BLSSDWLF's TOS Enterprise WIP

[blssdwlf]

@Mytran - thanks

Here are hopefully some better views as to where I put the Doomsday Machine entrance (basically 1 deck above Journey to Babel). The flight deck ended up the same length the first time I tried it but now tapered (like the forced-perspective deck). I've shortened the length of the hangar deck though to see if I can make some more room and added a cargo entrance for the flight deck's front wall following the idea from TMP

@Wildstar - That red pole is a divider for a red screen wall. You can see it better in the HD version. Interestingly, the wall angle behind it matches better with the corridor angle aligned with a tapered flight deck.

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x13hd/theconscienceofthekinghd193.jpg

 

[wildstar]

Oh, very nice catch!
Kinda glad that I missed that actually and thought it was a red pole that I decided to ignore as I've always regarded those red screens as protective screens, blocking radiation or in the event of an explosion or something. No idea how to explain a red screen in the middle of a hallway going to an observation deck would be.

If you're able to UV map textures to your model and output as FBX, they can be brought into Unity engine and let people walk around them. Could even light in LW, then output lightmaps. It would look amazing. If you're interested in trying that out, let me know.

Excellent work again, btw!

PS, good luck getting the external windows in that obs corridor to match the outside of the ship where there's windows!

 

[Mytran]

Maybe the observation deck windows are normally behind shutters? In any case, it's the side of the ship we never see, so anything is possible!

Seeing as you're back on the shuttlebay blssdwlf, I may as well mention this oddity I spotted in Battlefield - the turbolift isn't a a turbolift!

Let me explain:

Kirk and Spock board the turbolift on the bridge - the carpet is green. They exit - it's blue! Also, the wall is far thicker than it should be for a turbolift. Something strange certainly happened on route from the bridge!

Of course, the production crew simply glued a "Turbolift 2" label above the briefing room door and hoped nobody would notice . So as I see it, there's two options:

1) Ignore it as a production error/shortcut
2) Interpret it to mean that Kirk exits from a turbolift lobby rather than the lift itself. Perhaps a sort of additional safety feature, in the case of decompression?

Since these are your ship plans, I'm not going to advocate one over the other - either can work, depending on how literally you interpret what's on screen!

Having said all that, I think your positioning of the Battlefield corridor is spot on, even justifying that wierd angle of the end wall! Also good placement of the cargo bay (essential really, given the lack of cargo bay doors on the ship!)

I've seen some plans of the E that have that large red rectangle on the secondary hull as cargo doors - have you given any thought as what to do with it on your ship?

 

[blssdwlf]

@wildstar - Thanks I do have Unity3d downloaded on my computer but just haven't had time to play with it yet. The demos are pretty cool though. When I get to a point with this model where I think it could go to Unity I'll give it a go

As to the obs windows, I've decided to "add" those two square windows to the exterior.

@Mytran - Good eyes! I couldn't place why that turbolift exit felt odd but the close-ups explain it

I'm going to opt for it to be a turbolift since there are no other episodes (AFAIK) to suggest differently. Keeping it simple

As to thinking about the red rectangle's purpose...

I originally thought about using the markings on the bottom of the engineering hull as guides for:
Circle - the M/AM reactor,
T-shape - AM fuel ejection,
Square - M/AM refueling ports,
Rectangle - extendable sensor antenna
and Red Rectangle - workbee hatch/pass-through to hangar

Some of these ideas stemmed from other blueprints and ideas I've read over the years. I had hoped that after piecing the interiors together, that they would line up with the exterior

Alas, only some align up and I discovered that the movie Enterprise also has similar markings. But upon further inspection it became apparent to me that they couldn't serve the same functions that I was thinking about and I chucked those ideas...

