Phase II Refit

[evil_genius_180]

Recently I've been working on the Constitution-class ship from the never aired series Star Trek: Phase II. It's basically the version of the ship Matt Jefferies was designing for the Enterprise's big refit, which was supposed to be explained in the pilot episode, In Thy Image.

Well, as preproduction on the series was being done and the ship was being built, Paramount changed their minds and decided to make TMP instead. So, the script In Thy Image was turned into TMP and the models, which were being built for television resolution and weren't good enough for movie resolution had to be scrapped. Andrew Probert finished the refit of the Enterprise and the rest is history...

Anywho, I'm finishing the unfinished Phase II ship in 3D. I'm using Matt Jefferies' original design drawings that were cleaned up by David Shaw, more of Matt Jefferies' original drawings from the book Star Trek: Phase II: The Lost Series and images from that book. I'm not using the fan blueprints from Kennedy Ship Yards, they used too many TMP elements to finish the ship, IMO.

Here's the nacelle so far. I'd thought this would be the hardest element to do, but it was easier than I thought. It's easier to build than the TMP-refit version, IMO. I did do one TMP-ish element, which was to add the bussard grills to the front. The orignal plans had that area plain. I don't do plain very well. :evil:



And the secondary hull. I'm still working on it. The only TMP-ish thing I did was change the design of the docking port to canonize the ship. The original pentagonal docking port didn't fit with what was done in TMP and all Trek that followed. Everything else is either from Jefferies' drawings or Mike Minor paintings of the ship.

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I added the main pylon. Complete with windows, vertical lines and the thingy on the bottom that was supposed to house the ship's phasers.

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I had a little time for modeling earlier. Though I also spent some time doing some much needed cleaning and watching Babylon 5 on DVD.

Anywho, I started on the saucer. I freakin' hate grid lines, especially on the saucer bottom!! But they're there. I also built the basic shape of the nacelle pylons so I could configure the ship for these images.

Looks good!

Any chance we can see the plans too?

awesome! Yeah, the series that never was, its a shame but i spose we mightve never gotten st:tmp so everything happens for a reason hehe. Very nice work on the ship so far. I do hope you'll have an alternate texture set so it can say, "Enterprise" as it was supposed to so long ago (when I was about 9 ;P)

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Thanks guys. I would've updated this thread but I have the main page set to my bookmarks and that's been FUBAR, so I thought the whole site was down.

It wasn't until I just checked my e-mail and I had one about a file upload to the downloads section and realized the whole site wasn't down.

Originally Posted by sgreco1970

awesome! Yeah, the series that never was, its a shame but i spose we mightve never gotten st:tmp so everything happens for a reason hehe. Very nice work on the ship so far. I do hope you'll have an alternate texture set so it can say, "Enterprise" as it was supposed to so long ago (when I was about 9 ;P)

I wasn't born yet.

I don't really plan to do alternate textures because I'm anal retentive and I'd *have* to make them authentic to the series with the TOS hull font and signage. But I've started texturing the ship in the TMP-style and that would involve making whole new maps. Plus then I'd have to remake the docking ports in the Phase II style and change some other modeled details. Basically it's all a big pain in the ass.

Basically, I'm done modeling and I've began texturing. Here are the complete (but untextured) model images.



And some progress shots on the texturing.



Here's the schematic I scanned from the Phase II book.



I'm not sure who "finished" those for the book but they got the shape of the saucer and some other things wrong. The shape of the saucer is too TOS on that. However, Matt Jefferies' original drawings HERE show a different shape to the saucer. That shape is correct because it's the same shape as the saucer in all of the images of the incomplete series model build, so it's what I used.

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Texturing continues. Though I'm mostly done. I just have a couple small maps to make and a few areas to remap.

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Just about done here. I might fiddle around with the spot lights a little but that's about it. Next is either the Phase II drydock or some interiors, but I might just knock out that drydock really quick, since it's mostly cylinders.

Looks good.

I don't know if it's your lighting or not but, IMO, the texture needs to be a little more prominent. I'd dial up the specular a little more. Maybe give the whole thing a little more contrast.

Also, the aztecking is supposed to match with the saucer gridlines isn't it?

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Yes, it's spec mapped. I was going for the light paneled look of TMP-era Star Trek.

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Originally Posted by Kakaze

Looks good.

I don't know if it's your lighting or not but, IMO, the texture needs to be a little more prominent. I'd dial up the specular a little more. Maybe give the whole thing a little more contrast.

Also, the aztecking is supposed to match with the saucer gridlines isn't it?

You raised some valid points and I'd been wondering if I'd made the panels too small anyway. So, I redid the specular and color maps for the whole ship to make the panels larger so you can see them better. The biggest change is in the saucer. The azteccing now matches with the "spoke" grid lines. It doesn't match with the radial lines and won't ever because that's a big pain in my ass to do because of the way I do my textures. But I don't think the paneling necessarily always matches the radial lines on Trek ships anyway.

