Been on a Star Trek kick latley. After seeing DS9 episode with waves of fighters and no carriers I thought it is high time the Federation get a carrier. One of the things I like about doing a design based on Trek is that everything there has a purpose. Sensors and phaster strips and bridge and impulse engines warp drives and shuttle bays escape pods etc. Being a carrier the Coral Sea has an oversized shuttle bay in the fore and aft of the engineering hull.

Hi Dann-O Where is the main deflector located? ... can you post a view from the underside? I like the shape of the engineering hull.

The deflector array is on the underside of the saucer. The engineering hull is larger to accomodate all the fighters. Also the little bumps are the emergency escape pods for the bridge crew. There are none on the engineering hull because it is full of fighters and shuttles so they have a means of escape and for astetic reasons. See the pic of the underside of the saucer. I did choose a different shape for the deflector. I would not forget the deflector array I worked on aircraft radar for years. (10)

Attached Link: http:///www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=985777

A beauty shot of the textured render. Did something on this I don't normally do, did some lense flares where there is a bight highlight. Worked out ok working on subcraft for it.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=985777

I fixed the link here ... the third "/" was throwing it off ;) Sweet beauty shot! The texture for the hull plating works well. The one suggestion I would make is to give the saucer section some thickness at the edge, as it looks like it tapers to a point. The deflector looks good, and I am curious to see how you'll handle the blue glow effect if you do a final render of the underside.

CJD you are right it does taper to a point there. I got the idea from the Galaxy class.It might look better with a bit of an edge. I will have to do that on the next one. It might be a bit too hard an edge. Sorry for the sloppy link. I am curous too. I will have a go at it soon. I don't know which direction to go. I have a number of ideas on how to get the blue glow. But on the other hand the original trek had a metallic deflector. The hull plating on the rendered shot is a bit of experementation with Bryce materials. I wanted to get a good hull plate that does not go over the top with notches and colors. It has a couple channels that I can adjust to get differnt looks. Works quite well. Still more tweakign to do.

"But on the other hand the original trek had a metallic deflector."

Indeed, as Spock would say...

Not that I dislike the original Enterprise, but the glow on the "new" deflector is cool. There are a few things from the original Trek I really prefer, such as the design of the shuttles. I think the shuttles from TNG are a bit cheesy, although I do like the Runabouts on DS9.

I'm sorry the current series have come to an end, and I can only hope that a new "Trek" will be a possibility.

Message edited on: 06/24/2005 15:41

bryce does have some excellent material tools. if you can ( have it ) try using vue for the render, put a slightly offset duplicate of the deflector just behind it in a different layer, then add a blue glowing glass maerial to that. ( can also be used for the warp nacells ) since the new "glowing" deflectors the glow actually comes from behind the actual dish in the deflector. why, a transmitter array was called deflector is beyond me though, it never was in the original. the "deflecors" in the original were the navigation shields, as opposed to the battle shields. the front dish emitted an electromagnetic field to deflect incoming debris from hitting the ship. the carrier looks great.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=987071

Still did nto do anything with the deflector. Made a render with my curret library of trek ships after my wife said can you do that. It was one of the big DS9 dominion war episodes. Jaqui sounds like a good idea since it is a sperate area I can do that. This is supposed to be a post Dominion war ship. So a glowing deflector would be used. Did do 1 thing to the ship I had to change the color of the stripes aroudn the saucer so they would not match the escape pods.

Message edited on: 06/24/2005 19:45