CGI MODELLING ARTWORK
NEBULA CLASS (Variant I)
This was a class of ship I'd been wanting to do for some time. This and the Galaxy Class remains possibly my favourite classes of ship from the modern Trek era. I haven't yet built a Galaxy Class, the first reason being that there are many Galaxy models out there already, not that this precludes the possibility of building my own one day, but there's also the reason that the Galaxy is such a familiar and well known ship that it would have to be 100 percent perfect and 100 percent accurate for me to judge it worthy of rendering. This is something that would be very difficult to do with poly modelling alone. But I plan to attempt it at some point. So for now, I've built its illustrious sister ship Nebula Class.
There is more than one design that can call itself a 'Nebula Class'. Firstly, as my model below portrays there's the Type-1 variant. The USS Phoenix seen in TNG's 'The Wounded' was this type of ship. The second type we've seen had a triangular missions pod, the USS Sutherland seen in 'Redemption part 2' was of this type. The third was the dreaded four nacelle proto-Nebula variant, of which the USS Melbourne was a member. Eventually I'll be amending my original Type-1 mesh to construct these other Nebula variants.
These basic renders display the Nebula model going through various stages of development.
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The basic untextured model, almost complete in accordance with the pictures I based it on.
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I think the trickiest thing with this model which I had to tackle was the scaling. She's certainly the biggest ship I've yet built, but getting the relative scale of windows and details on the hull correct wasn't a straightforward process, as well as lining up separately modelled elements such as the secondary hull with the saucer, the scale of the nacelles, their pylons and the pod.
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The first couple of test renders with textures. I also gave it a name, as by my normal tradition the class prototype, in this case being the USS Nebula seeing as it was of the first Type-1 variant (in my opinion). It also gets the registry of NX- 60572.
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Continuing with basic scenes..
Final beauty shot for now.. although it's not absolutely complete. I still have a few bits and pieces to model, such as saucer impulse engines, and other texture details and markings.
Nebula Variant I | Nebula Variant II | Nebula Variant III
The Nebula Class page in the Fleet listings.
Please Email Me fellow 3D starship modellers, I'd welcome your feedback / suggestions...
Please, if you wish to use these images on your website, or anywhere else, please ask for my permission first. Thanks.
