Alex3D

Enterprise D Download

USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D (Galaxy class)

Mesh created in Cinema 4D R16
Textures created in Photoshop CC

Required credits on all images:
Model and textures by A.Klemm (Nightfever)

Required credits on conversions and modifications:
Original model and textures by A.Klemm (Nightfever)

Free for private use. For commercial use please contact me.

Archives does not contain the interior elements seen before (Ten Forward, Lounge).

I added the registries PSD file, so you can easily replace the ship’s name and registries to your liking.

If you like this model and want to spend me a coffee, please

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1701-D_BLEND 46 MB 1029 downloads

Contains the mesh for Blender. …
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1701-D_Textures 54 MB 1056 downloads

Contains the textures. …
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1701-D_C4D 27 MB 315 downloads

Contains the mesh for C4D. …
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1701-D_FBX 60 MB 618 downloads

Contains the mesh in FBX …
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1701-D_OBJ 35 MB 600 downloads

Contains the mesh in OBJ …

    42 Comments

    1. Joa

      Hi Alexander, first of all thank you for this incredible mesh! It’s commercial quality!

      Unfortunately I’m having problems importing it to Max 2019 or Lightwave 2019. The uv map coordinates are lost and textures are all over the mesh. I’ve tried .fbx, and obj all unsuccessfully. Short of redoing the UV maps from scratch (I’d rather have your quality map coordinates than creating my own) I’m not sure what else to try.

      Any advice?

    2. Jordan Orlando

      Continuing to make adjustments and refinements (mostly to textures and materials) and now beginning to work out the warp-drive lighting:

      http://www.jordanorlando.com/other/nacelles_05.jpg
      http://www.jordanorlando.com/other/nacelles_06.jpg

      The red “bussard” lighting isn’t finished yet, obviously. This sort of thing amuses me because it’s about simulating imaginary future technology but also about mimicking what was clearly incandescent light bulbs behind tinted plastic.

      There are both Maya surface attributes and Mental Ray effects here (as well as Photoshop tweaking of the material image files, including conversion to .iff format).

      Alex, might I very diffidently and respectfully recommend that you consider re-doing the bump map files? They way you’ve done it (with all that embossing) tends to create aberrations around the edges of the raised “plating” elements. If you re-did those images (in Illustrator presumably) so that the different plates had different levels of gray — in pure, uniform distribution — but the edges were clean, it would probably look a lot more like the physical model.

      Again, I express my appreciation for the work you’ve done. It’s making me appreciate and understand the original work (by Probert, Jein, and even Roddenberry) to a whole new degree.

      1. JohnMarchant

        If you need to get close up to the model then any bump map will eventually start to look jaggy. The only real answer is to stencil it in to the hull and the slightly raise or lower and change color ever so slightly.

        1. Jordan Orlando

          No, this is a specific edge effect; it’s not about “jagginess.” You can see it if you look at Alex’s bump map image files: he used a Photoshop emboss filter or equivalent which created thin beveling around the “panels.” It works better if you differentiate the panels by means of different shades of gray rather than by embossing them.

          Bump maps are counterintuitive because the natural instinct is to create “shadows” to indicate relief (as when drawing or painting) but that’s not how they work; you have to force yourself to suggest depth solely by means of grayscale variation.

          Alex’s image files are all extremely large, detailed and precise; I’ve seen almost no “jagginess” even with tight closeups.

          1. JohnMarchant

            Have you tried a normal map, how does that work. All maps produce jagginess if you get close enough to them because they are bitmap and not vector formats. You can make bigger resolution maps but still if you want to get up close as in look through the windows it will eventually get jaggy to some degree.

            I usually spend some time converting to EPS, AI or SVG making sure the vectors are very smooth and then stencil into the hull if i want to get close. Then you don’t have to fake the bumps just slightly tweek the color and select the geometry and give a liitle bit more height or depth than the other plates.

            For really close up work i tend to model and and use some procedural’s i try to avoid texture maps at the close a level. It all depends how close it is that you need to get.

