My Continuing 3D Voyage with the Enterprise

I think I’m more than halfway home. I figured out how to add lettering, so now there’s nothing stopping me from adding all the lettering and designs, plus the myriad little glowing lights.

I tracked down the font they used, reproduced the lettering on the hull, saved it as a PNG with no background, did some other voodoo, and finally shrink-wrapped it to the ship.

Making the radar-looking thing — “main sensor and navigational deflector” — was one of the easier parts. It’s all symmetrical and concentric circles. Some of the larger shapes like the main disc are more difficult because of all the subtle curves. I know, from this angle it looks like a jet engine.

The fuselage has some angles I’m not sure how to interpret, and the landing bay should give me some stimulating challenges.

Sometimes I have to go into the wire-frame view to figure out what I screwed up.

I’m quite sure I’m not the first, or the hundredth, or maybe even the thousandth person to recreate the Enterprise with 3D modeling software. Some have undoubtedly done the inside as well. But for me it’s still magical. I’m able to reproduce a space craft I’ve cherished for decades, since I was in elementary school. I can spin it around in real time while I work on it, and admire it from every angle, which is part enjoying my own handiwork, but also that of the original design.

I forgot about there was an “impulse deck” on the back of the main disk.

how to make them, and figure out how to assemble it all as well.

Addendum

And then I decided to take a break and watch an episode of the original Star Trek, and it was filled with footage of the Enterprise. Ah, the film version is a bit different from the original model, the blueprints, and various other models. I’m going to have to make some adjustments. I want my version to look most like the film version.

~ Ends