Nero's Fire Interior Update

Still plugging away on this.

Dan

Jaspera Central Core Modelling - Part One

Work starting on the interior of the core region of the station.  Got a rough idea from some concepts on what I want to do, so now it's just time to build it.  The video above is a timelapse of the concept phase of the station's interior.

Hopefully everyone is doing awesome.

Dan

Adamant Command Deck Concept

Concept work beginning on the Palatine-class Adamant's command center.

I recently was asked via email why I didn't have more starship "bridge" sets.  The answer, in a nutshell, is command centers/bridges are stinking difficult to concept and finish out.  I always run out of steam before they're completed.  But, seeing as there's a significant lack in my portfolio for suitable command decks, I decided to move to the Adamant's Command Center.

SIDE NOTE: I kind of don't like the term "bridge" to describe a starship command center, for the simple reason that that level of retention of naval etymology really seems silly in a far advanced society.  I doubt that the Thrass, an alien race, would have had the same word etymology for their naval traditions as humans do.

In the case of the naval ships having a command deck called a "bridge", it is called that because originally an ocean going vessel had literally a raised platform which connected the wheelhouse with another part of the super structure of the ship, and it was called the bridge.  It stuck from then on.  Why a starship so far in the future would still have its command center called a bridge, I don't know.  But oh well...anyway, enough of that silliness.

Consoles.  Starting with the consoles this time, because they're the most challenging aspects of bridge designs.

Placement.  I knew the command center of the ship would be near the front, inside a heavily armored portion, with some bunker style windows looking out.  I've got to put the general placement of the various split levels.  I know I want the captain's chair and the aft sections to be raised up, with a lower level toward the front where the various lower hands operate their various stations.

Here, I simply mirrored the finished conference room to show where the captain's cabin would be.  The conference room is on the port side, the room with the table.  The captain's cabin will be somewhat adjusted to accommodate an office/ready room area and a partitioned private sleeping area for him.

The command deck itself will have three window banks at the front, with possible duty stations along the sides where there are no windows.  A central corridor will provide access from the back.  All in all, we're looking at a pretty spacious command center which should be able to house five or six duty stations comfortably.

Hopefully...

Dan

Conference Room Set Finished

So, finally finished the public edition of the conference room set and uploaded it.

Starship Conference Room B

And here is the text description:
_____

A highly detailed starship interior, suitable for use as a conference room, observation lounge, or officers' mess hall.

All previews rendered in Cycles or Blender internal engines, with post-processing nodes. UV mapping only guaranteed in .blend, .obj, and .ma versions.

Features:

--Included 25,000 px across equirectangular background image (1080p version included for low ram)*

-- Included props: 2 types of meeting chairs, easy chairs, a conference room table with a built-in holographic projector, decorative plants and planters

-- UV unwrapped screens, ready for video textures

-- Optimized for physical based render engines like Cycles or Octane

-- Maya version includes scene hierarchy and primitive light set up. (See presentation image for Maya hierarchy set up.)

*Note: Blender scene is automatically set to 'GPU Render'. The background is extremely large and may exceed graphics RAM. If so, select 'CPU Render' in the Render settings, or switch to the lower resolution version of the background.

As usual, have fun!
_________

This is the first time I've put up a triangulated mesh instead of one that tried to stick to quads as much as possible.  Which was a bit of a stressful thing, because tris are...well, rebellious at times, especially with UV unwrapping.  But I think it ended up okay.  I relied on triangles this time because of the modelling approach I did, which was much faster.  I figured that most people who purchase ready-made scene models like this aren't totally obsessed with topology.  We'll see how that goes...

It's also the first time I've uploaded a Maya version from the start.  I'm trying to go back and redo the older products to Maya, too.  But there are a lot of them, and converting them over to Maya can take the better part of two or three days, with all the elements that are in these scenes.  Ah, oh well. :)

So, I put this up here just in case someone on here might be interested in taking a look.

Hope everyone is doing well!

P.S.: And... as soon as I post this, Turbosquid goes down, thus killing my link! Isn't that just the way it works?  Well, hopefully they get the issues ironed out soon!

Adamant Interior Conference Room WIP

Continuing work on the Conference Room on board the Adamant.  Nearing completion, but still have a few details to add here and there.

By the way, if only I had a real life version of that golden Palatine to put in my room...ah, that would be wonderful.

