Author Archives: Mark

Excelsior Class and Utopia Planitia orbital dock

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Excelsior Class in orbit around Utopia Planitia yards on Mars

This is a shot of a Deep Space Nine-style excelsior (hint: the nacelles glow) in orbit over Utopia Planitia.  The orbital dock seen here is a model I did of a station briefly glimpsed at in the Star Trek Voyager episode Relativity.  I didn’t have much reference material at the time, and it’s hard to believe but the model is now just over 10 years old!  Here is a closer shot of it (Click for a larger version):

Utopia Planitia Orbital Station

I’ll put this up for download if there is enough interest in it.

The Excelsior class ship is however, not entirely my own – it was originally Eric Peterson’s mesh which you can get hold of here. I believe Matt Allen and Rob Willson also did some rework of it, and then I have taken it and done some re-modelling and retexturing of it (Phew!).  However my modifications were light and its still a great mesh to use.

Oh, and if I don’t speak to any of you before – Merry Christmas! 😉

Insignia Class Starship mesh available for download

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I have had a lot of requests over the years to release my Insignia Class Starship mesh to the public, and after some resistance on my part I have finally submitted.

It can be hard to let go of something you have come to hold very dear to your heart; I remember when I first developed this design from the sketches at the back of the old TNG Technical Manual. I recall the hours and the months slaving away to make it a reality. So I have been very wary of unleashing it into the public domain where I have no control of it. I have come to trust you though, dear readers; so treat it well.

I never seem to have the time to make the many animations and pictures I have in mind for the model, which is also a reason for releasing it. There are a fair few of you and only one of me, so I look forward to seeing all the images and animations people make with it – please do email me with any of the work you do. Just remember to credit me whenever you use it!

So, with that, continue to the new downloads page…

Nemesis Dry Dock shot

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Insignia Class in Drydock

The image above took some time and I’m still not very satisfied with it, but I have decided to put it to bed and post it here.  The work bees seen here were designed based on some John Eaves designs (again!), and here’s a closer look at it below: Here’s John’s original sketch:

My mesh was based on the one in the bottom left 🙂

Insignia Class Starship in Dry Dock (Rough)

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Insignia Class Starship in Dry dockDue to a request this weekend for a shot of the Insignia Class starship in a Nemesis-style drydock I had a quick search on the net and was lucky enough to find the above mesh at scifi-meshes.com by an S-Stephen.

I have only done a rough mock up so far (which is why the above is quite low-res, sorry), but I plan to do a couple of good desktop sized shots over the next week.  So stay tuned!

Insignia Class starship at Warp

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Firstly, sorry for being away for so long….I have been busy this year getting married, which you can read all about on our other blog. Also, my old computer blew up quite spectacularly just after the honeymoon (As if to say “Not again, please…”), so I have been busy re-building a new one. Although I think I am reaching the limit of what one computer can do and really should look into how easy it is to configure a render farm.

To start slightly afresh, I have also moved the blog to my own hosting so that I have a little more control over it.  Any who, onto my latest work…

I’ve been wanting to have a go at a Next Generation era warp star effect for some time ago, and this youtube tutorial started me on my way.

I set up a blizzard particle system as per the tutorial and the main thing I changed was the instanced mesh: instead of a cylinder I used a capsule with the one end shrunk using an FFD modifier, to make it look like a spark. That and a bit of gradient texturing to give a subtly multi-coloured effect and you are pretty much there. I also added a smattering of fixed stars in the background as that was also in line with the television effect.

So, here I am on my new blog….almost. I’d like to tweek the theme of it a little, and need to officially announce I am moving on the old one, but that will have to wait another day.

Oh, and this is pretty much the first animation of the Insignia Class I have ever done. Enjoy!

John Eaves’ concept ship "B" in progress

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I have done some work to realise a design concept John Eaves posted here on his blog:

Fascinated by the second ship’s ability to separate but at the same time maintain it’s lines, I’ve started to put some work into realising this in a 3D model.  Here is my progress so far:

Still some work to do, or course: mainly panelling on the secondary hull, the windows, the texturing, and some tweaking to the shape.  Though it’s getting there in between other commitments 🙂

In production: Mothership concept

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For some time last year I was working on a project for Sonnett Realm Productions, where I was tasked with realising the concept and animation of some invading saucer-like motherships.  The concept was meant to very much reflect the genre of the piece.

Whilst the project is on ice, here are some test animations and images with some annotation:

Shot 1

First off, a simple shot of the saucer emerging from some clouds.  The pulsing center was inspired by the saucer seen in Cocoon, but there are of course a lot of Independence Day references to the design.  The main direction was that the mothership had to be black.  At first the blue glow started off being much brighter than it is here, and the initial pass showed all of the ship in frame.  However, to portray a sense of scale more, the camera was brought closer and only the central part of the ship is seen.
The brief part that shows the saucer coming out of the cloud was actually the hardest here, believe it or not.  I faded flat 2D layers of cloud in post production to get the effect, which cut down on the render time of an actual CG cloud.

Shot 2

The shots increased in complexity at this point – the brief was to show a set of saucers descending on a city.  The concept storyboard sent to me indicated a hazy-sunset type effect which I attempted to recreate in the scene here.  The city is a still stock photo of night time New York, with subtle noise effects added to the windows and streetlights to give the impression of a living, moving metropolis.  Noise effects were also added to the still photo of the lake to give the impression it was noise.  The motherships were then rendered in to the scene and then a solid colour was laid over the entire shot to blend all the elements in together.

Shot 3

This is my most favorite – and complicated – of the shots I put together. The camera pulls out from the edge of the saucer, showing the true origins of the invaders, and pulls far out to show multiple ships devastating the land.
The complication came not only from the pullback of the camera which involved some fine control, but also from the many elements overlayed on the shot: the still background photo of the landscape had to be wrapped correctly, and the expanding mushroom cloud shot had to be synced with the moving landscape. The mushroom cloud was again a still image with distortion effects added to it.
Then the laser effects were overlayed on top of this, with lots of glow added in post production. The small fighter you see getting obliterated here was added last, where the exploding debris had to also be synced with the laser beam it hits. You can see the low poly mesh of the fighter in one of the still shots at the bottom of this post.

Shot 4

Finally for now, there is shot 4 – which is a much simpler shot, although it took longer to render because of the reflections involved in the skyscrapers. The main brief was that the saucer descends/rolls into shot from the point of view of an onlooker. After doing this shot, I noticed that the V remake had a very similar shot in the daytime. Again the whole effect is very reminiscent of Independence Day to keep the genre recognizable.

Finally, this animation shows the very first test shot I put together:

Below are some stills of the mothership I did before doing the shots above:

Unfinished projects: Andrew Probert’s design

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Whilst doing some work for www.stphoenix.com, the producers asked me to start on a 3D model based on some sketches that the famous Andrew Probert had done for them:

Although the need for the design didn’t materialize, I thought I’d post my very early work on the model here, even if it’s just for the fact that it was from Probert himself:

I think this sleek and slender design showed promise, so perhaps I’ll find time to progress it further.