Fem Trekz's U.S.S. EARHART

[mos6507]

I was undecided about Chawla because Fem Trekz is partly a comedy. I don't want to upset the family of that woman who died in the Columbia accident. Usually I like people misinterpreting things in Fem Trekz, only to discover the other layers later, but with something like this, I want to be respectful of the dead at all times.

If you think that's not too dangerous, then yes, name the Waverider Chawla, but the shuttles are all part of the Earhart, so the lettering might work like the Galileo with the NCC-91937/[number] system. I don't mind the Earhart patch graphic on the side of the hull, since the ship belongs to the Earhart, but if you wanted to put Chawla's picture there instead, that would work too. But at that point the label would say "Chawla" at the bottom and not "USS Chawla". The main ship is still the Earhart. I like the fact it starts with an E like Enterprise, and I did utilize that in the screen-test by the ship's computer calling herself Amelia.

[Raul Mamoru]

The Waverider deserves a special name.
This vehicle is not a simple shuttlecraft, as you said before is a Captain's yacht.
I believe that the Waverider may dispense the number that comes after NCC-91937/1 or 2 or 3 ...
Includes only the general identification:

CHAWLA (Handwritten in red)
U.S.S. Earhart. NCC-91937 (StarFleetStandard Black)

About the comic spirit, I know that our girls will not make jokes about this great heroine. At this point, Chawla is safe. 8)

Thank you.

[mos6507]

Sounds good to me.

[Raul Mamoru]

Hi, Glenn and friends!

Here are some pictures of the model in progress.
The main hull and thermal protection, are already marked.





Soon, more progress.

Thank you.

[Raul Mamoru]

Hi, Glenn!

I have a question here, please consider issues such as animation and rig points:

The movable part of the winglet should be double or it may be a single piece?



Thank you.

[mos6507]

It is a split-aileron, so it can act as a rudder or an air-brake. So it is two pieces with two hinges, although they would both move together most of the time. Because it's trapezoidal, you may run into problems with how the hinges work. The pieces will angle downward. We mentioned this back then, and I think you said you'd provide enough clearance so that the inner aileron wouldn't fold down and its tip hit the hull. If you're concerned about this, you can make the hinge go straight up-down instead.

These are the other moving parts (not including any interior items):

-the doors
-the landing skids
-the ramp(s)
-the three rear flaps (the middle one doubling as an exit ramp. The middle one definitely needs to be able to rotate down.)

[Raul Mamoru]

Thanks, along time I will make adjustments accordingly.

Here's another update with some initial details.
(Open the image in a new tab or window.)





Thank you.

[mos6507]

The level of detail here is far far greater than anything I imagined. Excellent!

This already looks better than anything that they could possibly have come up with for Voyager, just by virtue of how much thought has gone into the design.

Be careful when you bevel (inset) things, though. The front windshield and the headlight covers should be more flush with the hull for aerodynamic purposes. Love the headlights under the covers. Very car-like. Also, the hinges on the wing-tips look awesome, but it would be better if they didn't protrude so much. At several times the speed of sound, there would be an enormous amount of heat stress put onto those hinges from the wind-resistance.

You might also want to check how the rear hatch will open up and how that relates to the spoiler. I like the red (light?) in the back which reminds me of brake-lights on cars. In this version I don't see RCS thrusters or running lights. I'm sure you'll get to that eventually, though.

Amazing stuff, though

I think it's wonderful to recreate Star Trek's most famous models, but it is that much more of a challenge to design something almost completely from scratch like this. I hope you are enjoying this, because the model is really coming together and you can see how all that hard work (and yes, the torture I put you through) is paying off!

In the end I hope this makes the rounds of the Trek news sphere and people like Doug Drexler and Rick Sternbach see it.

[Raul Mamoru]

Yes, it's the Rear Spoiler Stop Brake Light.

A few improvements and fixes in external modeling.


Also modeled a hinge to the rear door.


I designed two options for main propulsion.
-The first alternative is more fictional.


-This second idea brings a piece of the Space Shuttle.


Which of the designs best suited to the spirit of the design?

[mos6507]

OK, I have a problem with the hinge on the rear door. It's very bulky and not aerodynamic. As a piece of detailed 3D modeling, it's fantastic work. It just doesn't look like it belongs on a streamlined hypersonic drop-ship like this. Here is another picture of a Mazda 3.