The bigger panels look much better now. I still can't get over the feeling that the texture is too flat, however; it just doesn't seem to "pop".

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OK, here's what I did. I edited my spec maps and added 40% brightness to the lighter parts of the aztec but left all of the other panels alone, including the smaller, brighter ones. This makes the aztec itself stand out more and the smaller, brighter panels stand out less, at least against the brighter parts of the aztec.

This is pretty much as good as it gets. I'm not spending the rest of my week tweaking the textures on this ship, so this will more than likely be the final texture revision as I'm pretty happy with it, more so than I was with the previous versions.



And a little image I cooked up with a planet and a flare. It's basically a fancy beauty shot, but I need to download and convert a couple Lightwave Klingon and Romulan meshes before I get more fancy with the images (or build some more models, but the download thing is faster and will happen first. )

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Here's a little something I started based on the Archer shuttlepod from Star Trek: The New Voyages.

Their version: http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/do...er_shuttle.jpg

Mine:


Since the New Voyages is semi-official (it's endorsed by Paramount) and the shuttle is basically the El-Baz shuttlepod from TNG with some minor changes, I'm following the canon line and building an intermediate design with Phase II-ish nacelles.

[Lee]

Nice work so far...

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Thanks bro.

I'm really having fun with this little shuttle. I'm almost done with the exterior and then I have to add a couple chairs, a control console and some other stuff to the interior and she's done.

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And a little more.

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I'm pretty much done modeling now.

[Lee]

hehe.. very cool

[seanr]

What happened to your images?

[Lee]

Looks like Photobucket either had a hickup or he took them down.

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Yeah, I took them out because my album was getting to be a bit much for me to sift through. If you want to see the final images, I can upload them as attachments. I should have them saved (though I think I deleted the WIP images off my backup HD to save space.)

I wish the pictures were still there.

I had started a Truespace Phase 2 Enterprise a while back, but the engines got to me. Like you I used the model in the book as a guide, and filled in the rest with my imagination.

Pity

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Sorry about that, guys. But I have a love-hate relationship with Photobucket. (mostly I love to hate them) For one thing, I use dialup internet and that site wasn't built with the dialup user in mind. It takes forever to load my album and sometimes I have to go though pages that take a long time to load to find stuff, so I wind up cleaning out my finished projects every once in a while. Plus, they have all those flash ads on your album pages so that, unlike Image Shack, people who click on your image links don't have to see them. But flash ads also aren't the dialup user's friend.

So, with that in mind, I'll just upload the completed ship and shuttle images here. Like I thought, the WIP images are gone because I'm done with this project. (it happens.)

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And the last ship image and two of the shuttlepod images.

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Here are the last 2 shuttle images. For some reason, I never rendered any of the completed shuttle with the doors open. However, if anybody wants to see it with the doors open, I will gladly render an image or 2.

Originally Posted by iain

I wish the pictures were still there.

I had started a Truespace Phase 2 Enterprise a while back, but the engines got to me. Like you I used the model in the book as a guide, and filled in the rest with my imagination.

Pity

I used all kinds of resources on this, though the book and David Shaw's cleaned-up versions of Matt Jefferies' original schematic drawings were my main sources. Since even the schematics in the book were wrong, I used the original schematics for all shapes and they were the deciding factor for the location of the completed details they showed. Though, I also had Mike Minor paintings of the ship and a wonderful side view that someone did (looked like it was based off the Minor paintings) and some complete (though not very accurate) schematics. Between all of that, I filled in the missing details as best I could.

Though I found those engines to be the most daunting task also, which is why I attempted them first, though they wound up not being that bad. Basically, I took them a part at a time, starting with the front, which required a spline and a lathe and then some deforming to get the shape to match Matt Jefferies' drawings. Then, for the main body back to where it transitions into the round part, I just swept the face on back of the front. Then the back was basically a deformed cylinder. Again, I used Matt's original drawings to get the shape. And the parts with the grills consisted of a cylinder with a sphere in front and some booleans. The parts where the front shape rounds back into the cylindrical section in back I did with another couple of lathes and some deformation. Basically, once you break it down, it's a bunch of pretty simple shapes.

I included a 4 view on the nacelle that I just rendered a little bit ago. The first view shows the nacelle broken down into what I consider to be the 3 main sections. I don't know if any of that helps, but there it is. I'd also be glad to share any references I have with you, if you're thinking of trying the ship again.

Thanks for that Evil Genius

Looking at your model I don't think I would try it again. I still have the model with its very basic engines, but I think I will leave it.

Thanks for the offer of references, though.

I am officially stunned!!
Beautiful!

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One of these days I'm gonna get around to releasing this thing and a few other models. I keep procrastinating on that.

I know this is your thread Evil Genius, but if I may, here are some test renders of my attempt at the Phase 2 Enterprise - never finished, sadly

The saucer underside was too flat (my TOS version is better), and the engines are just crap.
It was my first attempt to model any version of the Enterprise, and I had to go for a hard one :p