3 weeks later, the wind stirs in the west and Destructor takes to the keyboard once more!
I had a break, but before I went away, I sucked it up and did the first bit of wiring - the Deflector, window, and formation beacon lights in the nose:
What else? Well, it took a lot of wrestling with stupid anxiety, and a week off visiting friends on the other side of the country, but look!
I finally have most of the lighting wired in - I forgot the plasma vents, but they'll be easy to solder in tonight. After this, I'll work on the sound-related lights that light up when you press the associated button (pulse phasers, photons, quantums, maybe even the phaser strip on the spine).
Here she is in bright light (phone camera flash plus room light):
The lighting shows through well. Even in sunlight, it shows decently.
In the dark, the effect is obviously much better.
The part I was most concerned about was the warp field grilles. The 2 LEDs per nacelle shine into their own little chambre between the two compartments behind the grille. I made the chambre walls very thin to leak as much light into the compartments as possible, and I was worried it might be too dim.
But they came out great! I have the exposure lowered in this shot so you can begin to see the internal detail through the grilles, but they pop just as well as the rest of the lights.
Top down view:
The red glows from the whatever holes in the front and the radiator troughs in the back of the spine are crazy-effective. I'll need to dull them a bit with paint, but that's great because they're supposed to be grey/black with a dull red glow.
Bottom view in natural daylight:
Previous pictures haven't really shown off the windows in the ventral hull, but they work great too! Each side has a fore an aft warm white LED shining into a gully to channel the light along. I was worried the mid point would be a little dark, but just look! It's like the snow that lay round about when good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen! (deep and crisp and even)
When I do start light blocking, I'll be laying silver layers in places to bounce the light internally, and then covering with primer. In some places I'll be layering more silver on top as appropriate to get the light where I need it and minimise waste. Obviously I'll be masking off areas that need to fully transmit.