OK, first a little background. Back in the good ol' days (2008) I built a mesh for a TMP-era ship that was a bit of refit Connie meets Excelsior class. The original idea was that it was a ship that Starfleet had been designing as a replacement for the Constitution-class but it failed to impress, so they scrapped it and developed the Excelsior class. Then, some years later, some admiral decided to redevelop the ship as a science vessel and brought it into service as the Brisbane-class:
So, anyway, that was version 1. It was a blend of Connie and Excelsior and then I apparently decided to greeble the snot out of it (probably because of my love for the Constellation-class.) It was cute for a while but then I decided last year to do a rebuild.
The rebuild started off on the same premise, TMP-era, started off as a heavy cruiser, became a science ship. Anywho, at some point in the build, I decided to switch to the "Lost Era" in between the TOS films and TNG and started doing details in that area. (I think 2320-2330 was the launch year) I also decided to make it a utility ship with a Nebula-class-ish sensor pod on top. Anywho, as of September of last year, this is where I was at in the build:
For a complete summary of work to date, check out here:
http://evilgenius180.wordpress.com/?s=Brisbane
The posts marked "Brisbane-class V2.0" 1-11 are last year's work.
Anywho, it was about then that I put this ship aside to work on another project that took the rest of the year to complete. I kept meaning to get back to the project but didn't manage to get back into it until today.
I opened up the scene in trueSpace yesterday and did some renders of what I had so far. Then I closed the program. I wasn’t happy with it, so I considered leaving it and starting something new. Then I remembered all of the time that I spent on the pain in the butt engineering hull and I realized I can’t leave this unfinished. That part alone made me want to finish it. So, today, I opened it back up and realized what I don’t like about it; the windows. When I started the project, it was in the 2270-2294 era of the original model but then I switched tracks and decided to go for the “Lost Era” between 2294 and 2364, during which time we have only a rough idea of what happened. However, the horizontal windows were really from the wrong era, so I knew I had to redo those. Fortunately, I’m an anal retentive person when it comes to backing up stuff, so I have parts in various stages of construction. It was easy to go back to before I added the windows on the saucer, main pylon and engineering hull. However, I also realized that I wanted a more angled edge on the saucer, so I went back to my original spline and moved some points to achieve the look I wanted. Then I re-lathed that and re-cut the grid lines (which had to be modified slightly.) Then came the windows. Lots of windows. Those took a while to set up and cut but I got that done today and I think it looks a lot better.
Other parts that might get changed are the warp pylons (I’m only lukewarm about those for this era) and I’m 95% sure that the bridge has to go. I really don’t like it. However, before I do all of that, I have to put windows into the main pylon and engineering hull.
So, that's where it stands right now. Much work to still be done, but at least I'm working on it again. Also, here's the ship's dedication plaque:
