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Description

Ported to OBJ from the wonderful model created by Wicked Zombie for the Starfleet Command (SFC) series of video games by Acitivision. Preview picture posed in XNALara XPS. Model can be downloaded from the Demon Renegade Studios website at the link below (scroll down until you find the entry for "Constitution Class [Refit]"):

www.demonrenegadestudios.com/d…

Some appropriate music, maestro! (courtesy of YouTube):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI9YYe…

For almost everyone in Trek fandom young or old, the TMP era officially begins with Star Trek: The Motion Picture (ST:TMP or TMP for short) and the refit/rebuild/upgrade of the beloved Constitution class heavy cruiser Enterprise (NCC-1701), who also lent her name for a time to her refitted Constitution class and type sisters as the Enterprise class (FRS, SOSF1 - see TRIVIA). A lot has been said and written about this event and the new Enterprise as well as what it meant for the Federation Starfleet during this time, but I'll try to keep it brief. Enterprise was the Federation Starfleet's gamechanger in this time period. When Enterprise was relaunched (prematurely to resolve the Vejur Crisis, I might add) at the start of the TMP era, she was in her new form by far and away the most powerful starship in Starfleet in terms of capabilities. She even outclassed the much-vaunted dreadnoughts at that time, with her brand new Leeding LN-64 linear warp engines that almost doubled her top warp speed and power output, shielding strong enough to her to take a hit from one of Vejur's massive cohesive energy blasts and survive (although she woundn't have survived a second hit), a brand new and upgraded photon torpedo system with the latest and greatest versions of this form of Federation preferred heavy weaponry, and no less than eighteen phaser banks that both covered old blind spots in the former and lower-number TOS arrangement and provided the maximum phaser coverage possible given her configuration and hull form. Enterprise set the standard for all subsequent Starfleet linear warp refits during the TMP era, and it was both a very high and quite expensive mark to hit. Enterprise herself would be lost in the aftermath of the Genesis Incident; however, another similar Constitution type heavy cruiser that was just completing her own linear warp rebuild and refit (which got delayed by the Whalesong Probe affair, see STIV) was subsequently renamed Enterprise-A in her honor and given the new hull registry of NCC-1701-A. This would set a pattern for subsequent generations of Starfleet vessels down the years, with at least one from one of its best classes in each also being named Enterprise and continuing the succession (Enterprise-B, Enterprise-C, et al).

The enormous success of Enterprise in the years following her formal return to service and prior to her loss on Starfleet's subsequent linear warp or TMP era generation of starships cannot be understated. At one time Starfleet planned not only to commission as many new TMP era classes as possible but to rebuild its entire Class I fleet using the same linear warp technology and associated upgrades that had worked so well with Enterprise (including the aforementioned dreadnoughts, which would outclass her once they were upgraded - ed). In the end, as with almost all such things, Starfleet never achieved its goal -- partly due to internal Federation politics but mostly due to the tremendous cost involved, which eventually forced it to both scale back its new build classes program. It also had to eventually add two less capable linear warp upgrade paths to its fleetwide refit plans in a determined effort to rebuild and upgrade as many older classes as possible while keeping costs down. Nevertheless, there were more than enough older upgraded and new build linear warp classes of all three kinds for Starfleet to meet all of the threats it faced through and to the end of the TMP era and beyond (although it constantly complained that it never had enough). All of that was made possible by the initial successes of Enterprise in her reborn TMP era form. I think it's fair to say that possibly the only other new starship class in the TMP era to trump it in terms of its importance to its masters was the Romulan Sparrowhawk (SFB/SFC). That's the level of change we're talking about with regards to Starfleet. Enterprise wasn't quite the paradigm shift for the Federation that Sparrowhawk was for the Romulans; nevertheless, in her own way her debut in her new form shook up the future of Federation starship technology like few others have before ... and few since.

That's all I'm going to say. If you want to learn more, there's all kinds of sources both online and off you can consult. I also know a lot of you have your own opinions and ideas about the TMP era Enterprise too. The more the merrier, I say. After all, Trek's a multiverse now. XD

Do I have to say this is canon, not just canon canon but as thoroughly canon as you can get? (long laugh).

