USS Astraea - Second Flyby Test Renders

So I got the bussard vanes spinning and the blinkies blinking, then set it to a nice big 4k 20 second render...which took almost exactly 24 hours at the end of which.....I realised I'd accidentally deleted the windows. Reducing the size down to HD (and honestly my video editor wont export 4K without premium so no loss there) and a few fewer samples cut almost 20 hours off the render time, BUT it seems the glare node isn't proportional to the image size because that got a LOT brighter. Think a middle ground in glare size is better and I might desaturate the port and starboard lights a little.
I will say I really like how it looks when the camera pulls away, the hull texture when viewed form more of a distance works really well with the lighting to make it feel solid and real
(oh and obviously I don't own Trek, or the music, etc etc)

[@sirjanin]

This is what star trek is. They forgot that in the star trek shows the ship is also the main character. I love these shots of your ship, specially the second one.

[@RingandRaven]

I think SNW, LD, PROD, and Picard S3 remember this, to varying extents. Discovery...sort of is aware but the connection isn't there the same way, though I personally suspect a lot of their CG (especially in earlier seasons) was rushed and hidden in dark light to make up for it Did see a nice bit of analysis that pointed out that in Disco they talk about the ship sometimes and the family they are, but aside from spore jumping the Discovery itself is never really allowed to be the tool used to save the day in the same way it is for others, and SNW has that feeling back

[@benthomson1132]

Now that's a fan-designed ship that I would love to serve on. Great work!

[@Wraithage79]

I like this design very much!

[@Muledragon]

Cool design. Keep up the good work.

[@rhion]

Looks like a VASTLY nicer Oberth. Kudos!!!!

[@RingandRaven]

Funny you say that, I didn't have the Oberth in mind when I made it but theres a similar layout one someone ese has made (with much better quality post-work I might add :D ) that has essentially souped up Oberth nacelles, and I was thinking along those lines if I make a refit

[@tensecondtwoii4182]

Looks great. Agree with your self critiques, but looking forward to what comes next !

[@mr.flibble3190]

She's a nice-looking ship. I appreciate the way she fills in the gap between the TOS and movie aesthetics.

[@HalloranIllustrations]

Awesomely cool and I totally love that design.

[@TravisTwigg]

I would love to see a game based on the movie era, I love this eras ships more than any other time

[@jerryhenson3916]

This is a great design! I love it!

[@SO_DIGITAL]

Add her approaching a star, then the glare would look awesome. I also often have trouble with Windows. She's gorgeous!

[@RingandRaven]

Been playing around a bit with more post processing including getting a good star effect that isn't just a vaguely glowing ball, not quite good enough to show yet!

[@Biggles266]

This is a beautifully built and lit starship. It closely resembles my own kitbash of a Tikopai and Oberth to make my own T'Lani-class auxiliary science cruiser, though I kept the dorsal neck, my nacelles are TMP, and my saucer is Phase II concept. Would really love to know "how to Blender", but it's such a steep learning curve...

[@skywave1505]

She's a beauty!

[@RingandRaven]

Thanks!

[@stephenfarthing3819]

A TOS Pre-Excelsior class - a prototype test ship testing hull configuration - smaller than a Federation class, larger than the Constitution 2 class.

[@RingandRaven]

Almost 😅 it's intent is pre-refit era, putting the Connie's capabilities in a more compact space frame, but I could easily see some of its design elements eventually leading to Excelsior with the secondary hull shape. (It's actually I think just a smidge longer than the Constitution 2, and a slightly wider, flatter saucer iirc, but a lot shorter and I'm eyeball guessing 2/3s the volume. That's scaling off saucer rim thickness/windows and deck placement. The bridge module is smaller than the Connie 2's because I was working off scaling plans with errors. Scaling it back up to be the same size really didn't look good, so I made an artistic call to leave it and call it a prototype 🤣 but if you judge it based on the bridge module it gets a lot bigger than intended 🤣) (Scaling errors? In MY starfleet ships? At this time of year?!?)

[@Estes705]

I love the design feature that the Warp nacelle pylons are actually attached to the saucer section, not the secondary hull!!!!! Great idea!!!!

[@RingandRaven]

Thank you! I can't take credit for inventing the idea but I think the way its implemented its quite distinctive

[@arko09]

I love it!

[@BradimusMaximus78]

Very cool!!

[@kmdrfarsight]

This turned out well. I like the design of the ship too!

[@Grayivan]

That is beautiful! That is some good work!

[@jamieleesphere1305]

Beautiful

[@nickyiacobazzi8271]

stunning! amazing work!

[@ralphreinhardt6020]

Nice ! 😎👍

[@owenrichards1418]

You can render out your windows on a separate pass and composite them in afterwards as long as you follow the same animation track. This is what they used to do in the pre-digital days.

[@RingandRaven]

Is that doable if the windows are part of the model? I'd turned off the Boolean for the cutter mesh, but the windows themselves are shader based holes to the inside of the model

[@KennToomey]

Love the diffused lighting and occlusion(?) What 3D app(s) did you use?

