Logopolis console

[MttElby]

I've decided to split off the creation of the Logopolis console from the rest of my Logopolis TARDIS interior, as it is a self-contained project and also a bit easier to find as a separate thread for someone who is only interested in console builds.

Here's the base model:

This is the part I'm most confident about, as there are plans on this site with measurements, allowing recreation of it, rather than pure guesswork.

I've always known the Logopolis console was unique (because of the emerging chameleon circuit keyboard, that required modifications to one of the panels in the base of the console), but it turns out there are other differences too. This is not just compared to other seasons, but also other episodes in the same season (18). A simple example is the raised dividers between the panels. In Logopolis, these go up to the "collar" around the central column, but not onto it. In earlier stories in season 18 e.g. State of Decay, the dividers extend up onto the collar as well, crossing over the red lines.

Here's the modified version, with the chameleon circuit tweaks to the left hand pedestal panel and two thin horizontal strips above the central pedestal panel.


Unlike my rule for doing the architectural of the TARDIS interior (no visible screws, seams or brush strokes), for the console, which is clearly constructed out of separate components, I will be including visible screws and rivets, which is why the sets of three fastenings on the edges of the console are included in these images.

 

[MttElby]

With the base structure of the console done, it was on to the details of the gadgets on each of the six panels. Having seen that there were blueprint-style orthographic plans on both this site and the wider internet, I though this would be fairly quick and easy as I could just import the image of the panel into Blender and the trace over the buttons, switches and screens.

Here's the setup for that, with the console model in the middle and a blueprint image scaled to match it. Then six copies of the blueprint, each rotated so that a different panel is facing forwards.

The idea was that I could do all the panel components flat on the floor and then transfer them onto the base console model as a finished set. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that all the blueprints are of either pre-Baker consoles or post-Baker consoles, with all the images I had collected appearing to be from season 20. As soon as I began comparing Logopolis screenshots to the panels on the blueprint, I realized they could only be a loose guide. Although some panels have changed less than others, some are utterly different.

Here's an example for panel 2. The grey areas show where I have added components to match what is in the episode. Nothing matches the blueprint...

Here's the render of those components:

In earlier episodes (best seen in State of Decay) there is a neat triangle of silver buttons on the brown printer plate. It would seem that they got knocked off in the process of filming that or a later episode, because by Logopolis the arrangement is not a perfect triangle and two of them are missing altogether. In the Logopolis screengrabs it looks like a white ring of glue is still visible where they had been, so I have interpreted that to be a different style of button.

 

[MttElby]

An almost immediate correction to panel 2. I had created the red rectangle plate based on how it looked in State of decay, because there weren't any good close-ups in Logopolis. Even so, what could be seen in Logopolis looked completely red, without the yellow flashing. I decided to look forwards to Four to doomsday and it was definitely entirely red there. Looking back to Warrior's gate, it was red there too, so that seems to be when it was repainted fully red.

There are a number of nice close-ups of panels in Warrior's gate, which have helped with completing the ones in Logopolis. It's still remarkable the number of little tweaks that went on between stories. Some are quite overt, like adding an extra red stripe around the collar of the time column (there's only one in Warrior's gate, but two in Logopolis), whereas others seem very arbitrary, like changing the colours of the lights on the TV screen panel (from yellow/yellow/ black in Warrior's gate to yellow/green/black in Logopolis).

 

[MttElby]

Panel 6 components completed.

I'm not doing the panels in order, but jumping around between the panels where they have elements in common. In this case, because I had already done some chunky switches for panel 2, I could duplicate and recolour them for panel 6, so that's where I went next. In the same way, the gold grille is actually the same piece as the red rectangle from panel 2 - something I didn't immediately realize.

This one required a lot of reference images, especially for the small buttons and switches, but Warrior's Gate was very useful with several close-ups of the console panels. This is another panel that changed between chronologically close stories and in fact it also changed during Warrior's Gate.

The first image below shows this panel at the start of the first episode, with a clear gap between the two blue discs. The second image shows that once the Tharil arrives, there is a suddenly a red dome there. I guess he brought it with him.

The red dome has been flattened to a red disc by the time of Logopolis, so that's what it is on my version of the panel.

 

[MttElby]

Here's the panel 3 components, seen for the last time in Logopolis, as this panel is completely redone for the next season.

 

[MttElby]

Panel 4 components.

Logopolis is the last appearance of the door handle on the right, but the left-hand one lasts into the Davison era.

Any thoughts I had of quickly creating the Castrovalva version of the console have now been dashed, as rather than just panel 3 gaining the TARDIS databank, I can now see that all of the panels have some changes.

 

[MttElby]

Panel 1 components. Yes, the red strips are deliberately missing in the top left!

