Star Trek Builders Thread!

Ryuu@AMcCF

Redfern said:

Ptrope, that Lazarus craft is looking really good, very clean lines and it even has the notches in the (stabilizing?) fin.

I'm curious; was your reason for making the entrance region a "wedge" shape instead of parallel a conscious choice to allow easier camera positioning? It makes sense if you did; otherwise, it would prove a challenge to zoom the camera upon the Dilithium crystal panels without the opposite side blocking the view.

Though it was never built for the production, I always wondered if (in story) the craft was meant to have a "hatch" of some sort there. But then, how the heck would it open? That semi-circle "notch" in the bubble canopy poses a dilemma. If the whole thing dropped like a "gangway", that section of canopy would be the piecehitting the ground. And it would have to swing all the way down to provide enough clearance to exit. (It would also mean the craft would need to be elevated.) Oh, here's an idea. A "recessed seam" (which we never saw on camera) allows a "clam-shell" arrangement to swing shut (rather like the Enterprise shuttle-bay doors). Once closed, a semi-circle of canopy material rises to seal that last opening (rather like a car door windshield). A "clam-shell" arrangement would work better with the "pie-wedge" opening you've depicted.

Hmm, looks like you're thinking several steps ahead. Pretty clever, Ptrope!

Sincerely,

Bill

Agreed. The episode only gave us one angle of view on the ship, so a recessed seam could be in the section hidden from the camera.

As for the bubble canopy, what if the entire canopy was 2-parts, one mobile inside the other immobile?--with the "hatch" open, the semi-circular openings line up to create the cutout. But with the ship closing up, then the rotating bubble would also rotate inside the non-rotating portion and close the notch like a sissors.

Ptrope

Glad you guys like the little bubbleship ;).

I'll confess, I haven't put as much thought into it as you might be crediting me for; I started out with Gillman's Sketchup model, and even though there's nothing of it here, I used it as something of a templete to get started, and that's where the broad wedge of the entryway came from. It appears that the opening was wedge-shaped, just maybe not as wide an angle as modeled here. That's okay with me - I'm good with explaining it as making a more 'filmable' craft ;).

As for the front 'hatch,' yeah, nothing of what we saw ever explained how that could possibly work, or even account for a hatch ever having been there! The interior trim of the cockpit wrapped around and out the opening, making it fairly impossible to ever have something that sealed that space, and the overall design just never lent itself to anything that could either hinge away or slide into the existing bodywork. It's possible that the vehicle was only intended for temporal/dimensional travel and never meant to be a closed design at all - maybe the fins maintain its alignment with the timestream or whatever ;). With all the power this thing seemed able to channel, maybe it even had a limited transporter/replicator device with the sole purpose of creating or removing the entry hatch :coolhmm:. If one were to spend some time on adding details not seen (and therefore, not truly eliminated), I could see the little craft having a set of tripod legs, with part of the hatch swinging down with a stairway, but that still doesn't really explain where the upper half would go, unless, as postulated, it was split in the middle and each section could nest inside the hull on either side of the doorway (but then it probably wouldn't have the vital equipment right there in the panels of the open entryway ... )

Ahhh, Treknology ... nothing is ever simple ... ;).

Ptrope

Duplicate post - yay, new forum ...

Redfern

Yep, you're right.

The entrance "gap" IS a wedge rather than parallel. These pages of screen captures at TrekCore illustarte it quite clearly.

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/thumbnails.php?album=28&page=22

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/thumbnails.php?album=28&page=23

Just not as wide angle as in presented in the render last page. Oh, and it appears we do get a brief look of the port side entrance panel. It seems to mirror the starboard fixtures. That second page of captures also reveals the chair was borrowed from the shuttle set, along with with its swivel bracket. Model that and it'll save some tasks if you ever consider building a Galileo interior.

Sincerely,

Bill

Ptrope

Of course, the wider wedge opening also makes possible a simple solution - call it an Occam Hinge ;):

Redfern

D'OH!!!

Yep, the simplest solutions are usually the best! I really like that!

This prop/set piece is something of a mystery. I've yet to come across an article that discusses with any certainty, the origin of this pod craft. Some fans think it was built for some other production and Desilu was just lucky enough to get there hands upon it for Trek. On the other hand, it does look like some of the conceptual drawings of Matt Jefferies depicting things like "ground effect" flatbed "trucks" with bubble canopies or the repair pod that MattyManx converted into a Poser prop. I wonder if this was built for the Trek production and was planned to be "redressed" to serve as a StarFleet vehicle.

Maybe there is a well researched article with reasonable evidence about this prop, but I've yet to find and read it.

Sincerely,

Bill

bluto

hey guys and gals ,
i just saw this ,
they could be usefull for those of us that are doing our own version of starfleet ships and crew

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/badge-control-for-the-new-adventure/

the fact that they are for new adventures and the adventure continues is a bonus too

patience55

mdbruffy said:

Looks good, Ptrope. How goes the Re-animated Engineering?

This is going to be Nova Trek's verison of the movie uniform- male verison. It uses M2's Space Command jacket from RDNA which, sadly is no longer available. Which is really too bad, because it conforms damn well with just a little poke through and no converison needed.
I made the belt buckle, shoulder strap and sleeve strip. The shoulder strap uses Patience55's Admiral pin.
I'm letting it out of the bag, but that's also Wertz' John Wayne morph for M4- but it's NOT the standard Daz face texture. I went a-googling and found a good pic of the Duke that was about 98% full front and worked with it in Photoshop.

Looking good :-)

mdbruffy

Thanks, Patience55. This will be the movie era verrison of Admiral T'Pel. It uses the V2 verison of the Space Command jacket. Like the M2 verison it conformed with very little trouble and no converison.

celticarchie

Hey folks,

Does anyone know how tall Kate Mulgrew is? :ohh:

Si :P

bluto

mdbruffy said:

Thanks, Patience55. This will be the movie era verrison of Admiral T'Pel. It uses the V2 verison of the Space Command jacket. Like the M2 verison it conformed with very little trouble and no converison.

that kinda cheatin madd , shouldnt she be in the valour jammies of the motion picture ?

patience55

celticarchie said:

Hey folks,

Does anyone know how tall Kate Mulgrew is? :ohh:

Si :P

http://www.celebheights.com/s/Kate-Mulgrew-136.html

She's 5.5 but had to wear heels to appear 3 1/2 inches taller.

wolfgang_1

bluto said:

so , i guess that means i need to build an injection morph for my spoonhead alien too !
thanks guys , i need to write a read me but the vest should be on share cg sometime late tonight .
will post the info and link here

Where’s Bluto’s Cardassian Vest?

MotoTsume

just a quick question, how is it coming with the cardassian and the jem hadar morphs?

rduda

Almost done with my Olympic Class Bridge, here is a quick view:

mdbruffy

bluto said:

mdbruffy said:

Thanks, Patience55. This will be the movie era verrison of Admiral T'Pel. It uses the V2 verison of the Space Command jacket. Like the M2 verison it conformed with very little trouble and no converison.

that kinda cheatin madd , shouldnt she be in the valour jammies of the motion picture ?

As a certain Squire once said,"It's my game and my rules!" :lol:
No, really, I just thought the TMP suits were too bland- and I only have 4 stories set in this era before I jump to the NG era for the final 2 stories.

mdbruffy

Rduda said:

Almost done with my Olympic Class Bridge, here is a quick view:

Whatever happened to Picard's Ready Room?

Charlie Tuna

mdbruffy said:

bluto said:

mdbruffy said:

Thanks, Patience55. This will be the movie era verrison of Admiral T'Pel. It uses the V2 verison of the Space Command jacket. Like the M2 verison it conformed with very little trouble and no converison.

that kinda cheatin madd , shouldnt she be in the valour jammies of the motion picture ?

As a certain Squire once said,"It's my game and my rules!" :lol:
No, really, I just thought the TMP suits were too bland- and I only have 4 stories set in this era before I jump to the NG era for the final 2 stories.
Nobody liked those uniforms, the cast didn't since they needed help to get in and out of them, wardrobe didn't since the built in shoes made them hard to clean and the prop dept. detested those bio buckles.

Ptrope

Rduda said:

Almost done with my Olympic Class Bridge, here is a quick view:

Very nice! Nice angle you picked, as well ;).

A little progress made on the interior of the timeship, so I'm attaching a screen capture from LW. I've decided to extend the 'dashboard' out from the central door to the hull (I'm thinking about maybe borrowing my control levers from the TAStrogator to go on either side there, canon be damned ;) ). With no reference diagrams or images, we never actually saw whether there was some sort of panel down on the port side - we only saw Lazarus apparently working with something there, so I added a sub-panel under the dash that one can acccess when the hatch is open and one is standing in the doorway. I even added defroster vents :D ...

BTW, I just rewatched it again, and something I noticed that I never saw even in the HD screenshots: there appear to be small, regularly-spaced fillets or something around the dome, so I've added those, as well. Not a big deal overall, but I think they add another level of believability to the design; it looks a bit lesslike a dome stuck to the top of another dome, now ...

Timbales

Rduda said:

Almost done with my Olympic Class Bridge, here is a quick view:

nice work!

Are you going to keep it as is was shown? or are adding some special touches?

Ptrope

OOC, does anyone know of a Python script or utility that can convert a group of props into a single CR2, creating bones based on the origins and rotations of the parented props? I'm pretty much finished with Lazarus's timeship, and I grouped the whole OBJ and imported it into PP 2012 and tried to rig it, but apparently there are some points that are in the 'door' group that are in the same location as points in the main body, and when it opens, they 'bridge' across the open space (back in earlier versions of Poser, I never had this problem - D|S, sure, but not Poser. :( )

For the moment, this is a set of props (main hull, door, seat w/base), and I've saved them together as a single PP2, hiding all the controls for the door and seat other than the Y-rotation, and those have limits enforced - it all works pretty much the same as a rigged character, other than needing to select the props separately, rather than as body parts. Since this is a freebie, I'm not sure I want to go back and move points for miniscule distances, and possibly break something else in the process. But something like the Python script I described sure would be useful, at least for mechanical contraptions that don't need to 'bend' but only pivot; at the very least, it could be a quick way to create a rigged figure that could then be tweaked in the Setup room.

(BTW, I had this whole post written up and went away while the image was rendering, and when I came back and tried to post it, this stupid new site had logged me out yet again and my post was lost! DAZ, WHY can you never actually improve the forums when you change them over completely?????? Or even TEST them?? This new site sucks ...)

crownlion

trying to figure out is is possible to have the spot light beam visible in daz.

rduda

mdbruffy said:

Rduda said:

Almost done with my Olympic Class Bridge, here is a quick view:

Whatever happened to Picard's Ready Room?

I'm going to have it up next week, keep your eyes out for that and a couple more things not trek but star wars and such!

rduda

Ptrope said:

OOC, does anyone know of a Python script or utility that can convert a group of props into a single CR2, creating bones based on the origins and rotations of the parented props? I'm pretty much finished with Lazarus's timeship, and I grouped the whole OBJ and imported it into PP 2012 and tried to rig it, but apparently there are some points that are in the 'door' group that are in the same location as points in the main body, and when it opens, they 'bridge' across the open space (back in earlier versions of Poser, I never had this problem - D|S, sure, but not Poser. :( )

For the moment, this is a set of props (main hull, door, seat w/base), and I've saved them together as a single PP2, hiding all the controls for the door and seat other than the Y-rotation, and those have limits enforced - it all works pretty much the same as a rigged character, other than needing to select the props separately, rather than as body parts. Since this is a freebie, I'm not sure I want to go back and move points for miniscule distances, and possibly break something else in the process. But something like the Python script I described sure would be useful, at least for mechanical contraptions that don't need to 'bend' but only pivot; at the very least, it could be a quick way to create a rigged figure that could then be tweaked in the Setup room.

(BTW, I had this whole post written up and went away while the image was rendering, and when I came back and tried to post it, this stupid new site had logged me out yet again and my post was lost! DAZ, WHY can you never actually improve the forums when you change them over completely?????? Or even TEST them?? This new site sucks ...)

This is very "SWEEEET!"

crownlion

just trying out a scene.

crownlion

if interested space suit found here

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/space-suit-for-m4/93787

not free but only $ 9.74 by Simon-3D

Ptrope

crownlion said:

trying to figure out is is possible to have the spot light beam visible in daz.

I don't really know much about D|S, but can you add a little atmosphere to the scene? That would be why the beam would show in reality, so maybe it will here, too; I believe that works in Poser.

patience55

crownlion said:

trying to figure out is is possible to have the spot light beam visible in daz.

You can change its colour too :-)

Thalek

In some of the images Redfern linked to, it looks like there isn't a dome at all, only a metal arch corresponding to the cut-out portion of the dome. Anyone else see that? Is possibly due to subtle differences between the two universes, am I seeing things, or is there some other reason?

Edited to add: Oh, I see the dome has been removed and set aside temporarily. They apparently added in the framework just for that scene.

Ptrope

Yep, you saw that right, Thalek - in the alternate universe, you can see in the long shot that the dome has been removed and is sitting over to the side between the rocks, and the metal arch from the entryway is still attached to the ship. No idea whether this was done to differentiate the two a little more, or simply to make photography easier. I suppose one could make the argument that the metal arch was part of the dimension-spanning equipment.

In a slightly-related note, I got the rigging done last night on the model - the front hatch swings out as in my previous pic, the seat swivels, and it's all one CR2 now, rather than 3 parented props (I 'cured' my bridging problem by moving the entire group for the door forward by about .02 mm, a change that's completely invisible but makes all the difference!); I also added instruments to the instrument panel. I have a bit more tweaking to do, mostly to make up some material sets for it (will make it easier to cover or uncover the dilythium crystals ;)), and I'm UV-mapping the OBJ so one can add markings to the model for repurposing it. :) (Sorry, no pix handy at the moment)