And here I was, thinking I’d put a lot of effort into the Orville…
Dec 182017
Dec 182017
A lot of time went into the “spine,” largely because the contours are complex and the details are a bit difficult to suss out. I’ve finally declared victory on that part and have started in on detailing the rim and underside. Barring the unforseen, the underside should be done in the net day or three, with the aft fuselage/shuttlebay being the last section to tackle. And then… well, a bit of a wait until the book comes out in mid January. Until then, after the ship is modeled I’ll start working on a set of diagrams for some general plans.
Dec 172017
Work on modeling the thing proceeds. A whole lot of hours were spent yesterday and today making visually minimal progress, but it’s still progress. What is going to cause the delay is not bad news; in fact, it’s good news. In mid January, the book “The World of the Orville” is due to be published. Exactly what’s in it, I don’t know, but it seems to be well-illustrated; there is just possibly the chance that it will drop that vital nugget of information: “The Orville is XYZ meters long.”
“The World of the Orville” is available for pre-order from Amazon. Go ahead and order it from here and I’ll receive a small fraction of a pittance. Heck, go ahead and order a lot of stuff using the Amazon search box up there in the corner; if you start from here I get a small bit of compensation, maybe even enough to buy some cat food. For… the cats. Yeah. The cats.
And because why not:
Dec 142017
Apart from some “panel lines” and a few greeblies the details on the upper/forward hull are in place. I’ve re-sculpted the aft end of the “spine” and added the whatchamacallits to the forward ends of the lower engine nacelles. I need to detail the underside (there are fewer details there) and the at fuselage. Last thing I’ll do is flesh out the shuttlebay and at that point do another round of scale-guesstimation based on scenes showing people standing in the shuttlebay.
Dec 132017
The detailing of the Orville continues, now installing the individual windows and greeblies to the forward hull. *Pretty* sure that these probably won’t be entirely visible on the finished 1/1400 scale product, but who knows.
And yeah, rather than rendering a proper image file I simply photographed the computer screen with my phone. So sue me.
Dec 102017
So I got pretty far along with modeling when Brain 1.0 got a 1201 alarm and I had to step back from it for a bit. Now I’m back working on it. I continue to add windows and such details to the upper surface, along with fixing divide by zero errors and Einstein-Rosen bridges in the model, that sort of thing. Work continues, just not quite at the original pace.
I’ve also take a preliminary experimental stab at 2D diagrams. Let’s face it, this is a Trek ship… and you can’t have a Trek ship without a Booklet Of General Plans. The actual work on creating the diagrams won’t really begin until the modeling is done, but I just wanted to see if the rendering system could make a fair diagram from the existing model. Seems ok.
Nov 202017
The model doubled in filesize just with the addition of some of the tiny details… and there are more to come. Ugh. But it looks pretty awesome.
Nov 192017
Resculpted the lower loop *again.* The middle loop was angled up a few degrees. Now the model has all the major chunks; now come the innumerable little fiddly detaily bits.
Nov 162017
The top and middle engine loops are basically done and detailed. The bottom engine loop has been resculpted, but needs detailing. Once that’s done I’ll head back to the hull to start working on more details. The shuttlebay will almost certainly be modeled closed as at 1/1400 scale it’s really, really small. However, I’ll probably still work out the basics of it… because I want to get a 1/350 version milled out.
Nov 152017
A while ago an ebay seller had a display model of a maneuverable re-entry vehicle, a warhead for an ICBM.There was apparently no documentation to go with it, so details are pretty much utterly lacking. Still, it does look reasonably likely to have been a “real” display model built by or for the USAF or a defense contractor. It’s simple… a cone with four sides shaved off with four added flaps for control. This basic geometry has been popular for maneuverable warhead concepts for decades; McDonnell-Douglas used a similar shape (explicitly stated as having been derived from their maneuverable MIRV studies) for their Delta Clipper SSTO, and an even closer shape for their X-33 and follow-on concepts.