The hinge is internal, as with most hatch-backs, with a strut on either side to hold it up. It's not necessary to have a hinge visible on the outside. The change you made to the hinge on the wingtips is good. Those look closer to real aircraft hinges.

As far as the rear nozzles I think horizontal louvers might look better than bell nozzles. I think louvers would look better because it's already an angular opening. This would make it look more like the back of a sports-car like the Firebird used for Knight Rider. The round nozzle winds up looking too small when fit into that space. I would not put those RCS thrusters in-line with the main thrusters. Those are more for rotating the ship (pitch/yaw/roll), so they would be in a different area, and pointed at different angles. The nose is one spot, like you had in the earlier diagram, or in the roof area.

I know you enjoy adding detail to models, and you're very good at it, but if you add too much detail to this model it will make it look less and less aerodynamic. So the details have to be subtle, like the seams and lines and very slight relief you're adding, and not a lot of bumpy stuff or deep recesses. There are spots where you can add detail that won't impact the aerodynamics. For instance, the interior of the doors, the expandable ramp that comes out the sides the folding landing skids. When it's actually in flight, the ship should be pretty streamlined. It seems to me that you're very close to running out of areas that look like they need more detail. You've been working on this a long time but there does come a time when it's "done" Yes, even I can say that. The exterior does look very close to done. The majority of the remaining work will be texturing, the moving parts, and the interior.

[Raul Mamoru]

Details of the hull were removed. The engine now has grills. (If the grill is not correct, add a reference.)


The rear hatch has the pistons and inner hinges.


A notice: I did not add bones to joints. The pistons, for example, I'll leave in the open position.
Corrections, angle and axis adjustments involving complex movements will depend on your skill with animation software.
I do not know how to handle with bones.

[mos6507]

The louvers (grill) will require that you make the top edge parallel with the lines instead of slanted. Other than that, looks great! And surprised how fast this was. The piston animation can be worked out later, but the look is good.

[mos6507]

When I look at the hull as you have it now, with fewer details sticking up, you can see how Trek-like it is, because of how you broke it up into panels with seams between them. You may have also been thinking of body panels on a car. It's really really good. The back wall where the engines are is one big piece. You may want to add a seam on either end of the rear door, where it has a rounded corner. It seems to be calling for a split in the paneling there. I was expecting any sort of line-work to be done in the texturing but it does look better as part of the geometry. Elsewhere, you may have some lines crossing that look a little wrong, not knowing whether you may be putting a light or a thruster in that small section. Each component or panel should look like something built in a factory that then snaps together. I've provided a visual reference here. I would make one final pass with an eye towards the average panel-size and putting seams on corners. The one exception to the seams might be the thing lip around the whole ship. That would probably look best as one uniform piece, which is what you currently have, I think.

http://i.imgur.com/rhoRJ0i.jpg

By doing these things you will make something that looks very much like a physical prop, How things are typically built, the individual pieces have to be small enough to be carried by a person, or of a uniform size and relatively flat so they can be stacked and transported. There could be some exceptions, like the black top heat-shield section you have, but for the most part, the panels would be about the same size and not too curved. These are details that people don't really think about, but we're so familiar with the look of things like this that we can kind of "feel" the difference between something that looks like it was built in a factory and something that can only exist in a 3D program. By taking styling cues from cars and things, you naturally adopt the engineering traditions from manufacturing, which make it that much more realistic. I think a lot of the artists on science-fiction had prior careers as industrial designers, so they had an eye for how things are built in the real world.

So when you get to finishing the doors, for instance, consider whether you need to have an inner rubber gasket like is showing in the photo of the car. You might want something more elegant and not as wide of a seam, but it's a tried and tested way to seal a hatch like that. The temptation in 3D would be to just have it seal up flat without a gasket, and probably in some of the shuttlecraft practical models they did it that way, just to make it simple. But you can come up with what feels best.

[Raul Mamoru]

Well,
once again back to zero.

[Chainsaw_NL]

That looks amazing again. I see what you mean on the door. It just needs a bit more body and an inset on the ship where the door fits into. Still the outside looks amazing.