Saladin class render
Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 6:58 pm
Thought I'd take a break from my own stuff and have a go at rendering a TOS ship. Rather than go for the obvious, I decided to do the Saladin class from Franz Joseph's Starfleet Technical Manual.
Since TOS ships are very much about cylinders and circles, I thought I'd use my newfound practice at smoothing out shapes to try and make really high quality curved surfaces. Seems to be going well thus far!
I've actually modified Joseph's design a little to tweak some details. The TOS Enterprise always lacked visible weapons, with phaser beams emerging from more or less random spots on the hull - I tried to count them once, but gave up when I got to twenty or so. In the remastered version they seem to have settled on making the beams come from the very edge of the white dome on the bottom of the primary hull, which really makes no sense to me. So I've put some visible ball turrets on the hull, rather in the style of the movie refit Enterprise. I've also added actual torpedo tubes. The placing of all weapons is as FJ detailed them.
There's still work to be done on this, obviously - I'd like to add the hull lines we see in TOS, but I've only a vague idea of how to do that. I'd also like to add the name and insignia on the hull, but again, no idea how to do that. But it will be a good learning experience looking up how to do it!
Of course the most obvious missing element right now is windows. Up to now, I've rarely attempted windows and I've done them by making a little glowing plane that hovers right over the hull. It looks okay, but I'm thinking there surely must be a better way of doing windows than sticking little objects all over the place. I could, maybe, cut little shapes into the hull - but that seems horribly complicated. Will have a think and do some research on that. I'd also like to make the Bussard collector translucent with lights inside, rather than a simple glowing dome. I've had no luck doing that so far, though.
Anyway, here's the first pass :
Since TOS ships are very much about cylinders and circles, I thought I'd use my newfound practice at smoothing out shapes to try and make really high quality curved surfaces. Seems to be going well thus far!
I've actually modified Joseph's design a little to tweak some details. The TOS Enterprise always lacked visible weapons, with phaser beams emerging from more or less random spots on the hull - I tried to count them once, but gave up when I got to twenty or so. In the remastered version they seem to have settled on making the beams come from the very edge of the white dome on the bottom of the primary hull, which really makes no sense to me. So I've put some visible ball turrets on the hull, rather in the style of the movie refit Enterprise. I've also added actual torpedo tubes. The placing of all weapons is as FJ detailed them.
There's still work to be done on this, obviously - I'd like to add the hull lines we see in TOS, but I've only a vague idea of how to do that. I'd also like to add the name and insignia on the hull, but again, no idea how to do that. But it will be a good learning experience looking up how to do it!
Of course the most obvious missing element right now is windows. Up to now, I've rarely attempted windows and I've done them by making a little glowing plane that hovers right over the hull. It looks okay, but I'm thinking there surely must be a better way of doing windows than sticking little objects all over the place. I could, maybe, cut little shapes into the hull - but that seems horribly complicated. Will have a think and do some research on that. I'd also like to make the Bussard collector translucent with lights inside, rather than a simple glowing dome. I've had no luck doing that so far, though.
Anyway, here's the first pass :
