Welcome to my version of the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701! This is my most accurate version to date. I modeled and textured this ship in about 4 days using Newtek Lightwave 6.5b and Adobe Photoshop 6. She is only about 89,000 polygons. Not too bad for such a detailed model. I used various references for this model. Thomas Sasser's Tech Specs, the first Starfleet Technical Manual, and many, many photographs of the original studio model from the IDIC page, Modeler's Resource Page, and Chris Trice's Smithsonian Photos Page. I even used a few photos of Greg Jein's ½-scale model from the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, "Trials and Tribble-ations." I'd like to thank all of the reference sources for posting such great shots of this beautiful ship! Unfortunately, much of the reference material was inaccurate, incomplete or contradictory, so certain things had to be eyeballed, or I simply guessed. And as new material was acquired the model was altered accordingly. Certain things, for example, the placement, lighting, and size of the windows are based on a mix of sources. Also, there are a few markings that have not yet been added, such as the hull length markers on the engineering hull. These will be added at a later date. Other details like the nacelle strut angles (about 88-degrees), saucer neck width, and the curvature of the primary hull rim are all in question. I just did what looked right to me. What this means is that, while there are inaccuracies, they are pretty minor and only an expert would be able to tell. The surfacing and texturing is where I left the studio model behind. My goal for this ship is to create modern-style animations, I wanted to achieve a more realistic look. I attempted to bridge the gap between the look of the original ship and the more current dirty, metallic CGI look of Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise. The surfacing and lighting from the 60's show wasn't very convincing and the ship tended to look plastic and flat when rendered with modern lighting techniques. So, new texture maps and surface attributes were made. Now the orthographic views here are very brightly and evenly lit, making the texturing look very high contrast and overdone. But in the proper lighting (as with current Star Trek series), the ship takes on a very much different appearance and has a more impressive sense of size and level of detail. The first render I've included is much more representative of the look I'm after. Another thing I experimented with to bridge the TOS/TMP gap was engine lighting. I've always held the opinion that if the technology had existed and if they could've afforded it, Roddenberry and Jefferies would've found a way to show the tremendous energies in the warp and impulse engines. So, on my model I have added lit, dull red impulse vents (ala the TMP Enterprise) and a slightly purplish-white lighting on the inside vents of the nacelles. This effect is actually visible in old B&W photos of the studio model from the 60's. It's my understanding that this is really just a light reflection off of the grillwork, but that's where my inspiration came from. I didn't intentionally model this ship to any particular scale. The model is approximately 10 meters in length, making it quite a bit larger than the studio model, and quite smaller than the "real" ship. But in the land of CG all things are relative, it's the way you set up your scenes and lighting is the key to conveying the sense of scale you are after. The overall proportions are based on the Thomas Sasser Tech Specs, with modifications made as needed based on photographs. Lastly, I'm in the process of modeling the full interior of the shuttlecraft bay. The bay doors are already set up for animation, and there will be a Galileo-7 shuttlecraft to go with this ship in the future. I'm looking forward to creating some shuttle take-off and landing scenes that would've really been amazing to see back in the 60's. It is my hope that once this website is finished, there will be a virtually 100% accurate set of detailed plans and views of this ship available for all modelers to benefit from. Already many questions have been answered that would've made my model that much more accurate. When this information becomes available, I fully intend to rebuild this model. Thanks for taking a look!
Wes Chilton |
