Nightfire

[Lonewriter]

Originally Posted by PokemonFleet

Nice ship, Deks!!! What's the specs on this ship? Does it use Quantum Slipstream Technology?

why do you ask this all the time????????

as to the ship, I like it but I agree that the saucer looks unbalanced. I love the nacelles.

[Deks]

You know ...
I can understand PokemonFleet's enthusiasm about Trek technology ...
I get into it myself, but I don't excess in that aspect like he does.
If anything I could spend hours discussing the subject with him with equal vigor, alas I won't.

Suffice to say that this ship is supposed to be new and in every aspect better from a tech. point of view in comparison to others in SF (hopefully not in a fanboyish way).
It will be featuring various technologies, QS will be among them yes, but in order to keep things in perspective, the ship will have to look functional as well.
The story itself is set just after Nemesis actually, and the Nightfire is supposed to be launched some 8 months after the Shinzon incident.
Nightfire's technical details I won't divulge.
The story (which also won't be techno-babble heavy, but should contain moderate amount so it meshes well with the drama and character development/stories) contains that part so there's no reason for me to go into it.

Anyway ... I will post the older version of the Nightfire images at a bit later time.
Right now, I have to get ready for a date.

[Samurai]

^^Wahey.

Nice to see you back at the monitor Deks.

[Deks]

Ok ...
sorry about the delay folks but RL was busy lately and I had to reinstall a friends laptop with Win XP SP3 and other things he had in possession as he's not exactly adept with computers apart from doing basic surfing, writing/printing.

Anyway ... here are the older Nightfire images as promised.
I placed 4 images in a single larger one so I can avoid 12 attachments.

Well as you can see in the images below, I think the most of the details I previously modeled onto the ship (where the airlock and aft pulse phaser turrets are located) will be nicely remodeled so they look better and more true to the Trek version.

I am thinking on whether or not to model the hull grids from the last version because the Sovereign class for example has fancier grids and mostly panels.
I could make a combination of the two without a problem (which was sort of what I had in mind for the first version).

Hmm ... ok ... so the grids stay (although they will probably underwent minor modifications).
I also raised the upper 2 decks and elongated the nacelles.
To tell you the truth, plenty of star-ships look quite unbalanced in perspective view-ports ... however I though the first set of images I posted portrayed a nice longitude of the nacelles.
But I shall retain the longer nacelles for now and see how it turns out.
I can always scale them back if I don't like 'em.

I also found the old bridge I was working on.
Good thing I saved in the low poly version so I can work on it from the base up (previous poly count on it was extremely high ... that will be corrected and details will be added to the new version which should have mostly the same base).

I'll post new WIP images over the next few days.

[Basajaun]

By the size of those windows, the ship seems to be huge!

[Martocticvs]

You seem to have quite variable deck heights, going by those windows though... they seem to get closer together as you travel up the saucer, when you'd expect them to get further apart due to the curvature of the hull...

[Lonewriter]

don't misunderstand, I love treknobabble as well so I would love to read the specs on it when you get ready to. I can't wait to see the finished model.

[davidnevue]

Gorgeous

[Deks]

when I was making that older saucer section and the windows, I thought their distance between each other was ok mostly due to the fact that the ship is larger than what you'd expect.
If you take a look at the front image I think you'll notice that there's a rather large gap between the left side of the windows section and the other, so the curvature of the ship wouldn't present a problem here.
The upper 2 decks windows were modeled with intention of being larger due to their position ... I was oing for the larger mess hall type room and observational deck which is why those windows are larger than the ones on the lower saucer decks.

As for the deck height ... actually, it's the same for all of them (even on the larger observational windows).
The 2 gaps on the upper saucer section that are free of the grids were meant for the phaser strips (I'm thinking on going with only 1 row for the strips though in the new version) which were intentionally left free because if the hull grids are used to project a shield around the vessel, I figured that there shouldn't be any obstacles in some areas.

The saucer section alone is intended to have about 15 or 17 decks, and the whole ship about 30 decks.
Since most of the windows are concentrated on the upper saucer, it's justifiable why the ship would appear huge ... but in fact it's not.
Think of the windows as a slightly different approach.
I can render a closeup shot of the older saucer version in order to demonstrate the deck height and all.
I'll do it a bit later in the day though as I have to go to work right now.

[somacruz145]

Beautiful ship I always was impressed by your NX01 and this one is shaping up to be just as good May I ask what do you do with your images to give them that grainy and over-lit style ? I really like it