To keep everybody posted, here's how things are going on the model so far.  This is still (so far) 100% Carrara with textures painted in PSP 9.

Oh yeah, and before somebody posts it, yes, I have a LOT more work to do on the textures and quite a bit more modeling to go yet (maybe 40 or 50 more hours of work).  This is about 50 hours so far.

Looking good so far, Kixum. Really nice work.

-AniMajik

This is sort of one of my holy Grails.  It's probably in my top three most complicated models I've ever tried.  When Sar Trek the motion picture came out, McDonald's had a really great picture of the Movie Enterprise on their place mats.  I took one home and hung it up in my room where it stayed for a long time.

I've never seen a version of this that I could get for Carrara and render it to my satisfaction so making one from scratch is my solution.  I literally started this model with a completely empty scene and built it completely from scratch.

i have a 1/350 scale Polar Lights plastic kit sitting with me while I build this thing.  That's providing a lot of help!  I hope it will turn out when I'm done.  I'm pulling out a lot of old tricks And I'm using some new ones!

Looks good! Shows what good reference material can do to help along with your skill set.

Very good model!!

Wow - that looks awesome!

Don't know if you'll be up for it after all this modeling, but could you post a tutorial on the "Making of The Enterprise NCC 1701-A", Kix?

-AniMajik

Normally when I do a big project like this, I write up a diary of what I did over the days.  I'm doing this for this model like usual.  I was thinking of asking c3de to post a big article on it.

We'll see what they say.

This looks very good to me .. Great job.

Nice kix!

Mostly texture work to go (in fact, a lot of texture work to go).  Modeling is 95% complete.   I have some components to re-work but in general, all of the components have been made now.  I will add a few bumps and nids and nats yet.

It's coming along!

Very nice!

Beam me up Kix!  Great work!

-AniMajik

Just in case, I finished this model and have posted results of some renders in the Carrara gallery.

This has been a lot of work but it really paid off.  Mark and I both agree that the real strength of this model is heavily weighted in the textures.  It's interesting to realize that great renders commonly rely on the 2D skills people use to build the textures that are applied.

This is also a model that proves the old idiom that less is more.  I have put a significant effort into making things to scale as much as I could.  When researching this model, I have seen a several other people set it up with windows which are too big or other components which are exaggerated.

However, when done carefully and when adding tiny details, the results jump a lot more.

This model is a pretty big file in C mostly due to the big texture files but it's worth it.  I did this entire project WITHOUT UV mapping anything.  I will confess that I don't know anything about UV mapping.  Everything you see in my models is done procedurally through C's projection mapping options.  Maybe someday, I'll graduate to UV mapping.  Until then, I'm getting things to work out anyway.

Great job!!