            1. Jordan Orlando

              Again, the problem isn’t any imprecision or jagginess in the images; the problem is the embossing of the edges — you can see it clearly if you open the bump map files in an image viewer. It’s not about the panels breaking up or getting blurry when you get close. I’m describing an issue that you can see from a distance (particularly when the surface is catching a specular or reflecting a gleam of “sunlight” directly on its curves); the panels that are supposed to be raised aren’t actually higher (in the Z axis normal to the surface) so much as they have raised EDGES, because of the embossing.

              I would make my own, but I can’t easily do it because I don’t have access to Alex’ source files. (He’s clearly working from complex series of layers in Photoshop or Illustrator because you can see how the various elements in his various maps align when they overlap.)

      2. Jordan Orlando

        I’ll continue working on those lights, the coils etc. (as well as the glow for the deflector dish and the running lights).

        I also had to radically reduce the hull’s reflectivity and other phong attributes; I usually use Lambert for spacecraft hulls — Ken Ralston (ILM) talked about constantly applying chalk to the Enterprise A model while filming to reduce its shininess and make it look more scale-realistic — but phong works extremely well for the D. I significantly reduced the depth of the bump mapping, too.

        All of this could have to do with differences between C4D and Maya/Mental Ray (and the well-documented inadequacies of .fbx translation). The nuances of the different environments are very different. I sometimes envy the effects people are able to achieve in C4D, but I’m way too invested in Maya to consider switching.

    3. JohnMarchant

      With any bump, normal,alpha maps, materials, procedural’s and such those will have to be changed to suit in your program off choice, also any Xpresso and morph’s used probably need to go. Not sure about nurbs though, does C4D handle nurbs and does it convert to editable mesh before export. I always just go for the simple mesh with UV and strip out everything else, i try and keep the surface names and what textures are used.

      I have a question, sometimes we get flipped poly holes in the mesh. Now with Blender i think im right in saying that it sees all polys as double sided no matter what you model. That’s why when you export from Blender it can be a pain as the flipping is random so you have to manually flip them back. I know Sketchup can have this issue as well of flipped polys and normal’s facing odd ways, is this the same in C4D.

    4. Jordan Orlando

      Thanks Alex and John.

      I solved the texture problem (I simply had the directory in the wrong place; I had to move it and change the links within the Maya file).

      I reiterate what a fine job you’ve done, Alex. There are many, many bad-to-worse models of the D online; this is by far the best I’ve seen, by a wide margin. Thanks again for making your work available. (I’m wondering, in particular, how you made such excellent images of the surface detailing: did you draw that stuff from scratch, or were you able to get the stuff from some existing images in Rick Sternbach books or the like?)

      I’m still having some texture problems, mostly having to do with known .fbx problems. For example, the layered textures (“NCC-1701 D” etc.) aren’t masking right; it’s just because .fbx doesn’t properly translate the alpha channel infro from the .c4d file. Also, the depth of the bump-maps is way off (at least, it doesn’t look the way it does in your excellent renders here); that’s something I should be able to fix myself without too much trouble. (The lights are too bright, too; same remarks. Judging by your renders its a translation issue).

      The “set normals to face” problem is not about “re-importing the textures” as John guessed; it’s specifically about the normals (I don’t know how cinema4d handles this; perhaps its a different word?) As I said, the problem doesn’t exist in the .obj file, but the .obj file creates a Maya model with the components strewn all over the place. (Maybe something to do with freezing translations?)

      Anyway thanks again for responding.

      1. Alexander Klemm

        Thank you Jordan.
        I did draw all textures by hand and used Tobias Richter’s model and the Generations model as references.
        I have different FBX versions for choice when I export from C4D. If you’re up to, I could export a file to each version and you can look, what works best for your Maya version.

