USS Grandeur - Final Version

[Lonewriter]

Nice to see it back, it's looking great.

[Starship]

Welcome back Vek!

[Dr-Timelord]

Is this the same ship? wow that pic looks awesome

[floodcasso2]

wow! i think these might be my all time favorite trek nacelle designs

[Tallguy]

Excellent as always. Is the top of the "neck" modeled with sub-division (or whatever it's called in Max)? I tried modeling something with cut-outs like you have port and starboard aft. For the life of me I couldn't keep the overall "curve" of the hull smooth like you have. Any pointers? (Assuming you understand what I'm asking.)

[Vektor]

Originally Posted by Dr-Timelord

Is this the same ship? wow that pic looks awesome

It's basically the same ship, though the "head" of the neck section has been completely rebuilt since the last time it was seen. See below.

[Vektor]

Originally Posted by floodcasso2

wow! i think these might be my all time favorite trek nacelle designs

I am rather proud of those, though they went through a long process of refinement and several different iterations before I was truly happy with them.

Speaking of which, some of you may have noticed that the older images in this thread have disappeared. All of those images were hosted by Comcast who recently up and decided to reorganize their entire personal Web space structure. There's no way to fix 'em short of going back and editing all of the old links, which I'm not going to bother to do.

I am in the process of updating my Website and hope to eventually host all of this stuff there, but it's not gonna be any time real soon.

[Major Diarrhia]

They really are great nacelles, they have an appealing early 20th century vibe to them.

[Vektor]

Originally Posted by Tallguy

Excellent as always. Is the top of the "neck" modeled with sub-division (or whatever it's called in Max)? I tried modeling something with cut-outs like you have port and starboard aft. For the life of me I couldn't keep the overall "curve" of the hull smooth like you have. Any pointers? (Assuming you understand what I'm asking.)

The “head” is indeed modeled using Sub-Ds, as is most of the rest of the ship. Technically, it’s a NURMS subdivision of an Editable Poly object. I must admit, I have a real love/hate relationship with Sub-Ds. They are the most effective technique I know of for creating an organic design like this one, but dealing with the base mesh topography, keeping all the polygons four-sided while transitioning between different parts of a contiguous mesh and so forth, can be a royal pain in the ass. There’s no way I know of to tell someone how to work with Sub-Ds; you pretty much just have to dive in and wrestle with the things like rabid alligators until you figure ‘em out.

When I get home tonight, I’ll see about posting a shot of the base mesh for the neck section, which you might find helpful. Fair warning, though: It has some trouble spots, creases and discontinuous curves mostly, that I am still trying to work out.

On a related note, I am getting very close to the point of “freezing” the Sub-D objects and starting to carve all the added details into them like hull seams, panel lines, various and sundry greebles, and, of course, windows. Hopefully I’ll have some more dramatic updates to show in the relatively near future.

[DEAverification]

Well, I'm tickled pink. I'd reflect that in color, but this board doesn't apparently have 'pink'.

You've done excellent work Vektor. And I'm sure I can speak for the rest of the Grandeur crew that we're very pleased with the time, detail, and effort you've put into this project. (: