Found & Copied Serenity Deck Plan by BountyBoy56

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Found & Copied Serenity Deck Plan

POSTED BY: BOUNTYBOY56
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 23:50
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Tuesday, January 20, 2004 4:24 AM

I totally forgot! In one of the commentaries or extras I think Joss said something about the length of the ship, something like "there's only so much you can fit in 190 feet". Anyone have an exact quote?

190' can be either the interior or exterior length. Obviously if it's exterior the scale is larger, but they are fairly similar, and fairly reasonable.

Another way to measure height is to look at the front view of the ship (btw, like all of you, I'm sure, I'm using the "serenity up close" images from this website). You get a pretty good view of the height of the shuttles. Since there's enough room inside the shuttles for a 6' tall person to stand and not bump their head, we can take a guess at the scale. Interestingly enough, the height of the shuttle seems to match the same scale we get if we assume the ship is 190' long (interior or exterior length, though if the 190' is exterior the scale is a almost a little too large - Mal would be bumping his head on the shuttle ceiling. There is room for error of course).

Again, staying with the front view of the exterior, we can guess at the scale by looking at the bridge window. The front window is 9' tall if we are using the 190' measurement as the length of the exterior of the ship, 10' tall if we assume the 190' is an interior measurement. Both 9' and 10' seem a little high, based on what the height looks like on camera (I'd guess 7') but not unreasonable.

Interestingly enough, if you look through the bridge window on the front view you can see the hatch that leads down to the front hallway! Because of issues of perspective it's hard to judge the height, but using the scales mentioned above a 6' tall person should be able to pass through the hallway with no problem.

Assuming those exterior pictures are accurate, I'd say we can get a very precise picture of the scale of the ship. At their original resolution (2000 pixels) wide we get:

10 pixels=1 foot (if 190' is exterior measurement)

9 pixels=1 foot (if 190' is an interior measurement)

Of course, this is when all the problems with the differences between the exterior design and interior sets arise. The floor of the bridge, which should only by about 5' above the front hallway (accrding to the set), is instead 10' or more higher. If the difference was less, the area connecting the dining lounge to the front hallway would be in deep space.

Also, the shuttles appear to be mounted too high on the sides of the ship. On the set, the floor of the shuttles seems to be 2 or 3 steps higher than the level of the upper catwalk. From the upper catwalk to the ceiling is at least 8' or so (see the pic of River, above), and of course the dining area is above that ceiling. But the height of the shuttles pushes the dining area too high, and again makes the connection between dining room and front hallway too high. It also leaves no room for the (hypothetical) airlock above this area (seen on Objects in Space, etc.).

Of course, one solution to fit all this stuff inside the ship is to scale everything down (6 pixels = 1 foot, or less), but this creates its own problems...the bridge becomes huge, the floor of the cargo bay is halfway up the ship, etc.

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Tuesday, January 20, 2004 6:35 AM

STEVE580

Quote:
Originally posted by Hans:
...schematic coming soon!

Awesome, I look forward to it.

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Tuesday, January 20, 2004 7:47 AM

MOMAW

>> And since the cargo bay walls go out as you go up, the floor of the cargo bay is even narrower. <<

Did you notice that the walls of the cargo hold have two seperate angles to them? I didn't at first. Helps reclaim a bit of space where it's needed. This shot shows it very well:

What program are you working in, by the way? If you've got some way of saving out a .3DS file, I'd love to see what you've got so far :) I may also be able to use DXF or X, or if you've got Truespace, an OBJ would be fantastic. And you're welcome to mine too, but I suspect that you're farther along than me. momaw@nhvt.net is my cave, drop in some time if ye'd like.

>> In at least one episode (I wish I noted which one) we see Wash and Mal climbing up the ladder from that area, so it can't be too small. <<

I'm wondering if that hatch to the left side of the stairs leading up to control room opens into this smaller equipment area. Note in "Our Mrs. Reynolds" that Zoe says, "She's sealed both entrances". So the stairs aren't the only way in.

>> Another problem is the ladder from the passenger area up to the rear hallway. <<

Haven't quite figured those steps out myself. At the beginning of "The Train Job", we get taken for a ride and it LOOKS like they work... But it's a hell of a climb up, as you pointed out. To make the connection, the bottom of the staircase has to be pushed back a bit...

I didn't even try messing aroud with scale yet. Just trying to get a basic block-out is turning into a chore. What I wouldn't give for an hour on the set with a tape measure :P

>> Another constraint on the scale of the ship is the shuttles. <<

Another note on the shuttles, getting them into the ship in the proper places according to the external isometric views is easy as pie. It's making the connection INTERNALLY that seems impossible. We're meant to believe that they have a side hatch that opens onto the top level of the cargo hold's catwalks; but the only way to make them fit is to have them sitting on *top* of the cargo hold:

If you place the cargo hold high enough to make the shuttle connection, the dining room gets pushed out the top of the ship which screws up everything else too. If we didn't see several clear shots of the shuttle opening directly into the cargo hold, I'd say that they had a hatch in the bottom that you entered via ladder; that would work just fine. No such luck...

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Tuesday, January 20, 2004 8:34 AM

HANS

Quote:
Originally posted by Momaw:

What program are you working in, by the way? If you've got some way of saving out a .3DS file, I'd love to see what you've got so far :) I may also be able to use DXF or X, or if you've got Truespace, an OBJ would be fantastic. And you're welcome to mine too, but I suspect that you're farther along than me. momaw@nhvt.net is my cave, drop in some time if ye'd like.

Right now I'm still playing around in the first two dimensions...no 3d model yet. I was starting one (in Poser, since I had that available) but wanted to resolve the contridictions first.

Quote:
Originally posted by Momaw:

I'm wondering if that hatch to the left side of the stairs leading up to control room opens into this smaller equipment area. Note in "Our Mrs. Reynolds" that Zoe says, "She's sealed both entrances". So the stairs aren't the only way in.

Yeah, I noted that as well. I guess that hatch must be the second entrance, it doesn't look like there's room in the neck for any other access point (and even that entrance must be some sort of crawlspace). Of course, in addition to the main hatch and staircase there's a third way off the bridge: the small hatch to the side of the main hatch on the inside of the main bridge. It seems to be in line with the hatch outside the bridge, about 6 feet higher. Maybe there's some vertical tube connecting the two, plus the crawlspace running forward to the staircase. It might look something like this from the side:

x] <-Bridge hatch
x \
Hallway hatch -> [xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\ <- stairs up

...with the "x"s showing the tube/crawlspace.

Quote:
Originally posted by Momaw:

I didn't even try messing aroud with scale yet. Just trying to get a basic block-out is turning into a chore. What I wouldn't give for an hour on the set with a tape measure :P

I thought figuring out the scale might help clear up some of the problems...instead it only confirmed them! :)

Quote:
Originally posted by Momaw:

If you place the cargo hold high enough to make the shuttle connection, the dining room gets pushed out the top of the ship which screws up everything else too. If we didn't see several clear shots of the shuttle opening directly into the cargo hold, I'd say that they had a hatch in the bottom that you entered via ladder; that would work just fine. No such luck...

There is a short set of steps up from the catwalk to the shuttle entrance. It's only about two feet, though, not enough to account for this discrepency. Since we can't see exactly how far down the floor of the shuttle extends, with a lot of fudging (and imagining there's another step or two up to the shuttle inside that airlock area), it sorta kinda works. In fact, maybe the shuttles we see in the exterior pictures are raised up 5 feet or so in "launch position". When fully nestled into the ship they are sunken down further (a stretch, I know).

The killer, though, is the whole front hallway/dining area/bridge connection. Having tried creating schematics at multiple scales I believe there's no way to get everything to fit. Either the floor of the bridge is way too low, or the dining area and its hallway stick out of the top of the ship. I think we just have to resolve ourselves to the fact that the exterior pictures and the interior sets do not line up perfectly (sob).

Possible (wacky) solutions:

1.The head and neck of Serenity can swivel up and down. In the side view, the neck is up, but in the interior shors we've seen, its been down.

2.The "windshield" is actually double-paned. What we can see on the exterior view is the outer pane. The inner pane is behind and lower (making the floor of the bridge lower). Actually, I kinda like this idea!

Hans

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Tuesday, January 20, 2004 10:16 PM

NOOCYTE

PMJI;

Has anyone tried modeling the front hallway with a slight incline "upward" (i.e., a slight positive angle to the longitudinal axis) toward the bridge? It wouldn't have to be a huge slope, and it might resolve the issue of how low the hull cuts just fore of the mess hall (important, since sucking vacuum just before a meal can make one a mite ornery).

Department of Redundancy Department

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Tuesday, January 20, 2004 11:50 PM

SOUPCATCHER

In regards to the stairs up from the passenger common area to the back hall: Do we ever get a good view of the stairs after the first turn? The stairs start up heading toward the outer hull, hit a landing and turn left, hit another landing and turn left, and then top out leading into the back hallway. The section of stairs paralleling the back hallway (after the first turn) could gain a lot of height.

I have the impression that the front hallway was at a slight incline to the floor of the dining area.

Another question I have is that in the exterior shots it looks like there is an airlock over the top of the dining area. Am I imagining things?

I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!

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