The Starplex forum

The first Starship I fell in love with....

I am attempting to put together a deck by deck model of the Enterprise using the Franz Joseph blueprints as my guide. Other reference materials will be used to cross check and give me details on those areas where the FJ plans are lacking. I am by no means a 3D modeller, I just have some software, a reasonably fast PC and an interest in seeing my favourite ship exist full size...

A shout out to Havoc92 as he is my inspiration where this is concerned. Have a look at his outstanding work
http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?175366-NCC-1701-USS-Enterprise-Deck-by-Deck-WIP This man has been plugging away at this for about two years and has still not finished. His work is absolutely outstanding and the attention to detail amazing. If my ship ends up being a tenth of what his is, I will consider myself lucky.

Later posts will show my progress. I hope!

Well I finally got my thumb out and have been having another go at the old girl. Looking back at what I had previously done just seemed too much to go back to and I decided to start afresh. Starting with the Bridge again and this time I am using just one set of plans to work from and those are by the late Michael McMasters. The external structure will probably be based on the V2 Casmiro drawings, but the remainder of the deck plans will almost certainly be from the Franz Joseph blueprints. Although I do have a fine set of prints from Strategic Designs which I might just use for the internals.

Anyway, this time around I have decided to build everything myself and not use any borrowed items such as the nav/helm console and captains chair as I did last time around. Everything will (for better or worse) be built by me.

I had a few ideas as to how to build the ring of consoles and workstations this time around and thought that I would start with a spline and then extrude it by the circumference of whatever the outer ring of the console came to, have it divided up by the number of consoles in a circle and then bend it through 360 degrees. That way there would be no unsightly gaps or measurement problems. Right?

Well yeah, but of course when I cut the sections away that shouldn't have consoles I was left with open ends. So I went back to constructing a spline and then extruding it out by one console width. But this still did not work too well. In the end I used a box for the workstation with the correct WxHxD made sure it had enough segments and then converted it to an editable poly. From there I altered the side vertexes to the correct shape and then placed this box just above a cylinder which was big enough and had the correct number of segments to give me the appropriate angle lines in hidden line mode. Then from a top view, I altered the end vertexes on the workstation so that the tapering angles on both sides matched the deck lines. I also did the same with the consoles above. This writes easier than it was to do, I had to make a number of attempts before I got it right enough to use. Thankfully I always kept a copy of the original box, so if I get into trouble after making alterations......

From here I continued building up the elements which make up the bridge ring, viewscreen, turbo lift area, secondary exit, rear wall of the head and so on. The turboshaft was interesting as I wanted the outer tube to just be able to go straight down through the saucer section as is and build off of that. I had to redo this several times too, but now I think I have something which should work. In fact, on my bridge the front most portion of the turbo shaft actually encompasses the outer doors and makes up the beginning of the entrance alcove on the bridge.

The basic deck is in place, along with the rails and posts. Still a few structural items to add, but not too much.

Enough talk, heres a couple of images of how far I have got to date.

Did a little bit of work on the central part of the nav/helm console. In fact, completely re-did it because I put too many chamfers in originally. I think it looks a bit less fussy now.



Next I'll do a bit of detailing on the overhead consoles and the interior of the turbolift. Hopefully followed by a plaque and a monitor display in the bridge alcove. Just to try and give it a bit of scale.

Lots of elapsed time with no progress...

Too busy, no motivation to get on with the build. Usual things.
However I have recently taken another look at this and have managed to tidy up quite a few bits.

The bridge is essentially done, all the structure is in place. Just the decorations to go. Which will take a while!
Outer hull for the bridges and decks 2-4 are done. With the correctly shaped tear drop at the back end. Saucer has been re-done using the Strategic Designs cross section.

Then while I was about it, I thought to myself. Havoc92 has already done a wonderful job of doing the Enterprise from the Franz Joseph blueprints. There is nothing that I can bring to the table to improve what he has and continues to do.
So I scuttled my secondary hull and brought in the rest of the cross section from the SD plans cross section and have remodelled the secondary hull using that. In all honesty it was easier!
Next thing is for me to do the nacelle pylons and the nacelles themselves. These will just be in rough form for now, to give me an idea of what it all looks like hanging together.

No images at the moment, because I am at work, but some will be posted soon.

My intention is still to do the interior, but from the Strategic Designs blueprints. It's a shame they are no longer around but there is an alternative for your Star Trek blueprints fix

Tim Palgut Cydonia 6

So, as threatened. I have re-done the dorsal connection between the saucer and secondary hull. The secondary hull is new too. As are the pylons and Nacelles.

Note that the dorsal, secondary hull and nacelles are all hollow so that I can stick the decks inside at a later date.
As I mentioned before, I have decided to work from the Strategic Designs blueprints for the TOS Enterprise.

The ship is real world size and the bridge which you saw in the previous posts is actually inside the deck 1 module! I'll do a see through render another time to illustrate the fact.

Enough talk. Here are some quick renders I have done. Please excuse the bits laying around, I didn't hide them all all before rendering.
You can see that there is very little detail at the moment and the end caps are missing from the nacelles. But the basic shape is there. Which is what I was aiming for at this time.

Hope you like them...

Click any of the images to embiggen them!