This was the panel that I knew would be different in Logopolis compared to previous episodes, as it has the black section that opens up to release the keyboard used for the chameleon circuit. At first glance it looks like it's just a swap of the trapezoid section above the red handle, for a new one, but there are other more subtle changes elsewhere on the panel too.

The image on the left below, from State of Decay, shows a perspex disc that has several pegs sticking up from it - one in the middle and four around the edges. For some reason, by the time of Logopolis (right), three of the outer pegs are gone.

Not so obvious in these photos, is that the two vertical strips to the left of the red handle have been repainted too. The red centre has become black in Logopolis. The metal switches above these strips have also changed.

Trying to puzzle these differences out, it occurred to me to look at the animated CGI menu clip on the S18 Blu-ray, since that is razor-sharp and was presumably made using much better reference material than I have. Unfortunately, all that showed was that the CGI console doesn't match the one in Logopolis, even though the Master's TARDIS is in the CGI console room, an event which happens in Logopolis.

Below you can see the disc has all the pegs on it, instead of only 2, but also that there are three vertical strips to the left of the red handle. The switches aren't a match either.

Looking at the other five panels, I have to conclude that this CGI console doesn't match any console shown in S18 and seems to be a sort of averaged representation.

 

[MttElby]

And finally, panel 5.

This one was always going to be last because you don't actually see it in Logopolis, so I've had to go to episodes before and after it to find the most likely arrangement for it. There was a good close-up in Warrior's Gate and a brief glimpse in The Keeper of Traken (along with another spotting of the TARDIS ceiling). The panel looks identical in those two stories, so I've assumed it's the same in Logopolis. It's still very similar in Four to Doomsday (and even Timeflight), but it is nevertheless different in S19 - the yellow and black sticker is gone, as are the white stripes on the red object, and there is an added red sticker above the door handle. Other than that, this seems to be one of the panels that changed the least - even to the extent of not repairing damage. Although it's not very clear from the angle I've chosen for this render, when you look at the four black switches at the bottom of the triangular section, switches 1 and 4 have actually been snapped off. This is visible in Warrior's Gate, but they still appear to be broken at the end of S19.

I've been experimenting with doing blinking lights while doing these panels, so I think I'm going to tackle the time column next, but that may take a while....

 

[MttElby]

Another quick correction. While looking for time column images, I spotted a shot from The Keeper of Traken that showed I had the wrong pattern on the yellow sticker. Here's a corrected version, from a different angle, where you can see the broken switches (closest to the camera) a bit easier.

 

[MttElby]

After seeing a good close-up of panel 6 from The Invisible Enemy in a thread about the console, I have made some adjustments.

From left to right, they are:
1) A tapered frame around the gold vent. More scrutiny of Warrior's Gate confirmed this.
2) Added some tiny fins to the black rectangular button, based on what is shown in The Invisible Enemy.
3) Re-did the array of large switches to better match the actual shape. I also became convinced that the blue switches aren't all the same shade of blue.
4) Turns out the little studs on top of the white discs are brassy, not black, or at least they are brassy in stories leading up to Logopolis and also in Four to Doomsday after it, so it is probably a trick of the light that makes them look darker in Logopolis. I also re-did the black pie-chart they sit on, to make it a smoother curve.

 

[MttElby]

First steps with the time column.

 

[MttElby]

A few more bits added.

I've been very glad that Tony Farrell's "Build your own TARDIS console" pdf exists while doing this, because I would never have been able to work out the internal structure of the column from screengrabs. Unfortunately, like doing the components on the panels, it does seem there were some tweaks in S18 when the metallic domes appeared on the top of the red tubes, that mean those plans can't do all the work for me.

 

[rassilonsrod]

It's all coming together nicely

 

[MttElby]

I'd just finished modelling the pairs of short fluorescent tubes to go in the red tubes, when I noticed that in later stories in S18 you can't see two light sources. More scrutiny showed that when they added the metal domes on the tops of the red tubes, they also changed to a single, long fluorescent tube light. Fortunately, that's an easy change to make, but I did like the paired lights effect.

Anyway, here's the render with long-tube lighting and the frosted vertical panels between the red tubes:


While this seemed to be correct, I found that I just couldn't get the lights looking as white as they do in Logopolis screenshots, no matter how much I turned up the intensity of the light. All that happened was the amount of red light overwhelmed the scene. Grabbing some new screenshots from the Blu-ray, I found that the bright whiteness was still there even when the column was powered down. I now think that they changed the red tubes too, adding clear vertical strips to them, so the white of the fluorescent tubes can still be seen even when it's off.

You can see this in the image below. The blue arrows are pointing at one light that is on and one that is off, but even the off light looks white, not pink.

