Another rendering using my Enterprise model and GrahamTG art as the setting, birth of a star perhaps, good enough title as any.
my appreciation to Graham Gazzard aka GrahamTG who makes his artwork available for us modellers who sometime get around to rendering..
Its been so long since I used this model, it’s a terrible thing spending weeks or in my case months designing and building models and after the first test renders and a renders I take a little more seriously, the model is forgotten.
I have taken this out of mothballs and with the wonderful Spawn Nebula art by Ali Ries and have set 3 Ranger Class Destroyers deployed on patrol
The model is available for sale royalty free on my Gumroad page
HMS Endeavour, also known as HM Bark Endeavour, was a British Royal Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded to Australia and New Zealand on his first voyage of discovery from 1769 to 1771.
This name was suggested in lists of possible ship names in Star Trek The Original Series by D.C. Fontana and Robart H. Justman for Gene Roddenberry.
It did not make the cut at least not directly, it was named finally in a cut scene in Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country in the scene where Colonel West shares his plan on rescuing Captain Kirk and Dr McCoy.
3 rendering in Lightwave 9.6
I have at last finished with my version of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701, I was/am looking at new projects and to help I have jumped back to an older design, I used to call the Kilkenny and on refection feel it not a name that grabs your attention, so I went back to the Pathfinder, giving it some more thought the S.S. Pathfinder, S.S. standing for “Solar Surveyor” a designation from the pages of Arthur C. Clarke book “Rendezvous with Rama” and its ship the Endeavour.
S.S. Pathfinder is a interplanetary explorer, making trips to Venus, Mercury, Mars etc in rapid time and I imagine in 100 years hence, with a crew compliment of 20 or so.
I was inspired by designs I seen over the last few years that hearken back to Isaac Asimov book covers, the David “Lucky” Starr story called “Oceans of Venus” by Ray Feibush, which I have in my book collection. and the Black Hole USS Palomino which I made a in the early 2000s.
by Ray Feibush
When the Enterprise attempts to penetrate a space barrier, it is damaged and creates a potentially worse problem. Two crew members, including Kirk’s best friend, gain psionic powers that are growing at exponentially. This leaves Captain Kirk with the difficult choice; either marooning them or killing before they get so powerful they lose their humanity and become truly dangerous.
I have finished my rework/rebooted Constitution class, as of today I am finished other designs I want to work on, just to recap, this is larger then the official scale of the Connie, I had to enlarge it to address so many issues, this is 1311.5 ft long or 399.7 meters, I posted basic image here before, for these I used Ali Ries wonderful and scenic space art with permission for these WIP images..
I hope you like the design.
I have at last finished the design, but it took me some time to return to it, over the last week I refined and reworked the design added features I like and giving some thought how the ship would be arranged internally.
The overall design is bigger then the original series version to fit my idea of its internal layout too.
Its has been a few weeks since my last post, I was on my holidays, arrived back a few days ago, and as it takes me a few days to even return to 3D and remembering my plans for this design to find to my mild annoyance that I was not paying as much attention to the results as I should have, so I had to go in and clean up parts of the model, esp around the hangar bay.
I have placed all the windows and are arranged as I like them the most and I think retains a lot of the original look..
Just to jump out of Trek for a bit.. Dan Dare Eagle on patrol,, using the fabulous Ali Ries Background art scene .. no prep just slapped it in there where the Enterprise was and a reminder of its scale.
Well I have returned to this, my re-imagined constitution class, a last throw of the dice with this before I move on to other designs, I have adjusted the scale (again) to 1311’5 ft design and made changes to deck height to fix as many issue as possible.. I did have it at 1260ft.. that I thought would work, but it falls short in some areas I think important to address.
One of my favourite sources is The Making of Star Trek by Stephen E. Whitfield & Gene Roddenberry 1968, and I have look to it for guidance in some areas, (I think its canon though I also think that as the book was published in 1968 (second season) many idea and thoughts on scale where in flux, busy enough just keeping the show on air.
but one area I thought needed addressing is the deck heights, one key scale for me is 10ft for the deck heights, I except the needs for camera and dolly’s etc.. but it the established look for the series, (I am not going anywhere near other and later designs)
In The Making of Star Trek by Stephen E. Whitfield & Gene Roddenberry the Hangar Deck height and width is 30ft by 60ft and 100ft long.. now I assume this is only the bay area proper and not including the corridors to each side (we see in Journey to Babel) at this new scale there is room for a corridor, while there is very little room practically none with the established scale of 947ft.
also I have with some adjustment with deck scales (something I did not want to do, but you can see I found some workable changes, most decks are 10ft, but in the dorsal neck they have 12ft and this works with lining up portholes (assuming mine are close enough) then in the secondary hull all decks save 2 are 10ft ,, the top and lower most decks here are 16ft,, this is something I am not entirely happy with but,, these levels could have need for for structural supports for the dorsal neck and perhaps something else ,, antimatter storage or something.. but this works for me.
this is the direction now..