[@RingandRaven]

So I modelled fit in Wings 3D originally, an old, obscure, and not so powerful one, but it's a comfort modeller for me with a lovely and intuitive UI. I then ported it over to blender for shaders and animation, and I intend to learn how to actually model in it too at some point

[@grantmiller6570]

Pretty nIce man. 👍

[@user-ph7bh5yu2l]

The original show will always be best🎉🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@TheCormTube]

The registry would 2280's but the design of this makes me think it would fit into the Klingon War / Axanar fan series time, like launched 2230's?

[@RingandRaven]

I ended up picking 2260 as the launch date, its intended as a TOS-TPM bridge. The flatter profile does kinda fit some of the axanar designs though

[@CASA-dy4vs]

How did you model this? I’m looking to create my own starships so I can do something like Triangulum studios ship histories

[@RingandRaven]

So this is textured and animated in Blender, which is free and has many tutorials, but I actually modelled it in a more obscure free programme called Wings 3D, I came across years ago and got familiar with it's nice comfortable user interface. Wings is way less powerful but I don't know how to use Blender modelling yet and haven't had the time to dedicate to learning it properly

[@CASA-dy4vs]

@@RingandRaven thank you! I will check it out, however I don’t know where to download. Is it on steam or a browser?

[@RingandRaven]

@@CASA-dy4vs browser, search for the website and you can download from there. Blender has a ton of tutorials online that are quite nice to follow, it's UI takes a little to get your head around but is much better than it was back in the day

[@spaceace1006]

Whoever said that a Starship needs any exterior windows?? They would be potential points of vulnerability in a battle, especially if and when your deflector screens are weakened or compromised!!

[@mickeyholding7970]

The secondary hull reminds me of the Oberth.

[@RingandRaven]

I can kinda see that 🤣

[@viceroy7792]

it will be nice when you get it nailed down. I've that the slight motions stutter too, while transferring it to KZbin. I was never able to get that fixed. But this is gonna look great soon, no doubt!

[@RingandRaven]

Oh the stutter in the nacelles is there in the raw footage, I think its either something to do with the animation cycle, or the vanes not being *perfectly* aligned before I rotate them 360

[@MrRurounismc]

I understand your pain, spending 20 hours and realizing you accidently fucked up something, this looks great though!

[@RingandRaven]

I was.literally walking to work in the morning when it clicked in my head 🤣

[@confuseatronica]

HAVE YOU TRIED REINSTALLING THE WINDOWS :P

[@Workerbee-zy5nx]

Warp nacelles date that machine.😉👍

[@RingandRaven]

Yup 🤣

[@dtuk22]

Yeah! The best looking Starships have a simplicity to their design. This is a good example of this. Many of the actual ships used in cannon are simply ugly. For example the Enterprise G.

[@RingandRaven]

So awkwardly I actually like the G 😅 that said I *prefer* the Shangri-la (or them..refit one that backdates some of the G's differences - I think Howie Day's Titan model?) and I feel it needed more than a weekend to update it for Picard and I was the *first* to say it feels out of place - but the base design I largely quite like (except the bit above the deflector where it's oddly square).

[@korblborp]

rip windows.

[@BlackMammoth25]

Not bad, certainly a better design than the Enterprise. Personally, I've always hated the weird splitting of major segments of the federation ships on flimsy struts. This seems to fix that quite a bit!

[@chrislea1000]

I use Shotcut for editing, it's free and exports in 4K

[@gregbirger5810]

Interesting design, to be sure. Maybe its just a by-product of youtube's compression, but is there a way to smooth out the motion during the flyby? At least for me, it was a bit jerky when playing back on a pc that's powerful enough to not drop frames. Really well done overall.

[@RingandRaven]

Huh funny it's this video you say that on, it SHOULD be moving pretty smoothly here. The Old Astronomer one IS jerky/near stop motion in places, because I had the render preview set wrong and spent an entire night rendering far fewer frames than I thought so I had to stretch them further than I should 🤣 How is the most recent one? That one is definitely smooth at my end, if it's jerky then I presume it's KZbin doing something (Also, thank you!)

[@gregbirger5810]

@@RingandRaven If you're referring to the "Flyaround Beauty Shots" video, that one is significantly smoother. Your ship design is intriguing, probably the best I've seen where the primary hull is not a full circle or oval. Excellent "feel" of the ship being similar to the 1701 refit era, which is where I believe Starfleet design was the most aesthetically beautiful.

[@RingandRaven]

@@gregbirger5810 that's the, and thank you so much!

[@thetiktokman]

The interior bridge sound effects over an exterior shot is an epic fail.

[@RingandRaven]

Excuse me, that is the interior *engine room* sound effect I'll have you know! And more specifically it's the sound effect I could find quickly and simply online for test render

[@thetiktokman]

@@RingandRaven EPIC FAIL ON A COSMIC SCALE