This image (from S19) also has a very white-looking strip in the red tube - presumably the fluorescent tube showing through a clear section.

This behind-the-scenes image, gives an even better impression that there is a clear vertical strip (or maybe an air gap) at the corner of the triangle formed by the three red tubes.

The question now, is: how many of these clear sections are in there in the 360° of the red tube? Three seems sensible, spaced at 120°, as then each side of the triangle would have a view of the light through a clear section, but there doesn't seem to be a visible white stripe in the red tube at the back in the image above.

 

[MttElby]

This isn't sleuthing on the scale of mverta's simulation of sunlight and shadows, but I think I have worked out what must have been done with the time column lights when they moved from two small fluorescent tubes, to one large one.

In the image below, the left-hand shot shows the lights on, giving a good representation of what is seen on screen i.e. a white light. This was achieved with a thin clear strip within the otherwise red tube. So far so good.

On the right, is the same thing with the lights turned off. Now there is a problem as the white fluorescent tube can't be seen as a white strip, despite being behind a clear plastic window.

I thought this might simply be because there are no "studio" lights to light up the inside of the red tube, so tried again with some external lighting. This time the image on the left is with "studio" lighting only. There's a small improvement in the visibility of the fluorescent tube, but it's not a match.

The right-hand image is far better, looking a lot like the screengrabs. In this case, the clear plastic has been removed, so that the red tube has a vertical gap in it - and that makes all the difference. I have to conclude that this is what they did on the set too (maybe for better heat regulation with the bigger fluorescent tube), so will continue with that assumption.

 

[MttElby]

Now added the little lights on the central pillar and the remaining white wires at the top (a bit neater than the real ones).

 

[MttElby]

I had a bit of a dilemma about the clear cylinder that goes over the time column lights, because not only does the real prop have visible screws, but also vertical strips holding it together. It seems to me that Timelord tech would be able to fabricate a perfect one-piece transparent cylinder, so I have no issue with dropping the screws as just being a consequence of the less-than-Timelord tech of the BBC in the 80s, but the strips may be distinctive enough that it subconsciously looks wrong without them. I don't think it will, because there are plenty of screengrabs where you can't see them at all, but it's a risk.

The other issue was how transparent and glossy to make it, so I tried a few different approaches. I naively thought I could just look up the refractive index of acryllic (of which it is reportedly made), put that number into Blender and get a perfect reproduction. That didn't happen, but here's some experiments:

I think there should be a white reflection from the top disc, but that seems to come with a dark edge (top two pics), which isn't what you ever see in the screengrabs. The lower two are more transparent, including the previously dark edge, so are my preference at the moment, but until I drop it into the console room it's probably not possible to get it just right.

 

[Mike Verta]

You're going to possibly be running into a total internal reflections limitation depending on which engine you're using. Vray for blender is coming. In the meantime keep your refractive index around 1.4. acrylic only has reflectivity about 25% or so. It's about 95% transparent with just a hint of subsurface material which you can possibly fake with a touch of diffuse, white. But just a kiss. Dark edges are an engine problem or a problem where you have too few bounces.

Also, very important - make sure it's actually an accurate model which is that it has wall thicknesses and is closed. You can't have single-sided surfaces and expected to solve. You got to model the geometry completely. And don't allow any interpenetrations between that and surrounding geometry.

 

[MttElby]

You're going to possibly be running into a total internal reflections limitation depending on which engine you're using. Vray for blender is coming. In the meantime keep your refractive index around 1.4. acrylic only has reflectivity about 25% or so. It's about 95% transparent with just a hint of subsurface material which you can possibly fake with a touch of diffuse, white. But just a kiss. Dark edges are an engine problem or a problem where you have too few bounces.

That's helpful to know about those extra parameters, thanks. I haven't tried changing the number of bounces yet, so will see how that affects things.

Also, very important - make sure it's actually an accurate model which is that it has wall thicknesses and is closed. You can't have single-sided surfaces and expected to solve. You got to model the geometry completely. And don't allow any interpenetrations between that and surrounding geometry.

For this I properly modelled it with thickness to the walls, because I knew it needed to be transparent, but also have some lens distortion when passing through thicker regions. It's a cylinder with a small inset on one end cap, followed by an extrusion, to create an inverted bucket. The top disc is also thicker than the side walls, as it is on the actual prop, so I was expecting some sort of discontinuity, but not such a dark outline.

 

[Mike Verta]

The original prop has an inset cap at the top. The main "cylinder" walls look to be around 1/16" and the cap is around 1/4", inset and held in place by little screws. You've got to mimic all this geometry to get it to behave properly. The acrylic itself will also need distortions from normal maps to mimic the wavy, cheap quality of the original. Something in this world: