above the plane of the primary hull. We’ll see…
This looks like a refit Galaxy class but it wasn’t supposed to look that way. This was supposed to be a purpose built battleship, I wanted it to have some similarity to the Galaxy since it was supposed to exist in the same era but I think it looked too similar, but not enough to be a decent refit (I tried that this month). Anyway, I’ve tinkered with this on and off for about six months (maybe more). The primary and secondary hulls are all modeled as a single piece so that I could make a nice smooth cut for saucer separation later down the road. I have since spent all my time on this tweaking the vertices to correct smoothing errors. I hate this ship so much I’d like to send it away and have it built as a physical model just so I could blow it up in the desert. Simply deleting the file wouldn’t give me the same sense of satisfaction.
I was supposed to work on some greebling and robotic arms and cut some windows on the repair ship. I rebuilt the hull instead and then lost steam…
I rebuilt the impulse engines for the 3rd or 4th time. When I opened the model up in the program I was supposed to cut windows. The last time I opened it before that I was supposed to cut windows, that time I rebuilt the engines. As I was saving it this last time, I thought, I really don’t much care for that secondary hull. As I wrote this I cast my eyes to heaven and just sighed…
Yeah a Klingon ship, didn’t get to far with this, just blocking out the general layout of things. So this week I started fleshing out the engineering section (the back section whatever it’s called). This is as far as I got.
And here’s my refit Galaxy class. I swept the pylons forward a bit, rotated the primary hull 90 degrees. I feel like starting this one completely from scratch. The only thing preventing me from doing that is that I would have to start it from scratch.
I tried my hand at the Excelsior a while back. I love this ship onscreen, I hate my model of it intensely. I hope it dies.The secondary hull is a bitch among bitches, queen of the bitches in fact.
I was sitting in my car at work a few weeks back and watched an AWACS plane take off from Nellis AFB. Then I had this brilliant idea for such a starship. This looked a lot better in my head. Yeah I just used the warp engine from my Bold Fury class, cause I’m cheap like that.
Oh yes, the Linus Pauling, another take on the Planet of the Titans Enterprise design by Ralph McQuarrie (too bad he’s gone when I read about that I just said “shit”. I mean, I know the man couldn’t live forever and it’s not like we ever met or corresponded, but some people you just feel better knowing they’re in the world someplace). So I opened the file, rendered these two pics and closed the file again.
This is the USS Bluefin, another offshoot of my Bold Fury group of similar technology ships. Same engines, but the rest is newish. I haven’t done much with the design. I had worked on the lower hull, turned it into a large open hangar bay. It was open on the bottom similar to a Star Destroyer (stop, it didn’t look that bad). Anyway, I usually save my work as a new file whenever I change things dramatically in case I want to go back to a previous version. I ended up doing just that after I started tinkering with the primary hull (now that looked awful), but I ended up saving the previous version over my newer one and deleted the new hangar bay. Since then it has been too painful to open the file.
Some shuttles, that’s all I have to say about that…
Star Trek: USS Excalibur Update V
Completely rebuilt the warp engines, although the back end is still unfinished, I’ll probably throw in some light greeble back there. So these engines being experimental are sort of a merging of both circumferential and linear warp drives. Added a little character to the deflector dish, but it still needs more details. I still have to tear up some more hull plating to give it that under construction look all over but I’m deciding whether to give the secondary hull some more curve.
Star Trek: USS Enterprise 1701-D
Started on my first Next Generation ship, so why not tackle the one I’ve always wanted to tweak the most, the Enterprise. For whatever reason, this ship just has never sat well with me (no offense meant to those that love her). I don’t know what in particular I didn’t like, but I’m going to try and build a version that I find more palatable. So here’s a start…
Star Trek: USS Excalibur Update IV
Worked a little on the impulse engines. At first, I thought about using one of Andrew Probert’s discarded impulse engine designs from the refit from TMP, but as I was working I decided just to take what was done for TMP and dial it back a little so it looks like it’s on its way to being the system we see in TMP but not quite there yet. I also tinkered with the warp engine grills, halved the number so they show up and aren’t just an interference pattern in the renderings.
Star Wars: Tormentor Class Imperial Battlecruiser Update II
Greebling is still ongoing, it’s really just plodding along but I’m almost halfway down the first trench there. I’ve made some changes to the hull, to help break up some of the plain expanse in the back (also had some bad angles that needed fixing). I’m really wanting to dive right into paneling but if I keep letting myself get distracted, the greebling is just going to take even longer. The big guns are in place now though. But anyway, here’s some updated pics…
Star Trek: USS Bold Fury Deck Plans
Did a little more work on this, expanded the hangar a little since the shuttle was just barely fitting before… still getting the hang of inkscape…
Star Trek: USS Excalibur Update III
Changed a bunch of stuff. What I intended to to was cut out some windows but one thing led to another and I never got to windows. But I did rebuild the bridge superstructure to make look like it was being rebuilt. Also scattered around some open spots on the upper side of the primary hull. Changed the main sensor/deflector dish to look more on the road to TMP version. Also rebuilt the hangar doors and worked on the hull around that area. And now Star Wars calls, probably work on some of that for the next post. Anyway, here’s pics…
The Galactic Empire 