Day 8 "Shadows and Light Play, Confirming Facts and Details"

What we want to do at this point is negate the effects of shows and light play. We want to confirm facts that we know to be true against what we assume to be facts. In the photos below you can see that I took a previous photo and dissected it across the centerline, I've also shown what appears to be an accurate profile of the engineering hull less the cutouts on the bottom, port and starboard side to come up with a concentric shape of the engineering hul before the details were added. Lets take a look at some of the details as well. In the rotocoped shot of the enterprise it appears that the forward edge of the hull, behind the deflectors rings seems to be rounded, it would also appear that the Polar Lights 1:1000 model got this wrong as well, because when we go back and look at the actual ship, haning in the Smithsonian, back before the 92 "resoration" we see that the shape is an angle and not a radius. Further, in the photo that a rotoscoped the detail on the port side seems to be at an angle when in fact we see from the same Smithsonian photo that it does indeed have a chamfer.

Day 8 "Rotoscoping and Pantographing"

There are many tools available to the scale modeler, but some of the oldest and widely used are the panotgraph and the rotoscope. Pantographing was used as early as 1603 and used for the purpose of copying and scaling diagrams. Rotoscoping has been used in animation since 1915 and was developed by Max Fleisher, of Popeye fame and was copyrighted by him in 1917. Both of these methods are used today in CG, animation and in drating. These are essentially the methods that we have employed thus far. The Klingon D-7 that was sold by AMT models (approx 1/650 scale) was pantographed from the actual filming miniature used in the original Star Trek series. So, if you ever want to have an accurate scale copy of the Klingon D-7 in any particular size, you can use the very same method to scale it to what ever size suits your fancy. Before you can rotoscope a series of screen captures to create a set of prints there are some fundamentals that you have to have in place. The best way to do it is to have shots of the model going by in profile, following a straight path and ensure that the model appears to be following a level path in relation the the horizontal. This is the same thing I've sown thus far. Let's go back and look at a few things before we procede to the actual drafting. In the first picture below, I've identififed a region of the screen where the POV and Parallax distorion were at their minimum for that frame. This is the area where the position of the model and the position of the camera gives us the most direct point of view on this region of the model. In the next photo, you can see that I've overlayed a section of another capture over the original frame. As ship progressed across the screen, the forward end of the nacelles aligned to each other on the forward, leading vertical surface. Same with the third photo. You can use any number of frames and the more you use and the more accurately you align them, the more accurate your overall rotoscope will be. Click on each photo and look at the overlays and position of the red circle. I'm concentrating on these three photos merely to give a quick reference to the method and for brevity. I'll be using many more to make the actual prints.

Below you can see where I used the "Paint" program described earlier and started a closer rotoscope of the key features of the engineering hull. I used the program to inverse the colors and to highlight the the outline in black. Afterward I started collecting some data points for the nacelles and used a different photo to start a baseline for the primary hull. With regards to the nacelles, since the one closest to our point of view looks larger and the the one farther away looks smaller, logic follows that the exact size with relation to the engineering hull is in between these two measurements. With the primary hull, at this point we are only trying to get a few angles and match that up with other available data.

Day 7 "A Closer Look"

Let's go back over some of the screen caps that I've provided and take a closer look at the engineering hull in general and a slighly larger overall view of the ship.
As you can see in the photos below, we've plotted out a more clear over all look of the engineering hull, straight from the screen caps, where the parallax is a minimum.
Later we'll combine some of these plotted points and lines and attempt to come up with a close approximation of the neck and engineering hull. First we'll want to have a refined hull shape, then we'll go back and add the various details to that approximation and overlay that onto our original draft from the X-Ray. Later still we'll use the final version of the print to create one in CG and show how this same data can be used to cut a hull on a lathe, or use a lathe tool in software to do the same thing.

For now, let's look at what we have. The first thing I did was establish that I had the best shots I could get where the distortion from the POV of the camera was a minimum, after which I used a basic "Paint" program to outline and highlight the shape of the hull. You can get the same program I'm using for free at PaintDotNet.

I've also taken this opportunity to plot out some of the details with relation to each other. As stated earlier we will confirm all of this later and will compare this data with what we know to be facts.

