Superb job with the lighting, looks very realistic.

Graeme

Thanks guys.

The pod bay is finished.I put it into the lower sphere to see how much room I had for the cockpit.It will be a tight fit, but I think it will be OK. I am leaving 2 of the 3 pod bay doors open so you can see the pod bay.

The next step is the cockpit.I used the paragrafix detail set for the basic shape and then added printed back wall piece,consoles and seats.I used smds to light the main console.I attaches the hdamodelworks decals to clear plastic and placed them behind the paragrafix parts and backlit them with smds. its actually quite difficult to see inside the cockpit.

OK on to the final stage-painting the exterior. The model has a very subtle panel effect .It was lit with very bright lights for the movie so it is hard to get a really good idea if the actual colors. I decided to try a masking set made by Aztec Dummies.This company makes vinyl masks for many sci fi kits.The most popular are the patterns they make for Star Trek ships. The masking set was quite expensive, but it provided enough masks for the command sphere,collar and a few masks for the spine and reactor module. The way the masks work is to break up the surface color and give an impression of a complex surface.There are precut panels to mask off the panels on the sphere and collar.

For the command sphere and neck and collar I sprayed the whole part in dark grey.I then added some masks and sprayed a lighter shade of grey.I then added more masks and sprayed with a lighter shade of grey.I masked off further panels and then sprayed white as the final layer.I then removed all of the masks.The final result was pretty good,but it needed toning down a lot.I sprayed a couple of mist coats of tamiya white to blend the colors to achieve the closest I could to the filming model.

The spine and reactor module used a different technique.The masking set has really good instructions for this.Basically you use a mask that has a random pattern of lines on it.I sprayed the spine and rector modules a medium gray.I then used the masks and oversprayed with dark grey .Once this had dried I reapplied the masks, but in a different orientation and oversprayed with white. This left a complex linear pattern that looked a bit like modern camoflage. Again the colors were too stark so I spray misted a coat of tamiya white over the whole spine and reactor module to blend all the colors and make the sphere and neck and collar match the spine and reactor module

Some excellent work and modelling skill. This is going to be a wonderful piece of work.

Mark

Finished!!!

It was hard to photograph because it is quite long -41 inches.A very enjoyable build and a nice looking model.

thanks Roger.


After finishing the model I decided it may be cool to build a bigger version of the command sphere. The Moebius kit is 1/144.So I 3d designed and printed a larger version,.I used the files for the pod bay that I used in the Moebius kit and upscaled them and designed the outer hull.At 1/32 scale it is too big.The shpere is 19 inches in diameter.I will rescale it to 1/48 which will make the command sphere 13 inches in diameter.

cheers Kev, good to see you back on the forum.Look forward to seeing some builds from you

Carl

outstanding Carl lovely build regards Phil