        1. Jordan Orlando

          Alex,

          Thanks for responding. You can see here the current state of my Maya version of your D model.

          http://www.jordanorlando.com/other/ent_d_alex_textured_16.jpg
          http://www.jordanorlando.com/other/ent_d_alex_textured_17.jpg

          All the components required adjustments to the normals as I’ve said. I’ve done some modifications of your textures in Photoshop, including some coloration changes; I had to adjust the bump maps as I said, and I’ve turned off the lights for the time being (since that’s an area where the format-to-format translations tend to fail). You’re welcome to my .psd files, if you want them.

          As you can see, I’m not finished yet with the “registration” components. layered textures don’t work the same way in Maya as in C4D, apparently. For the time being I’ve directly added the saucer-top registration to the underlying saucer-top texture (even though it’s supposed to be a lambert and not a phong). Once I sort out the layering (and the alpha-channel problems) I’ll go back to doing it your way.

          I’m looking forward to taking a crack at your J. J. Abrams Enterprise; I love that design.

          Thanks again for your communication and assistance.

    5. JohnMarchant

      Alex,

      When you export from OBJ or FBX do you have access to something other than C4D to check the exported file.

      If you have any C4D specific stuff like Morph’s, Controllers and such, you need to get rid of those as well until someone comes up with a decent version of FBX that can handle this stuff.

      Basically get rid of everything apart from the pure file and then Jordan will have to import it into Maya and carry out any remapping and sperating of parts for animation.

      1. Alexander Klemm

        I always convert all C4D specific stuff before I export the models. And when exporting into FBX I exclude animations, lights and cams.
        I only have time limited demo versions of other 3D apps, so I am very limited in checking the exported files.

    6. JohnMarchant

      Im pretty sure that C4D does not support MB files, Jordan needs a Maya Binary, which means unless you have Maya installed it wont work.

      Depending on what version of Maya and C4D you are using the best approach is FBX or OBJ. OBJ export from C4D is still a PITA, if you use FBX switch off any animation stuff and also cameras and lights as Maya may not be able to deal with them. The biggest problem for FBX is the version you use.

      Surfaces are mottled because you will probably have to re import the textures. FBX is to be honest a PITA as well but its the only way if you want the animation included.

    7. Jordan Orlando

      Alex,

      This seems like a fantastic piece of work but I’m having trouble getting it into Maya.

      When I import the .obj file, the components are scattered around haphazardly — everything’s scaled and oriented right, but the pieces have been arbitrarily moved around.

      When I import the .fbx file, the normals are all messed up; the surfaces all look mottled and I have to select each piece and “set [the normals] to face” which of course means I lose all the nuances of smooth vs. hard edges.

      In neither case do I get the materials.

      Would it be too much to ask for you to upload a maya binary version? (with a “sourceimages” file in the directory, etc.)

      Thanks,
      Jordan

    8. Dirk

      Hi Alex…
      Wieder mal ein sehr detailliertes Modell. Du hast es echt drauf….
      Ein ganz großes DANKE für deine hervorragende Arbeit…
      Wirklich ganz super… Mach weiter so….

      Dirk

    9. JohnMarchant

      Thanks Alex, im using SAP Author and it comes out separated. Ive also noticed riptide does not seem to work well in the latest versions of C4D. Really wish Maxon would give as a decent OBJ with MTL, FBX and 3DS Exporter.

        1. JohnMarchant

          Yes about similar for me. just had to remap everything. I like OBJ because it gives good quads, 3DS is ok for tri’s but never have liked the quads it produces. FBX is great for animation and stuff but for static mesh the old formats seem better. FBX gives problems depending on the version you are using, so it can be a PITA to know which version for which other software. I tend to go for older versions for LW.

    10. JohnMarchant

      Very nice indeed Alex, the OBJ file seems to be a mess though. Ive used the C4D. Are there any plans in the future to release the interiors, I was hoping to do a close by render.

      1. Alexander Klemm

        That’s strange about the OBJ, I used Riptide, which used to give good results. I will check the OBJ in Maya.
        The interiors are not yet optimized. I hope I will get it done in a couple of days.

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