Do the Rocinante Sets fit in the Exterior Model? 

If you liked this check out my video on how big the Roci is: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BBkZ5gnPXPo.html

This is really helpful to visualize what's going on on set, but when I'm watching, I envision the armory and airlock as directly under the ops deck rather than offset. Goes to the directorial skills as well as the set-design brilliance I imagine, since if you slid the "first" floor under the second, you'd have that ladder going into the airlock :D

While fans of The Expanse (myself included) laud the show as one of the most accurate representations of actual space science, we also recognize that it is a work of speculative science fiction. We accept some inaccuracies and flights of fancy such as the Protomolecule, the Epstein Drive, and roomy interiors in order to allow for more narrative freedom. I agree than the Rocinante's deck seems bigger than the actual exterior. But Season 4 showed just how big the Roci is up close, making it easy for me to reconcile the discrepancy in my mind.

What bothers me more with the sizing: In every scene you see the crew on the outside of the ship, or walking out the airlock, the ship is way to small in comparison. The size is off by a lot. The main airlock for example takes all the available space in the model/ship. When you think about all the space the PDCs would take up, or all the other tech and systems, it's quite obvious that there needs to be at least 1/3 more ship. Always found it quite odd, since everything else in the show is pretty accurate and to scale.

That reveal of turning from the ‘front’ to the ‘side’ view really blew my mind when I saw it on your livestream! The interior on the show always felt allot bigger than it sounded in the books, especially so after I saw the actual scale of the Roci in your other video, so it made so much sense to see how it all fit together.

Fully understand the reasoning, and don't see a better solution, yet I still would love to have the decks stack like they should be. Love the show

On one hand things like this (the warthog run in the pillar of autumn *cough*) drive me up the wall as a lore nut. On the other hand as an artist and writer I completely understand these sorts of limitations and design inconsistencies come up based on the media you are using. I've always loved the set design on this show, particularly for the roci.

There are enough disconnect between shots of the airlock and the Ops Deck that it doesn't break the illusion of it not fitting into the ship. I always thought the armory is directly under Ops in universe anyway. Most of the time, these interior being bigger issues only arise in video games where you can directly run around inside and outside of the ship/location. Look at the hero ship from Mass Effect Andromeda, the inside layout has a lot of stuff that would protrude outside of the ship. The Normandy has similar issues, but the general shape still fits the silhouette of the ship and there are less opportunity to directly run around and on top of the exterior of the ship, helping to preserve the illusion of scale.

I’m glad you did this. It’s been causing some cognitive dissonance with me for a while now.

In my head I just doubled the size of the Roci. In the book, it was supposed to have space for 20 people - crew and marines.

I kinda wished they just rented out a grain silo and built the sets in that. Had that Serenity kind of feel of being able to walk 9or in this case climb) across the entire fictional ship was amazing for the show and the fans trying to understand the ship.

In a mere 3½ minutes you packed so much information and great points, great job!

I completely accept this explanation for something that always kind of bugged me, but not seriously enough to impact my enjoyment of the show. Thank you!

This is precisely what I needed-and I didn’t even know it! In the end I’m okay with giving up an interior that matches the exterior for the opportunities it presents for filming. A good DP can tell a marvelous tale in just a few well placed angles, well timed pans, etc.

I already knew there was no way the set fit inside the ship but it's great to see it like this. Thanks for this video!

As long as you make it look like it COULD fit, it's all good. I never had a doubt that each environment was one of a few tiny rooms stacked on top of each other vertically. The only thing was the flight deck looking a little bit too long for the section of the ship, but it was more of an "aspect ratio" thing and it never really bothered me

I have to say that I really enjoyed this Video Chris...especially considering I was talking about Exterior/Interior scale issues with someone earlier today....Great work! ...as well as Fantastic timing! Hope you have a great weekend. :D

So Cool Chris, Really nicely visually explained. Thanks for posting this...next up Chetz.

Amazing insight into your work. But I’d like to wipe it from my memory as the illusion of filming makes the decks look stacked like the art work that shows the deck by deck plan It’s a bit like finding out Santa’s sleigh is powered on methalox and not fairy dust (yes I know Santa doesn’t exist!) Still, excellent stuff as always. In my mind those decks all fit within the exterior visuals and that keeps me happy!

Thank you, Chris!

Yeah. Thats pretty much a common issue with most exterior/interior layouts of various crafts in shows, movies and games. The interior never fully match up with the design of the exterior without rearranging it a little.

I always thought it was a weird choice to have that second ladder. they could have spun the airlock 189* around the ladder so that it opened directly under the pilot. if they also swapped it for a true vertical ladder, it would also make the ship feel more like a "stack" because it wouln't stop in the armory

While I am a stickler for scaling in ships, I have to admit that there were so many good things going on in the scenes that I can comfortably dismiss the TARDIS technology that they secretly employed on the Roci. I have not read the books, so half the time I'm too busy wondering if Amos would murder the crew to be bothered with scaling details :)

I think it would be a lot closer (though not completely) if the ladder near the ops deck holotable was removed and the whole lower deck moved so that the other ops deck ladder led to the armory. Having visited the set myself, it really doesn't matter to me that it's 'bigger on the inside'. It's just so cool!

So cool man! Love this. Great work 👍🏼

I knew the answer was 'no' but I didn't realise it was such a resounding no! It's damned close to 3x as wide!

Love the analysis. Thanks Chris.

Loved the explanation. Thanks for sharing.

My brain has just adjusted the set layout to fit in my head.

I don't see why this is a bad thing, I'd love to see an expanse-doctor who cross over with ships that are bigger on the inside. Jokes aside, I was kind of always aware of this but just imagined it being the same thing, just like compacted so everything is just a like a metre or two closer together, and the armoury and airlock sort of flipped around to be underneath ops

FAscinating; thanks!

