Concept ship based on the Sovereign family. Still working out finer details, eventually I'll take it away from the Sovereign a little more to give it a sense of individuality.
Currently less than half finished - a bare bones model. Two variants exist:
I like them. Like the var01 best, whenever I see dorsal/ventral nacelles I wonder about how you'd dock it.
Good job...
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
Wow. Really nice, RA. You are the man. I think I'm gonn have to disagree w/ Toadkiller. I'm liking the Over-Under Nacelle arrangement.
You gotta tell me how you got that blue striped shape that covers the rear of the saucer. Boolean? Also is that/will that be a Galaxy-like roll-top desk shuttle bay at the rear of the saucer?
As usual very excellent work, sir.
Posted by EdipisReks (Member # 510) on :
the variation looks really good! the proportions on the over/under seem a little wierd. i think it would look better if the warp nacelles were shorter and if they were totally symmetrical in placement, instead of the top nacelle being mounted further back than the bottom nacelle. great work!
--jacob
Posted by The Red Admiral (Member # 602) on :
Cheers Balaam. Firstly, that is indeed a shuttlebay on the saucer for the second variant, but obviously with the first variant, any exitting shuttle would immediately crash into the nacelle pylon, one would think. I'm still playing with ideas.
There are many different ways to create the raised panel on the saucer. Boolean though isn't one tool that springs to mind, I'm not sure how you mean this. But for this ship I used a basic and rather lazy method. I simply traced out a line of points to come up with the desired shape of the panel. Joined the points up to make a single, flat poly. Then drilled it into the saucer. Then finally I extruded up the Y axis about 5 meters. Easy, but produces the desired effect.
Posted by The Red Admiral (Member # 602) on :
Well the reason the up/down configuration is like this is because it was liek this on the Challenger, or so the 'guessed' specs suggest. It's simply a homage to the Challenger design. I thought it looked cool this way, and the nacelle scaling in proportion to the saucer is indentical to the Sovereign.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Although I like the Challenger design, I don't think that the over-under arrangement works as well for the Utopia. Mainly because the long pylons remind me of a couple of bad TOS kitbashes that I've seen. I just don't think that the ship looks "right" -- it seems unbalanced, ungainly.
Of course, the Miranda-type arrangement is too easy, though... It's almost a cliche, what with the Centaur, the Nebula, etc.
What about shortening the pylons so that the over-under arrangement is not so tall? If the nacelles were close to the saucer, I think it'd look a lot better.
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Red Admiral: I simply traced out a line of points to come up with the desired shape of the panel. Joined the points up to make a single, flat poly. Then drilled it into the saucer. Then finally I extruded up the Y axis about 5 meters.
Sounds dirty. Aw, you Lightwave guys are always talking over my head. When you say 'drilled', are you talking about a tool, or did you go in and section by section drop the points (ie. -Z) to line up with corresponding points on the saucer. Either way, I wouldn't really call this lazy. It looks great. I will again voice my support for the over-under, though maybe bringing the nacelles in a bit closer would do (what MinutiaeMan said).
Posted by The Red Admiral (Member # 602) on :
Thanks MinutiaeMan, that's an interesting suggestion. I've just created a new nacelle-type to go with one of the Utopia variants, they were initially planned for the second variant (the Centaur configuration), but they might look good on the first too. I'll try shortening the pylons as well.
BX, by 'Drill' I mean a specific Lightwave tool which, basically, 'stencils' one object on to another. If you need more info on Lightwave check out some tutorials I did a while back: