Work continues apace on the starship Constellation. The Connie has haunted my dreams ever since I was a seven-year-old boy staring transfixed at the Trinitron whenever the local TV station reran “The Doomsday Machine”. How could a giant starship be wrecked like that?! Impossible! But as I got older, I started noticing how, er, undetailed the … [Read more…]
She’s ready to fly! The initial round of modeling on the Starship Enterprise is finished, so this will be the last test video of the model for the foreseeable future. There are a couple of minor tweaks needed that I’ve noted in this video, but nothing significant (some texturing errors on the secondary hull ventral … [Read more…]
After a much-needed three weeks off I’m back in the saddle. The model as shown in this image does not include any new features compared to WIP video #121-A from three weeks ago; it’s just a test image that I rendered to reacquaint myself with the Enterprise model and see what’s left to do. Click … [Read more…]
Getting close to the finish line! Today’s work in progress is a test of the warp drive and impulse engine effects. I think the impulse engines are “throbbing” a little too much (as if they were under stress or malfunctioning); I may need to tweak that. I’m also still not quite satisfied with the appearance … [Read more…]
Hmm. Click here for the YouTube version. This is the same source material used in test #116 published earlier today, but without the heavy gamma correction applied (just some minor color curve adjustments that I made in the nonlinear editor I’m using to assemble these test videos). The only reason I’m publishing this is to … [Read more…]
Just a quickie for today. YouTube: https://youtu.be/AKGQ6o3QExs Vimeo: The exterior of the secondary hull is finally finished, and I revised (again!) the “Christmas lights” visual effect behind the domes at the front of the warp nacelles. Judging by this test clip, I still need to do a little tweaking on the brightness and color … [Read more…]
Busy week at work and some personal life stuff, so not a lot of progress this week. Materials for the secondary hull exterior are completed. I’m still working on adjusting the lighting for the interiors that are visible through the portholes; that’s going to take a while (there are a lot of portholes!). I also … [Read more…]
I spent the weekend visiting friends I haven’t seen in years, and it wasn’t until I was on the plane home this evening that I realized Sunday was Star Trek day. Fifty-three years ago on September 8, 1966, the little science fiction show that could premiered on NBC. So, here’s a picture to celebrate the … [Read more…]
Spent most of yesterday evening tracking down a lighting artifact that was manifesting itself as a leak of “radiation” from the impulse engines. OctaneRender is forgiving, but only to a point… the culprit was a couple of n-gons (polygons with more than four vertices) that were also light emitters. Unfortunately, they were not only projecting … [Read more…]
Happy Labor Day to U.S. visitors… I’ve been laboring. The Enterprise primary hull is now completely finished top-to-bottom and inside-out. Now it’s onto the rest of the ship, which I hope won’t take all fall the way that summer disappeared while working on the saucer section.