Interested in a lighting kit for the Polar Lights Enterprise

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Darth Furtive

New Member
It would entail the same lighting that the larger 22" Enterprise has. Blinking navigation lights, interior lights, and the rotating narselles.
 
J

Jedi Dade

Sr Member
I'm working on one at the moment - but the thing is really small - I'm not sure the parts I ordered are small enough...we'll see in the next week or so when things arrive and I start experimenting.

Jedi Dade
 
J

Jedi Dade

Sr Member
I've got a semi working spinning system but I'm not sure if its produceable in more then a onsey basis - it's areal pain in the butt. I now understand why the pro's like ILM build things as large as they can get away with - its a lot easier
the spinning I have gotten to work - sort of but the lighting is proving to be difficult - mostly too bright. in scale with the model. LED's, even the lesser bright ones seem too bright for the nacelles - for a large model it would be fine but for such a small model it looks like 2 flashlights attached as engines - unacceptable. I'm working with adjustable voltage at the moment to try and dim them a bit to see if it will work out. I'm afraid that regular grain of wheat light bulbs would produce too much heat in such a confined space... Its a challenge!!!! I'm hoping it Will be cool when its done. I think it will, but I'm not sure if it will be some thing I can produce with a reasonable cost. the parts aren't that bad but the assembly is a major headache that I'm not sure I make a good tutorial of - or reproduce reasonably we'll see. after I get it working I'll (if I get it working) I'll post pics

Jedi Dade

Jedi Dade
 
D

Darth Furtive

New Member
Just a thought. But how about a frosted acrylic diamond suncatcher in the narselle. Ken Huegal did something like that on Cultman TV's site to create a more diffused lighting for the buzzard collectors. Would something like this possibly soften and diffuse the lighting?
DF
 
J

Jedi Dade

Sr Member
well I'm frosting the domes, adding a white light in the nacelle - all of my good reference pics show it as almost all white with the occassional blue and red spot popping in. I anm working on the spinning fan inside of the nacelle and think that I might've got that beat. I've thought about trying to fins a really small peice of leaded crystal to put in there to give the psuedo random coloring, but that may be a bit too much maybe a bit of carefully placed transparent paint and a diffuser sheet insid the nacelle in front of the "fan". Its terribly small in there and I'm not sure its gonna be a success but its worth giving it a shot...No matter what if I stopped right now its still pretty darn cool


Jedi Dade
 
D

Darth Furtive

New Member
Sound really cool. I hope you will either be selling a kit or sharing your parts for this project with the rest of us. I can't wait to see what you come up with. Also keep in mine, if you come up with a good foundation for this kit it will make the rest of the 1/1000 scale kits easier if Polar Lights produces them. Just think how great it would be to have all 7 ships in scale and with realistic lighting, awlsome.
I've heard they are making a D-7 Klingon cruiser in this scale next year.
DF
 
M

Mike Emery

New Member
Yes and no...

You may enjoy this:

Animated Polar Lights TOS E engine nacelle effect

I spent a good month (on and off) developing this proof-of-concept; while I'd really like to get this to market I have doubts that it can be made "affordable" enough for the masses.

If nothing else it shows that a complex effect can be achieved if you work at it enough. Just consider how they did the original effect and hack ways to recreate the look of each "layer" or element in miniature: blinking lights, fan, spin.
 
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