Dan

Adamant Interior Concepts

Starting to work on the new Adamant's interior.

The bridge shell has changed shape to this, with a human model to give an impression of scale:

It's necessary to redesign the interior of the Command Deck so that it fits.

I also wanted to take this chance to redesign the ship's interior motif, too. I wanted something a bit more menacing and muted. Since the outside looks tougher. To that end, I came up with this test motif:

I'm still not thrilled with this design, and may address some of my concerns. The most notable one is...there's something about it that doesn't look good...I don't know. I know I don't like the baseboard lights. I'm going to get rid of those...the support struts also don't look quite right to me...perhaps they should follow the rounded edge motif of the rest of the design more.

Here is the Officer's Conference Room, directly aft of the Main Bridge, now, instead of to the side like the old design. This is looking to starboard. Left is forward, and that door on the left is the door to the bridge. It is shown in the old Adamant's interior color scheme. I'm seriously considering changing it.

I will definitely be adjusting the windows of the ship for the interior. I'll leave them the same on the exterior, because they're so small that they're fine the way they are. But close up, they're too angular. I'm going to round the edges for the interiors so that they provide more detail for the close-ups they'll be subjected to in any interior scenes on board the ship.

And here is the final color scheme, I think.  I need to add some stuff on the walls, including handrails, displays, door control panels and perhaps a display case for a model of the ship.

 

All that's left is adding some detail on the wall, including getting rid of the door in this image and adding a table.  I'm thinking on a circular table, with a holographic display in the center for presentations.  If that's the case, I'll change out the ceiling to fit the table. Instead of the door to the left in the following image, I want to put a display of a model of the Adamant (probably in silver or gold).  Right now the room has 3 doors.  The door to the left just leads out into the central corridor leading from the bridge, and 2 doors is more than sufficient for this room.

The table here is probably a bit too big around.   The bridge crew consists of 6 people--the captain, first officer, helm, comms officer, gunnery, and sensor officer.  The chief engineer would likely be included in meetings, too, so, at most, I'd need room for just 8 - 10 seats.

Dan

Adamant Work Nearly Done

Just a little post today, showing work done so far on the Adamant refit.  Got the new warp winglet pods animated and ready.  I also bit the bullet and completely remodeled the wings and the thruster pods on the wings, as the curvature was a bit funky. 

"Reduce speed, bring us out of warp." -- Every nerd sitting in the bathroom at one point or another in their lives...

The ship's mesh is extremely heavy, now...3.4 million faces. :|  I've got to bring that down considerably.  The gun turrets add a whole 1.5 - 2 million faces by themselves.  Alas, it can't be helped.  Reducing back faces on the extruded hull plates will help somewhat.  The finalized mesh will probably use triangular faces because of the difficulties of combining quads with tris.

She's a beauty, even unoptimized :)

The new cowlings over the aft wing thrusters are purposely drawn back and less obtrusive so they can show the thrust nozzles more prominently.

Pretty much all that's left is finishing out some minor details, killing backfaces, creating the new interiors of the main sublight engines, animating those, and finishing out the forward deflector dish.  Then she'll be in great shape for film!

Dan

Finished Gingerbreed Sample Work

So, continued work on Gingerbreed.  The guys over at HiFI3D sent me some finals yesterday featuring one of the digital sets I built for them.

Here are some original OpenGL versions of the Colony set as it was being built:

Since this set was to be different from the rest of the sets built previously, I started with a single panel to get an okay from Jon and Szymon

The set was to be heavily damaged and distressed, but I started from a pristine state to get an idea what the location looked like before its demise

Jon and Szymon would give me helpful feedback on the project.  Since the scene was to include live action shots already completed, certain geometry had to be placed correctly to accommodate the paths of objects as they moved through the digital environment.  Some of these changes may stay, others may be removed at virtually any time in the production

The central core of the set was left for last.  Again, due to shooting constraints, the over all floor plan had to be followed closely

I model in Blender, because I find the modelling suite there to be easier and faster to work with.  But the film uses Maya, so the sets have to be exported to Maya scenes and set up in a certain hierarchy to facilitate lighting, texturing and shooting.

From there, Jon and Szymon take the modelled scene, light and texture it and then render it out for backgrounds for the action.  The results look like this:

So, that's what I do for a living. :)

Hope everyone enjoyed this little foray into the world of a digital environment modeller!

Dan