WIP of TheUnknown - The Akula (mk II)

[Nebula]

Looking great

Ya know I just thought of something.... there should be a shuttle bay that is actually usable on this thing lol
one you can fly into.

[Nihilus]

Those textures are perfect 

[DJ Curtis]

That certainly is looking good!

[X_TheUnknown_X]

Thanks eveyone  !

Just a quick update: I've got the whole of the exterior textured now, and I'm going to be moving on to the interior very soon. So far, I've used 7 texture maps (sounds a lot, I know, but most of them are 512x512s and below - only the dome and upper stalk use higher res). Windows will be coming last, I think; they'll be a pain to impliment on a model this size .

[baz1701]

looking sweet

[DJ Curtis]

Can you imagine how much blue paint that is... like, in liters?  lol

[Shadowknight1]

That looks fantastic!

[Vortex]

Maybe they just use holograms instead of paint. xD

[FarShot]

I think having the metal plating pre-dyed would be most logical.  That or worker bees have some sort of projector beam capable of replicating things where it's aimed.  Kinda like spray coating the side of a building.

[Phoenix Bondi]

Can you imagine how much blue paint that is... like, in liters?  lol

in the voice of data

"captain, it would take .... umm.....f**k knows sir, not even i can compute them odds"

LOLZ

Awsome model btw man!

[JamesTiberiusKirk]

Thats the way I had in mind for the colorscheme! certainly looks fantastic 

[086gf]

Nice!

[Saquist]

Nine Years....
and we finally have a proper  Space Dock upgrade.  The fans owe you a huge debt.

----
I've done a 2D CAD sketch on the interior.
May I suggest on the interior using two different kinds of run ways.  On one axis the runway from Star Trek III and on the other axis the Runway from Star Trek VI. 

The Star Trek III run way doesn't have the crossing of lateral lights like in TUC.  It also seems to have taller spot light towers lining the run way.  From memory...(if accurate) I believe I figured from the visual that it was only three sets of spot light towers between the drop off and the doors.  The runway itself wasn't lit and had some sort of yellow lined design (possibly blue too)

While Star Trek VI had shorter box like towers and there were an estimated for sets of two between the drop off and the doors.

The buildings on the surface of Primary Dock are all squares with a few rectangles .  I created them as seen in the movies and then estimated their actual location and placed a few more in the radii we don't see.  Rather than treating all four quadrants same the movies sort of imply (because of the different run ways and the features around each run way are different) that the quads are mirrored from the other side and not exact replicas of the same section four times.  I have a simple CAD sketches of what I did.  And I could post it any time.

I didn't finish my analysis of the walls....
You're on your own there.

[King Class Scout]

Can you imagine how much blue paint that is... like, in liters?  lol

probably the first time the Metric system ever had to apply the Kilo prefix to liters!

[X_TheUnknown_X]

Can you imagine how much blue paint that is... like, in litres?  lol

Does paint come in Mega-litre cans? 

Apologies for the long delay in updates, the interior textures have taken a lot of time to get ready. I've made the base colour of the inside several shades darker than the exterior, and put in some simple repeating hull panelling textures. In response to Saquist, I'll keep all th runways in the style of the ST:VI spacedock - just because it will be easier to impliment and should look better in the end. Theres still more work to do yet, but here's what I have now:

[Saquist]

Note:

Will remove if unwanted:

A Diagram of the Space Floor.






...and the Google Sketchup of the effect the detail creates. 
Plotting it was difficult but the creation in 3D was simple and straight forward.






Then of course the minor box structures on the ceiling.
I placed them at intervals of 2's and 3's (arbitrarily)







I feel the interior of the Dock is perhaps the most important for detail because it has the most memories in Trek-dom.
Stealing the Enterprise (both the original and ENT-D)
Leaving space dock on the final mission of ENT-A
And all the great scenes we never got to see like Voyager or even Defiant entering through those space doors, dock at those bays...
Anyhoo...

[X_TheUnknown_X]

If only I could have that level of detail built into the model, but the old BC engine probably wouldn't handle it. Some of the finer stuff must therefore be textured in.

Speaking of that, I'm nearly done with the interior textues now (even the windows are in place  ). So now it's onto the station's exterior to finish off there. Here's a render of the inside (with the AO set properly so it looks less noisy - and a nice angle on a Galaxy for scaling). Thanks for all the support and encouragemant so far, people; I think this looks many times better than my last try.

[Captain_D]

Indeed, I have to agree. everything looks great.

The texture inside the "bowl" part (for lack of a better word) doesn't look right to me. The docking port looks wonderful.

Nice.

[JamesTiberiusKirk]

Will it have superawesome speculars???

[X_TheUnknown_X]

The texture inside the "bowl" part (for lack of a better word) doesn't look right to me.

You're abosutely right, it was wrong, but I couldn't get the centre bit to look good enough. I've had another crack at it, though, and It's starting to look a lot better.

Will it have superawesome speculars???

Hopefully. Certainly I will put spec textures on the outside, but for the inner section I don't think they'll be necessary (BCs engine doesn't do shadows, so bits will show speculars even without any direct light being cast on it).

Got the inside finished off now. Moved on to putting the windows on the exterior (very tedious work, I've been trying to get them to have the same kind of arrangement as in the physical model). Dome's done, I'm now moving down the base adding windows and small details.