Hi all, been busy recently setting up my new website and packaging up all my models for inclusion on it. While doing this I've also been finishing off a few half-finished items I found lying around forgotten, and one of those is my first attempt at the lovely Type-7 shuttle designed by Andrew Probert. It was missing some nacelles and decals, so I quickly knocked up some for it and this is the result...
The minute I posted these I began to get people posting stuff to let me know how inaccurate the model is, and of course they're right. I wasn't building the later versions which had small windows and lots of extraneous panel details, but even this early version has a lot of stuff that I just never saw or never knew about. The nacelles are wrong, where they join to the body is wrong, and the whole indented area on the top is missing. And the details and decals are wrong. An no doubt many other things as well.
I posted here because I know you guys to be amongst the most well connected and knowledgable people in Trekdom, and I'm asking for assistance. If you know of any good drawings or blueprints of the early concept model I'd be happy to know where to get them so I can do justice to what is still my favourite shuttle design.
Any help gratefully received.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Very Nice. If you need help with shuttle details take a look at this article by Bernd Scheinder, it might help.
I think I still might have the same reference archive on that thing from back when you started that mesh. I'll have a look through my backups and let you know, but I'm pretty sure Bernd's site has all of the important stuff.
[ January 24, 2010, 11:05 PM: Message edited by: Reverend ]
Posted by Axeman 3D (Member # 1050) on :
Bernds site has lots of information and a few screen captures, but what I'm looking for are schematics or blueprints that I could work from. The ideal drawing is one such as can be found on Trekplace.com in an interview with Andrew Probert. Scroll just over half way and there's a small image of his final design drawing. That's the sort of thing I'm looking for. Screen captures are fine for helping get the on-screen look of a model, but not much good for building one. The only drawings I have lying around are those we found ages ago which show the last versions of the shuttle, after it had been mucked about with a lot.
Posted by The Ginger Beacon (Member # 1585) on :
If Bernd's site is not what you are after than I don;t know where you'd find the design online.
I seem to remember that Andrew Probert is a nice guy from what I've heard. You might try the direct approach? He does have a website and if you google it there is a contact button. I don't know if anyone has had direct contact with him from Flare though.
I'm not saying spam him, but just a thought.
Posted by Axeman 3D (Member # 1050) on :
You're not the first to have that thought, believe me. It's not that important, it was just if someone knew where I could get some decent drawings to work from I'd fix the model up. If not, then it waits for another time. I have about 3 projects too many on the go right now as it is.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Blueprint-wise, this is all I could scrape up mate: - Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Screw the nay-sayers! That looks great, Axe! Far better nacelles on yours than the simply-scaled down galaxy class nacelles. If nothing else, you can add some additional detail and have a viable alternative- maybe add on a Runabout sensor ir weapons pod that can fold down to the aft of the craft for landing in a shuttlebay.
hmmm...maybe add in some of the detail features we've seen on Runabouts and Data's scoutship- it could be a shuttle-testbed.
Posted by Axeman 3D (Member # 1050) on :
Thanks guys. Rev, I think a combination of the first and second drawings is what I used to make it in the first place. They agree only in overall shape, and it's not the shape of the original as designed.
The third is the version I dont actually like, where they've taken the swoopy, clean and futuristic lines and turned it into a stubby panel truck. Maybe I'll just go it alone and see what I can do. The indent over the roof and the additional detail between the nacelles and the body will go a long way to making me feel better about it.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
From what I remember, the model makers and for that matter the people tasked with knocking together the full scale mock-up had a hell of a time trying to replicate the all the compound curves. That plus model makers always seam to have this idea stuck in their head that smooth surfaces don't scale well and they feel the need to cover every surface in greebles. The way I see it, the original Probert design (that cropped up in one of the matt paintings as I recall) is the bog standard passenger only model, with an eye towards civilian use while the one we saw most of the time is the more utilitarian, adaptable model.
Incidentally, judging by this (look at the one in the back left) Probert did intend for the sides to swing up, though with a somewhat more seamless mechanism.
[ January 26, 2010, 03:03 AM: Message edited by: Reverend ]
Posted by Axeman 3D (Member # 1050) on :
Yeah, that picture and a couple of others I've found show that the side doors swing up on some incredibly strong hinge mechanism. Very roomy and airy, I'm just not sure how confident I'd be in the shuttle being airtight in all situations.
I started redoing the spline cage for this model. For those not 'au fait' with 3D work, it's like making the shape of the ship using bamboo canes and elastic. You trace the main contours of the blueprints with splines, and once happy with it you add the actual polygons in a manner not unlike shrink-wrapping the skin on. It takes a while as there are technical constraints, and avoiding bits poking through, pinching and pulling the skin, is an art in itself.
As you can see I've still got a fair bit to do, this is just a mockup to test how the skin surface looks. There's some rough bends and pinching here and there, but it's much better than the original one. I blew up that tiny drawing from the article and used it as my blueprint, and the proportions were quite different from the later versions used on TNG.
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
Looking good! I don't have much of any experience in 3D modeling (pretty much limited to AutoCAD and Sketchup) but I know how difficult it is and you're pretty good at this. Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Are you going to be daring and model the interior too? I was always a little disappointed we never got around to doing the bridge on the old Korolev yacht. I wanted to see how badly I'd miscalculated the ceiling clearance. Posted by Axeman 3D (Member # 1050) on :
Actually I was thinking of modeling the interior. After seeing the painting where we get to see some of the insides I thought it might look good to have the windows semi-transparent so we could see the seating and some other details. Nothing mega-detailed, but enough at least to make it look complete.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
What software do you use?
I'd be interested to get the volume of that baby.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Actually, in looking again to see if there was a free solution for going from .lwo to anywhere else, I found Blender, which supposedly has scripts available allowing for volume calc (but I'll be damned if I could make 'em work in one sitting).
While I found Blender's unique UI rather daunting, I managed to muddle through an export to .3ds and an import to SketchUp. I had to recolor the Bussard collector ends (the tips went gray), but beyond that she's a pretty ship in SketchUp (once I rescaled her to be larger than a man's toe).
At 8.5 meters, I came up with a volume of 59 cubic meters at 10% accuracy (some part of the model at about 20% of the volume calc really slows the thing up, so I didn't use the usual 5% accuracy).
I'll try to make the .3ds and .skp files available to you shortly.
Posted by Axeman 3D (Member # 1050) on :
My plugin in Lightwave shows a volume of 61.1 cubic meters for the whole ship, nacelles included.
Thinking about it, I should find a way to convert my models to .skp files as it's pretty much the most popular new tool around. I can export to .3ds and .dxf with no surfacing data, but that's about it.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
One thing I noticed (which you probably already knew) that the Type-7 width is seriously misreported in the TNG tech manual. According to DITL, the width given is 3.6 meters, which is about half what it should be.
As for SketchUp, it's something for 3-D dilettantes like me to play with, but you can't really render scenes or do anything especially cool with it ... ships won't even light up, I don't think. I mean, if you wanna export to it that's cool (you'd be a hero, since there are only a couple of other folks putting up nice Trek models on the SketchUp 3-D Warehouse), but it's very very basic stuff.
Posted by Axeman 3D (Member # 1050) on :
I've seen quite a few nice renders with it, there's a number of third-party render engines designed for it now. They seemed to have illumination and so forth, I assumed they were ubiquitous now as all the renders I see seem to be using them.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Ahh, there are plug-ins and such . . . very nice.
Posted by Axeman 3D (Member # 1050) on :
I think most people are using something called Kerkythea to do their renders, but there are now quite a few packages that will render sketchup. Unfortunately, i think most of them require cash.
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