Look at the degree of droop of the nacelles in the last photo. Again, this is not to take away from the creators of this ship, it's merely an effort to comment on facts, accuracy and symmetry. We were perfectly happy to watch this ship streak accross our screen every week back in the 60's, or every night in syndication.

Day 6 "Of Accuracy and Symmetry"

For many years Star trek modelers were perfectly happy to build the AMT TOS Enterprise kit. Later some modelers started trying to make their AMT kits a little more accurate. They fashioned and refined more accurate parts and later still there grew up a cottage industry the catered to the modelers that wanted more accurate versions of their favorite ship.In late 79, early 80 TMP showed up on the big screen and we all had to have a copy of the movie ship. Even later Star Trek TNG came on the scene and of course every good Trek fan wanted more models. Over the years the modelers demanded more accuracy, more models and more of everything. Thus the cottage industry grew. Now there are so many after market kits and supplies that it's almost impossible to keep up with them all.

Let's look back at the actual model, its lack of symmetry and the fact that an accurate version would look very funny up close.

The photos below show in part that the actual model had its issues, not the least of which was droopy nacelles, an asymmetric primary hull, not to mention the various derrivations of the ship from the pilot to the production version. More on that later.


Much more to come........=/\=

Day 5 Parallax, POV, Plotting...

Parallax, is essentially how objects are distorted according to your view. In 2d we only deal with the X,y, axis, in 3 dimensions we have the added z coordinate, this is when things go nuts, at least as far as observations are concerned. You can't create a true orthographic drawing with the added z coordinate, this is why draftsmen draw isometric, or orthographic drawings to look at an object in multiple views. Even CG artists start with blueprints, or orthos to create a 3d image. More on that later. To understand parallax more clearly check out the wiki here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax

Besides using the X-Ray of the engineering hull, I went back and cut out some sections of the screen captures I showed earlier. I used these sections to plot points and obtain angles to check my work and add to it. I printed up the enlarged screen capture where I had plotted out the curvature of the neck to primary hull section, used a french curve to get clean lines and cut it out as a traceable template.


In summary, in a very short time, using empirical data, accurate references and screen captures I'm well on my way to having my engineering section complete.

It's taken my longer to edit this blog, take pictures, adjust them and organise things than it has to do the actual work. After this point the blog should move along at a greater speed..... Whoosh........=/\=

Day 5 "Degree of Taper"

Following the process described previously I came up with an 11 to 12 degree angle from the hoirzontal plane. This checks with virtually every other reference. Once we angle the cone up 1/2 of this value and establish a center line we'll start on the neck and go over some details. Updates will be few the next couple of days, but I will try to get back to this ASAP. If you want to learn more about taper etc xheck out the link below.



http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/showthread.php/converting-ft-taper-into-156106.html?s=e2ffdc4b49bb68459ffc8168ef024c72&

As always, Keep on Trekkin! =/\=

Day 5 "Preliminary Drafting"

Today we begin drafting the Engineering section. To begin with and to keep accuracy to a maximum, I used the X-Ray from the Smithsonian that I linked to earlier. We're going to use this to establish our angles first. As stated earlier in the blog, the Enterprise, at its core, is little more than a collection of cones and spheres, with the exception of the primary hull. This does not take away thing from the over all elegance of the design, nor does it reflect negatively on the creators skills, in fact, for such an iconic craft, it speaks to the abilities of Matt Jeffries. I've used basic drafting supplies to get the angle of taper on the engineering, or secondary hull, printed up the X-Ray, used a rule to strengthen the lines and used a French Curve to get the compound curve on the tail section. We'll check this with screen captures, other prints, the directions from the PL kit and so on.


If you wish to do something like this, or follow along, you need some basic drafting materials and tools.

Later we'll establish what the angle is off of the horizontal, establish a center line and rotate the tapered cone into the right position with the center line referenced to the horizontal plane.

Let's look at some screen captures of the original Enterprise, establish the point of view and learn about parallax.

In the screen capture progression you can see that the Enterprise appears to move from right to left past a point of view that is established center left, at least that's the appearance. Actually the camera scanned from left to right and the ship was stationary. Regardless of how the shot was established we can use this information to get a basic profile of the Enterprise. What we will have will not be edge on with relation to the primary hull, but it will be close for the engineering section. One way to use these shots is to take frames, cut them up into bite sized pieces and knit them together. This will not give us a perfectly accurate orthographic profile, but will be useful none the less.