Hello and welcome, my name is Gerard Duffy aka gmd3d, a mix of my name and interest, not very inventive but easy to remember. Feel free to look around and check out the number of science fiction designs I have worked on over the years.
You can also find my tutorial of how to build the USS Enterprise from Star Trek TOS in Lightwave3d, aimed for beginners, check under Lightwave Tutorial in the menu above, its is downloadable in PDF format and is free.
This blog features a mixed bag of designs and interests, you might find something at the side options to interest you >>>
I have made some very good friends over the years through forums, two of the remaining sites are listed below.
Foundation3d
Lightwave3d and other 3d programs
(can be slow with bad connections)
3dscifi
Blender & other 3d programs
“All are welcome”
My CGI program of choice is Lightwave3D by Newtek, which is an excellent 3D modelling and rendering program and I’ve used it since 2006, Lightwave3d was first seen used very effectively in Babylon 5 (1994) where the producers took a bold step with this new CGI visual effect technology approach and went on to make a name for itself in the entertainment industry, though now its use has dwindled.
Science fiction and designs created for these shows have always being of interest to me from as far back as I can remember, in book or film, the stories I enjoy the most are those that shows us possible futures where technology transports us to new worlds and where humanity has grown into a space traveling society.
Star Trek
Battlestar Galactica
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Star Wars
2001: A Space Odyssey,
Destination Moon,
The Day the Earth Stood Still,
When Worlds Collide,
Forbidden Planet,
Journey to the Center of the Earth,
The War of the Worlds,
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The old 1930s
Flash Gordon
Buck Rogers
Legal Disclaimer
© Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and other trademarks are held by their relevant copyright holders “no infringement is intended” I hold the copyright for my own works, please do not use my artwork, images, tutorial in any commercial setting without first contacting me.
Contact
gmd3ds@gmail.com
I am always happy to see comments or suggestions on any of the artwork or designs, comments not in relating to the art or designs, ie: spam is deleted.
Gerard Duffy
They are not textured and only available in Lightwave3d for now, if I texture them would equal more time, greater the cost.
Of course there is also the early version of the Ranger that I may rework the engines, or maybe I won’t and Pathfinder Class Interplanetary ship and the McCall design but limited amount per engagement with McCall’s Daughter.. once they are gone that’s it.. and of course my Nautilus all in Lightwave3d 9.61..
I was away on holidays over the past 2 weeks, eager to get back to designing, but now I am here low enthusiasm to get started, so just to get my creative energy going I rendered two new images.
No frills, but after the time away I might see the design afresh and to give some thought to this and my next projects.
Well apart from working on the cockpit and other sections for the Halcyon, I was thinking of returning to the Nautilus from 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea’s, using the internal layout I built as a frame and jazzing the older one up a bit to have elements of the two Nautilus models I designed.
But I give it some thought, next post will not be my normal post, but something I have been interested in for several years..
The Halcyon design I started a few weeks ago is nearing it end of the building phase and I have to start thinking about the textures, not a favourite part of cgi that I can enjoy, but I will be doing just that in a few weeks as I have a trip coming up and a small commission which is great.
This design will be up for sale when its done, for Lightwave users, I don’t use other programs so at the moment for limited use. later I will build the cockpit and other sections as time allows.
The design is almost complete, modelling side of things anyway, I need a break from this to recharge my creative energy before taking on the Internal setting, as mentioned before, this will include the cockpit, corridor, small engine room, main hatch area, cargo area, then on to the land craft (but that may come first). I don’t know about texturing it yet hence the break 🙂
Taking shape with some added details, I am currently redesigning the engines and here I have the ship with landing gear extended. you can see (just) the 6ft tall crewman..
The plan of the external look of the design is more or less complete save some minor detail on the main body and some additional details in the engine section.
Getting close to finishing the external look, now I have to think about the texture maps and later the internal sets, this will be available for sale in the future and I am going to try to make it available for DAZ 3d users, also on the cards for this design is land-craft of some description and perhaps a small flying craft for planetary surveys..
Here are a few images from different angles to show off the design, going to take some time before I add more details.