So, back to the red rectangle. Interestingly, it is right behind the hangar with no overlap and can be it's own compartment. I am now thinking it could be for a hatch to open and deploy emergency markers, towed sensor array, etc or an attachment point for a trailing boom with an ion pod at the end of it

 

[Mytran]

I'm going to opt for it to be a turbolift since there are no other episodes (AFAIK) to suggest differently. Keeping it simple

Fair enough. The "Turbolift 2" label appears there in a few different episodes in Season 3 but Battlefield is the only one where the doors open (they do it again towards the end of the ep as well, when Bele and Lokai begin their chase)

I originally thought about using the markings on the bottom of the engineering hull as guides for:
Circle - the M/AM reactor,
T-shape - AM fuel ejection,
Square - M/AM refueling ports,
Rectangle - extendable sensor antenna
and Red Rectangle - workbee hatch/pass-through to hangar

Some of these ideas stemmed from other blueprints and ideas I've read over the years. I had hoped that after piecing the interiors together, that they would line up with the exterior

Alas, only some align up and I discovered that the movie Enterprise also has similar markings. But upon further inspection it became apparent to me that they couldn't serve the same functions that I was thinking about and I chucked those ideas...

You mean these markings?

They were only added to the Enterprise-A (of which we saw precious little of the interior). Have a look at TMP and there's not a marking to be seen. Captain Robert April began a project a while ago to incorporate these hatch markings into a functional layout for the E-A, but it seems to be on hiatus at the moment.

So, back to the red rectangle. Interestingly, it is right behind the hangar with no overlap and can be it's own compartment. I am now thinking it could be for a hatch to open and deploy emergency markers, towed sensor array, etc or an attachment point for a trailing boom with an ion pod at the end of it

I'm not 100%, but it seems that the red rectangle would cut accross two sections, here:

Am I close?

 

[blssdwlf]

@Mytran - Yep those markings on the E-A.

Disclaimer - I don't completely think that the internals/flight deck we see in the E-A from "The Final Frontier" make sense and I'm very willing to discount it as an alcohol + bean dream rather than an actual adventure

As to the red rectangle on the E, here are some more views. I am using Sinclair's exterior schematics for placement of the hatches.

I also added the hallway seen in front of the Engine Room and added a few feet more between the turbolift and the forward hull to give room for the long range sensor gear and structure. Interestingly and unintentionally, the amount of M/AM reactor space is about the same that ended up being available on the refit-E...

 

[Captain Robert April]

Petri Bloomqvist, in a picture for one of the "Ships of the Line" calendars, depicted the rectangle under the fantail as a hatch for two or three workbees (a notion I rather like and subsequently pinched ). As for the rest, they make a lot of sense, to me at least, as access hatches to the antimatter generators and storage pods, with the circular yellow one indicating the intermix chamber, specifically, the ejection port. The remastered version of "Operation: Annihilate!" shows it opening up like bomb bay doors, to allow orbital insertion of those ultraviolet satellites, so I've modified the internal setup slightly to allow for a couple of crewman in environmental suits booting those things out the hatch, not unlike how crewmen on AC-130's pitch flares out the side hatch during night operations.

 

[Mytran]

Thanks blssdwlf, I'm quite happy being wrong here. Sinclair's and Casimiro's plans are near identical in this area, it's just my placment that was off!

 

[blssdwlf]

Petri Bloomqvist, in a picture for one of the "Ships of the Line" calendars, depicted the rectangle under the fantail as a hatch for two or three workbees (a notion I rather like and subsequently pinched ). As for the rest, they make a lot of sense, to me at least, as access hatches to the antimatter generators and storage pods, with the circular yellow one indicating the intermix chamber, specifically, the ejection port. The remastered version of "Operation: Annihilate!" shows it opening up like bomb bay doors, to allow orbital insertion of those ultraviolet satellites, so I've modified the internal setup slightly to allow for a couple of crewman in environmental suits booting those things out the hatch, not unlike how crewmen on AC-130's pitch flares out the side hatch during night operations.

@CRA - I might have seen the fantail hatch idea from one of the calendars - thanks for the reference.

I thought a better choice for "Operation: Annihilate" instead of the circular bottom hatch would have been using the launch rails on the flight deck. There would've been room for racks of those satellites in a staging area on the flight deck.

@Mytran - No worries It is pretty neat to see how many pieces of the puzzle do fit on the ship

 

[blssdwlf]

Quick update:

Did a check on the new shorter in length (and height) hangar deck and everything still fits Even the elevator opening lines up (woohoo )

 

[Gagarin]

Peter - sorry to back track, but I'm curious about why you ended up with the '2 consoles and a ladder' in two places in the engine room you designed? It's an arrangement I've not seen others do, and not one I ever really thought about. I know lots of your work there focused on EMM, so was there a step I missed?