Interesting!

Making the airlock smaller on the model would make the set fit better and make more space for fuel and machinery

I think that if the lower deck was rotated 180° it would fit a bit better in the space

I think the scale is just wrong. Scale down the flight deck set to fit inside, dont forget, the ROCI also has TWO HULLS. I think its much bigger than your original set. There may be an issue with the airlock door size appearance from the show vs the model, but cmon, this thing is HUGE, with space between hulls for crew members to work? Scale down your flight deck to fit inside and fudge it up against the hallway with the airlock door. THEN see how the other decks play out. Youll have much more room for the double hull and all the workings of a spaceship that would add to all that space.

We see this all the time in movies and TV shows. Almost every airplane cockpit is 2.5 to 3 times larger than in real life. Cockpits tend to be cramped and cluttered leaving no room for cameras or lights, let alone the ventilation needed under those lights. And sometimes they are just outright ridiculous like in Start Trek Discovery where every corridor is 25 to 30 feet wide. Expanse did a pretty good job all things considered, but I thought that the CGI model was just too small by far, especially when you allow for the inter-hull space shown in one episode.

This ship is the 1st one I am going to build myself just out of scrap parts, I have a brother with a 3D printer & knows how to use it for any of the specific bits I can't craft myself, wish me luck.

I would like to see the same description of the inner Anubis!

Whenever they are crawling inside the outer hull the roci seems to be at least twice the actual size.

Very cool video! I've come across this myself ... Thank you. Where can I get the schematics used in this video? Or is it prohibited information?

I've bitched about this for ages lol. I even put a diagram on reddit several times.

It’s not a tin can it’s multi hulled with space to walk between the walls. your model didn’t account for that space, where the airlock and pdc’s wouldn’t poke through the ships interior

Wasn't that the same issue back in the day with Star Wars where the interior of the Milennium Falcon wouldn't actually fit in the exterior model? 🙂

Okay, you've explained why the set couldn't be altered to fit the exterior VFX model, but that leaves open the question of why the exterior VFX model couldn't be modified to fit the set.

actually it did not answer the question I came here with. Why was the model not build in a way, that the Set would have fit into it? The exterior did not have to be that slim.

By the way! Do you only make the decks shown in this video? Or will the living and engineering decks be in the game as well?

Does the square footage fit though? Like if properly rearranged, could it fit in the vfx model?

Why would the set need to fit into the model? It's THE SET, it's made to film the show, it needs to feel right, it doesn't need to be geometrically correct. And it does it's job really well.

The CAD model of the set (at 2:20), are these yours or something available somewhere? Does anyone know if there's a decent model of the Roci's decks somewhere? Great video, bang on about the practicalities of filming v. FX models. Thanks!

We get the set needs to have a size in order to be able to film and put cameras arround and so.. The question then is why not make the Roci bigger so they would fit .. Ironically the cargo bay set seems correct in size.. and the galley too.. the work shop however...

Yep figured as much 😂

I suspected this was the case. Sorry to see it confirmed though. For a show that supposedly takes its physics seriously, it breaks them in some pretty blatant ways.

So the whole flight deck and ops deck is level higher than than the airlock right. If so, then there just wee little space above the airlock that's visible in the exterior model. Was that a mistake, why make the airlock so high, if everything was to be above it?

I'd assumed it was 'cos the Roci was like Dr Who's TARDIS, bigger on the inside!

It’s like the tardis

I feel it is a bit of a let-down to flunk the architecture, after getting so many other things right. I understand, that you cannot build the skyscraper, but you could have built elevators/stairs and do a connecting shot, e.g. climbing up, cut, then arriving from the bottom in the next level, like they did with the staircase in The big bang theory. They only had one elevator door and half a staircase up and down and then shot the stairclimbing over several levels by using the same elevator door with a different sign on every time.

well, in the book is is described as stacked floors - just like you see in the game I *think* that the boys based the books on (Space Opera). That the TV folks fudged some things the Rossi is the absolutely LEAST of their sins. Good lord, Season six was disgraceful.

why didnt they just flip the armory and the airlock the oposite way ? it would have savesd tham space and would have made sence.

Just rotate the armory and airlock 180 degrees

No it doesnt give me insight as to why it doesn't fit, it seemed to fit when you overlaid the interior with the ship

i should not watch this clip. T_T

Thanks for ruining The Expanse for me ;)

"star trek syndrome" unfortunately has nothing to do with most of what you just said &more to do with your last few words &set builder incompetence (actually the showrunners/lineproducers fault set builders just do as they're told) You can easily plan out something like this accurately &keep it within build/shoot dynamic parameters if you plan it out properly then keep a record of the proportion dimensions &adhere to them.. unfortunately the sets are built before a CG model is finished &the sets aren't built to any common sense standard of what the ship WOULD look like So when the models finalised it's always kaka This is why every &I do mean EVERY ship in star trek makes zero sense proportion wise.. &is something this hapless nerds have been struggling to invent back bending justifications for for decades for instance all the problems in this piece are easily solved by making the roci 55-60 meters.. but this (to whomsoever wrote it) betrays the "little ship" doctrine/aesthetic somehow I just always thought (especially when it landed on ilus) the cg model is WAY too small.. even for the numbers given the crew to ship size differential whenever they were on its surface doing repairs etc was also usually off There's a multitude of reasons for this of course from incompetence to three diff CG teams handling models can easily lead to things like.. but the biggest cause is the showrunner didn't care enough The level of scrutiny the rest of the physics in the show came under shows they have the ability to make sure such minute details are 100% accurate.. but they decided to prioritize other elements. It is what it is.