Sunday, December 8, 2019

Development Log: The Motion Picture Update Part 3

Just a quick update to add some CAVE2™ pictures of my Star Trek: The Motion Picture anniversary updates.

December 8, 2019: TMP bridge in CAVE2™
December 8, 2019: Bridge 360 image from command chair
December 8, 2019: Recreation Deck

Saturday, December 7, 2019

Development Log: The Motion Picture Update Part 2

Just my way of celebrating the 40th anniversary of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Often underrated as a Star Trek film, it has plenty of flaws but there are so many iconic elements that this film introduced such as the refit Enterprise - which I argue still remains as the iconic USS Enterprise in the general public and Jerry Goldsmith's 'The Enterprise' and 'Klingon Battle' themes.

Still hoping for a  40th anniversary release of the 2001 director's cut in 4K which I consider the definitive version of the film. While it had a DVD release, it was never released on Blu-ray since the new digital effects were rendered too low resolution to be decently up scaled and the server containing all the art assets was never backed up, sold, and apparently the files lost. Sadly this is also the case for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with a few exceptions - notably some of the artists who worked on the show who have backups of their work.

Given I wrote and presented my PhD thesis proposal on December 2, I mostly rushed to get as much of this done by the 6th - ideally ending with some new CAVE2 footage. While some tests were made, a more polished video tribute was just not feasible.

Main efforts went to adding the recreation desk introduced (and only seen) in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Ironically similar to the above story, I had started this room a few years back and lost the file before it was finished.



December 4, 2019: Starting the recreation deck (again)


December 4, 2019: Wall details
 Similar to the torpedo bay, this room as shown in the film can't actually fit in the exterior model of the Enterprise. As seen in the screenshots above the curved walls are about half the height they're supposed to be, but I'm already hitting the top of the primary hull, with the floor about as low as I can without going through the bottom of the hull.


December 5, 2019: Main floor, balcony, and partial ceiling
 Working on making a scaled, but representative version of this room was a bit challenging. In particular how high the balcony should be. Only after a quick viewing in CAVE2 did I realize I needed to make the top balcony taller.



December 6, 2019: Back wall details
After nearly 8 hours of modeling over 3 days, I managed to get a decent amount of the main wall details done on the 40th anniversary of the film: turbolift alcoves, main display, and the Enterprise legacy display.