TOS Star Trek Builds

[scifidude79]

Thanks Eric.

[Freak]

Looking Good Chris.

[scifidude79]

Thanks Dean.

[Prime_8]

looking pretty sweet man.

[scifidude79]

Thanks Scott.

[scifidude79]

Ignore anything in this thread that was being done in Blender. I had a meltdown a few months back with desktop Linux and trying to find a distribution that worked for my needs without something going wrong, so I switched back to Windows 10. This means I'm back to using Lightwave 2018. The reasoning on this is simple. I paid a lot of money for Lightwave, so I'm running it.

As I indicated in the finished art post I did earlier, I converted a few of my older ships to Lightwave 2018. This basically entails completely redoing the materials, as Lightwave 2018's render engine is designed to use Principled BSDF materials and older versions of the software used different materials and a different render engine. These models were made in Lightwave 10 about 5-6 years ago.







I'm seriously considering redoing the Equinox (and not calling it that) as that was designed to be a ship that was a later TOS era, almost to the TMP time frame ship, hence the details. But, I'd prefer to do a model that looks like an older ship. Besides, I haven't done that style of hull in ages and it's a fun style to do. Another thing I'm considering is rigging up models for animation. For the most part, these models wouldn't be hard to animate or take a long time, but the bussard collectors are a problem. They're done practically with modeled lights and mirrors, and a lot of light refraction. The refraction is what is causing the noise that is visible on the Erickson render. This can be done away with, or at least greatly reduced, but increasing the anti aliasing to the level required results in really long render times. So, I'm probably going to have to fake the look of what's inside the bussard collectors with a texture, which isn't all that hard to do. I've done it before, all I have to do is animate it, render it to a .avi file and then use that as a applied to a dome. For animation, this will work fine. Really, it would probably be OK for still images, so I'll have to decide after I do it if I want to keep the practical bussards or just go to the textured version.

[scifieric]

This is all terrific work, Chris!  Fantastic!

[scifidude79]

I've been fighting a lot of noise when I render my TOS ships, especially where the light from the bussard collectors is hitting the hull. An idea struck me and I finally figured out what the problem was; the lights inside the bussard collectors were too strong. In an effort to make them more visible and pop more, I really cranked up the luminosity setting, which is what was causing the noise. So, I went in and backed down the luminosity setting a lot on all of the lights and I changed the dome settings to make the lights more visible. I'm pretty happy with the end result.

The old bussard collector:



The new one:



I don't feel I lost a lot in the look of the bussard, in fact I think it looks a lot better, but I lost a lot of the noise. The light hitting the hull was too strong anyway, that's what caused the noise. Now it's there but it's pretty subtle.

Here's how the Erickson looks with the new bussards:



So, yeah, I'm pretty happy with the results. I have the bussards looking how I want them, light is still hitting the hull and there's a lot less noise.

[scifieric]

So, yeah, I'm pretty happy with the results. I have the bussards looking how I want them, light is still hitting the hull and there's a lot less noise.

Excellent work, Chris!

You've done a great job maintaining the look while reducing the noise!  Well done.

[scifidude79]

Thanks Eric. That noise was really bothering me, so much so that if I didn't find a solution I was going to have to switch software.