Yeah OK, the Big E has been done to death, but let me 'splain.
Anyone who's been around here for awhile may remember that last year I created a CGI model of the starship Enterprise. Considering that it was my first CGI model it was an OK effort, but I've never been quite satisfied with the way that the model turned out. For starters, there were several inaccuracies (the B-C teardrop command deck shape was all wrong, the Bussard collectors were too gaudy and oversaturated, etc.), it wasn't "canon" (I added a bunch of running lights and other details that didn't exist on the 11' studio model), and worst of all the fragging thing took FOREVER to render in POV-Ray. Life intervened, though, and I never got around to fixing her.
Well, a few months ago I started getting the CGI "itch" again and started tinkering with the old model. I soon realized that I needed to start from scratch if I was going to do it right, though, so without further ado...
This time around I'm using the
excellent blueprints created by Alan Sinclair as the primary source material, augmented by photos of the old shooting model. This version won't have all the "extras" that the previous model had (i.e., no self-illumination lights), and since I know more about modeling than when I tackled version 1.0, this sucker should render a whole lot faster (the parts that are mostly finished already render 20-30% faster than they did on the old model). And yes, I'm still using the freeware POV-Ray raytracer... I never got around to teaching myself how to use LightWave. Maybe someday.
Stay tuned...