 

[blssdwlf]

@Gagarin - The 2nd smaller set of consoles and a ladder stems from "The Day of the Dove" and where everyone is looking towards. I'm not 100% sure I'll keep it, but there aren't any more engineering room episodes after that seem to contradict it

You can see some screenshots of that episode in this post:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=4164851&postcount=152

 

[Gagarin]

@Gagarin - The 2nd smaller set of consoles and a ladder stems from "The Day of the Dove" and where everyone is looking towards. I'm not 100% sure I'll keep it, but there aren't any more engineering room episodes after that seem to contradict it

You can see some screenshots of that episode in this post:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=4164851&postcount=152

OOhh... I most have watched that episode 40 times and never paid attention about which direction they were working.

Hah. I probably just thought "they should look the other way!" subconsiouslelslslry.

 

[blssdwlf]

^^My thoughts too. Of course now that I'm trying to build that room out these little things come to light (d'oh!) I've watched it a few times, and even though it was a really strange choice of the director, there are no camera shots at that corner to say the small console+ladder couldn't exist either. So that gives me a bit of flexibility in putting that there if I wanted to come close to that episode

 

[blssdwlf]

I got sidetracked over-thinking what the engine internals would look like between the engine room and the hangar complex. I had thought it would be clever to look to the refit-Enterprise and see if some of that internal structure could be leveraged...

So after trying in vain to match up the cargo deck scene in TMP I found on Andrew Probert's website a reference plate he used for the matte painting and was able to do a match on that. Whew!

What I'm currently thinking is that like the refit-Enterprise, the TOS Enterprise's M/AM reactor is fairly small and the energy is amplified as it makes its way through to the warp nacelles and back to the main energizer which is further amped by the dilithium crystals.

Anyway, will return back to the TOS engine room after this detour

 

[Mytran]

Wow, great stuff! Shame it seems to prove without doubt that those sidewise corridors have no room to go anywhere!

 

[blssdwlf]

@Mytran - Well, worse than going nowhere, I don't think the completed matte painting as filmed wouldn't fit the accepted 305m ship ...

When I overlay the film version to match up I ended up:

• moving the 3rd floor balcony bracing aft a little
• moved the turbolift shaft aft about 10' (still doesn't line up with the exterior port
• moved side cargo walls outward
• lowered the height of the shuttle elevator section
• lengthened the shuttle elevator section
• created the bracing for the flight deck which is substantially wider than the cargo section

There were some elements I couldn't match up mostly because the painted on elements are slightly exaggerated in perspective or when viewed at the other angle don't match up. I've tried to align them as best I could

I think I'll try rescaling the exterior using the exterior port position and the flight deck height to get a revised "Thermian" scale of the refit.

 

[Mytran]

I've always felt that the on-screen TMP Enterprise was larger than the published lengths. The massive cargo bay, huge recreation deck and long corridors outside Engineering all strongly suggest it. A larger ship was also make the torpedo room(s) from TWOK fit better.

I'm very interested in what you find!

 

[blssdwlf]

I'm currently guesstimating ~1164' / 355m.

I missed it before but it became apparent when I tried to line up the external docking port with the internal location. I had mistakenly thought that the 3rd floor balcony lined up with the flight deck. But if you look on the film and director's cut model, the external port is higher (like a couple of feet) than the flight deck. When I drop the flight deck 2', the flight deck in the matte painting now line up better (height-wise) as well.

I'll spend some time modeling the travel pod, workbees and shuttle to see how that fits into what's been filmed for scaling...

 

[blssdwlf]

@Mytran - I think for now I'm going to stick with 355m for the TMP Enterprise.

I used the orthographic views of the Director's Cut Enterprise from Doug Drexler's site (wish I had a high res version ) to do some lining up and comparisons.

There is a scene in TMP where the travel pod docks to the Enterprise and interestingly, that close up is kinda flawed. The windows next to the docking port are much closer than they are in the model. And there must be some kind of magnifying effect going on with the head at the window as he doesn't look he would fit through the door

Anyway, at 305m, a 6' person sorta fits through the docking port while scaling up to 355m a 6' person nicely fits through. Plus, other internal sets fit better as well.

The other thing I noticed was that at 305m, it seems that the TMP Enterprise's primary hull was thinner than then TOS Enterprise which seemed really odd.