Live long and prosper, folks.

TRIVIA - Calling this the Enterprise class is canon per TWOK (on screen data). Starfleet goes back to calling even the TMP era upgraded Constitutions by their old class name later on, as is shown on screen in one of the TMP era movies, and calling all of them the Constitution class in their TMP refit forms is official Franchise canon. All the same, we old school Trek tech-heads still use Enterprise class on our own to distinguish this specific refit/upgrade from the others, as well as the various older TOS/TAS era versions.

ASIDE - There are all kinds of CG models of the TMP Enterprise out there. The old but still good effort by Rick "p81" Knox remains one of the best low-poly model of her as of this date, and you can find it in the downloads section just about any video game site that still carries the old SFC series fan models and such. There are also plenty of higher quality ones with more detail that you might like more, such as Wicked Zombie's (see top of page). Another one is khaliban's, which has twice the poly count of Rick's (it was made for some of the later Trek video games) and thus allowed him to both add a lot more detail and use higher quality textures. Fellow XPS artist haganeya has done a wonderful job porting this out of its old game model format and into one everybody can use (and fixing my old snafus with the same model, I might add), and you can get his XPS take on it by following the link below:

There's also lezisell's Enterprise-A, which you can get here:

Finally, for those of you insisting on a high poly filming quality model, there's one in 3DS Max format by noted Trek CG artist Dave Metlesits, available at the links below. The one on the left is for the original Enterprise; the one on the right is for the later Enterprise-A:

FWIW in my own 3D posing projects I use multiple models of the TMP Enterprise at various resolutions. I use Rick's for very long distance and fleet battle shots, I use khaliban's or Wicked Zombie's for most situations, and I use Dave's for extreme close-ups where I need a "hero" model with lots of detail. That's the same way the filming pros used to do it back in the days of physical model shooting, so you might want to do the same in your own stuff and thereby reduce system memory and rendering load for given scenes and such.

Description

Ported to OBJ from the wonderful model created by Wicked Zombie for the Starfleet Command (SFC) series of video games by Acitivision. Preview picture posed in XNALara XPS. Model can be downloaded from the Demon Renegade Studios website at the link below (scroll down until you find the entry for "Constitution Class [Refit]"):

www.demonrenegadestudios.com/d…

Some appropriate music, maestro! (courtesy of YouTube):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI9YYe…

For almost everyone in Trek fandom young or old, the TMP era officially begins with Star Trek: The Motion Picture (ST:TMP or TMP for short) and the refit/rebuild/upgrade of the beloved Constitution class heavy cruiser Enterprise (NCC-1701), who also lent her name for a time to her refitted Constitution class and type sisters as the Enterprise class (FRS, SOSF1 - see TRIVIA). A lot has been said and written about this event and the new Enterprise as well as what it meant for the Federation Starfleet during this time, but I'll try to keep it brief. Enterprise was the Federation Starfleet's gamechanger in this time period. When Enterprise was relaunched (prematurely to resolve the Vejur Crisis, I might add) at the start of the TMP era, she was in her new form by far and away the most powerful starship in Starfleet in terms of capabilities. She even outclassed the much-vaunted dreadnoughts at that time, with her brand new Leeding LN-64 linear warp engines that almost doubled her top warp speed and power output, shielding strong enough to her to take a hit from one of Vejur's massive cohesive energy blasts and survive (although she woundn't have survived a second hit), a brand new and upgraded photon torpedo system with the latest and greatest versions of this form of Federation preferred heavy weaponry, and no less than eighteen phaser banks that both covered old blind spots in the former and lower-number TOS arrangement and provided the maximum phaser coverage possible given her configuration and hull form. Enterprise set the standard for all subsequent Starfleet linear warp refits during the TMP era, and it was both a very high and quite expensive mark to hit. Enterprise herself would be lost in the aftermath of the Genesis Incident; however, another similar Constitution type heavy cruiser that was just completing her own linear warp rebuild and refit (which got delayed by the Whalesong Probe affair, see STIV) was subsequently renamed Enterprise-A in her honor and given the new hull registry of NCC-1701-A. This would set a pattern for subsequent generations of Starfleet vessels down the years, with at least one from one of its best classes in each also being named Enterprise and continuing the succession (Enterprise-B, Enterprise-C, et al).

