New master systems display, lighting changes...

I've brightened up a lighting a bit all round, and completely re-done the master systems display. Most of what I'm doing at the moment is arguably just detail stuff but its helping it to look more complete. Also did a full compile of  the map to get some better screenshots, enjoy...

Lewis.

Pool anyone?

The 'pool table' in engineering has been bugging me for a while now, it was only originally done as a placeholder for scaling etc, so I decided to redo it from scratch. The new one is ever so slightly bigger, and is the correct dimensions, and far more detailed obviously. Also did a rough carpet texture and added some glow sprites to the spotlights...

Lewis.

Now arriving NCC-1701-D...

I've been thinking about sections of the ship that we never see on screen, obviously we only ever see a tiny fraction of the ship, mainly because that's all they could build set wise. I gave it some thought and had an idea for what would effectively be 'the arrivals lounge'. Maybe officers or dignitaries arriving on board via airlock would use this room, or something to that effect.

Located on Deck 25 on the 'neck' of the ship, here's my concept, in early stages...

Lewis.

Edit, some further tweaks, I think this looks better...

Definitely more natural lighting and the ceiling is more interesting. This is kinda what I'm using as a rough reference...

Great news...

It would appear Valve have released an automatic update through Steam for the SDK tools, something to do with Team Fortress 2, anyway, its killed the Hammer editor that I'm using.

Seems to be the case for everyone judging by the Steam forums, so I'm dead in the water until valve fix that, brilliant.

Lewis.

P.S. In the meantime, help yourselves to a free desktop background...

[CLICK IMAGE FOR HIGHER RES - OBVIOUSLY...]

And then it hit me like a slippery fish...

One of the things that's been giving me trouble is the curved corridors, namely how I'd get it all to line up, turns out it was far simpler than I thought, just a case of the clipping tool, and a bit of patience. So yeah, that's that problem solved. I'll almost definitely sharpen up the curve as it's way to shallow as it is, but as a proof of concept, it works fine, here's what I have...

(Oh, a bit more texturing for the transporter too).

Lewis.

1 to beam up...

Fancied tackling something a bit different today, so made a start on a transporter room, still fairly early days on this one and I intend to tidy up the lighting obviously. Lots of texturing work to be done also...

Lewis.

Scaling & Walkthrough...

As this has progressed it became clear that engineering was too long, as in the section with the pool table in, clearly my calculations went a bit off somewhere. I've shaved a few feet off the length of that section and it looks much better, not sure that its fully accurate to the original set, but it definitely looks better. Few other new bits, including a (very rough) master systems display, and a tad more texturing...

[HQ - YouTube]

I will get round to doing a proper warp core at some point, that's going to be tricky though, doubly so if I want it to light up (which lets face it, I do!), that one will have to mull around in my head for a while with regard to how I'm going to do that. Another section causing me headaches is the consoles opposite the quarter circle window, as the walls sit at strange angles and trying to keep everything 'on-grid' is a nightmare, again, I'll come back to that.

Lewis.

More engineering work...

Lots more progress on the upper level of the engineering deck, forgive the crude lighting, its just to make the screenshots look bright enough.

Back to Deck 36...

Now that the Cargo Bay is pretty much how I want it, save for a bit of texturing, I've gone back to engineering, so basic texture work done and got started on the upper level. It became apparent as I was doing this that some of my scaling was off, mainly the recesses for the elevators in the warp core room were too far 'back', or away from the main engineering, so they have come forward a bit, which seems to of sorted it.

Had to make the doors look better as well, as well as making a slight shade adjustment to the 'bulkhead beige'.

Lewis.

A little set dressing

Still not 100% happy with the lighting but I can come back to that I guess...

Lewis.

Some texture and lighting work

Textured the floor of the shuttlebay, and re worked some of the lighting...

Lewis.