The enormous success of Enterprise in the years following her formal return to service and prior to her loss on Starfleet's subsequent linear warp or TMP era generation of starships cannot be understated. At one time Starfleet planned not only to commission as many new TMP era classes as possible but to rebuild its entire Class I fleet using the same linear warp technology and associated upgrades that had worked so well with Enterprise (including the aforementioned dreadnoughts, which would outclass her once they were upgraded - ed). In the end, as with almost all such things, Starfleet never achieved its goal -- partly due to internal Federation politics but mostly due to the tremendous cost involved, which eventually forced it to both scale back its new build classes program. It also had to eventually add two less capable linear warp upgrade paths to its fleetwide refit plans in a determined effort to rebuild and upgrade as many older classes as possible while keeping costs down. Nevertheless, there were more than enough older upgraded and new build linear warp classes of all three kinds for Starfleet to meet all of the threats it faced through and to the end of the TMP era and beyond (although it constantly complained that it never had enough). All of that was made possible by the initial successes of Enterprise in her reborn TMP era form. I think it's fair to say that possibly the only other new starship class in the TMP era to trump it in terms of its importance to its masters was the Romulan Sparrowhawk (SFB/SFC). That's the level of change we're talking about with regards to Starfleet. Enterprise wasn't quite the paradigm shift for the Federation that Sparrowhawk was for the Romulans; nevertheless, in her own way her debut in her new form shook up the future of Federation starship technology like few others have before ... and few since.

That's all I'm going to say. If you want to learn more, there's all kinds of sources both online and off you can consult. I also know a lot of you have your own opinions and ideas about the TMP era Enterprise too. The more the merrier, I say. After all, Trek's a multiverse now. XD

Do I have to say this is canon, not just canon canon but as thoroughly canon as you can get? (long laugh).

Live long and prosper, folks.

TRIVIA - Calling this the Enterprise class is canon per TWOK (on screen data). Starfleet goes back to calling even the TMP era upgraded Constitutions by their old class name later on, as is shown on screen in one of the TMP era movies, and calling all of them the Constitution class in their TMP refit forms is official Franchise canon. All the same, we old school Trek tech-heads still use Enterprise class on our own to distinguish this specific refit/upgrade from the others, as well as the various older TOS/TAS era versions.

ASIDE - There are all kinds of CG models of the TMP Enterprise out there. The old but still good effort by Rick "p81" Knox remains one of the best low-poly model of her as of this date, and you can find it in the downloads section just about any video game site that still carries the old SFC series fan models and such. There are also plenty of higher quality ones with more detail that you might like more, such as Wicked Zombie's (see top of page). Another one is khaliban's, which has twice the poly count of Rick's (it was made for some of the later Trek video games) and thus allowed him to both add a lot more detail and use higher quality textures. Fellow XPS artist haganeya has done a wonderful job porting this out of its old game model format and into one everybody can use (and fixing my old snafus with the same model, I might add), and you can get his XPS take on it by following the link below:

There's also lezisell's Enterprise-A, which you can get here:

Finally, for those of you insisting on a high poly filming quality model, there's one in 3DS Max format by noted Trek CG artist Dave Metlesits, available at the links below. The one on the left is for the original Enterprise; the one on the right is for the later Enterprise-A:

FWIW in my own 3D posing projects I use multiple models of the TMP Enterprise at various resolutions. I use Rick's for very long distance and fleet battle shots, I use khaliban's or Wicked Zombie's for most situations, and I use Dave's for extreme close-ups where I need a "hero" model with lots of detail. That's the same way the filming pros used to do it back in the days of physical model shooting, so you might want to do the same in your own stuff and thereby reduce system memory and rendering load for given scenes and such.