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Tag: 3D
Having fun with an iconic Sci-Fi Design: An alternate USS Enterprise – Part 3
While I’m still tinkering with the texturing and smaller details of the mesh of my alternate USS Enterprise, I thought it was time to create a space scene. The majority of sci-fi renders of spaceships incorporate of combination of nebulas, clouds, suns, stars and planets, and unfortunately I did not strain from these conventions. In my defence these cliched elements provide a physical source of exterior illumination rather then an invisible light.*First I rendered out a view of the Enterprise to bring into Photoshop. I made sure to make the render a TIFF file and included an alpha channel. In Photoshop the alpha channel masks/eliminates the space around the Enterprise, making the lower photoshop layers visible. I decided to use a nebula and a planet as background objects, with the nebula being the main light source. The next step was creating these objects in Photoshop.
Having fun with an iconic Sci-Fi Design: An alternate USS Enterprise – Part 2
Since my last post I’ve been playing around with the textures, lighting and composting of my alternate Enterprise in order to make it look “real”. I’m using Cinema 4D v.11 and the multi-pass settings to get different layers/passes of the mesh, such as a specular pass, a lighting pass, a global illumination pass, etc. I take these passes into Photoshop and create a more dynamic, realistic, render of the Enterprise using filters, opacity settings and layer settings such as Multiply or Soft Light.Instead of having one main light I am using two, one for illumination and one for specularity. I keep the illumination light low, at around 30% and bump up the specular light to 120%. This seems to work quite well. This also gives the mesh a metallic sheen and reflective quality without actually using a reflective map, which helps keep render times down. I’ve also added textures resembling peeling paint and small dents (from space debris) to suggest the Enterprise isn’t new and has been in the far reaches of unexplored space for a while.
Click continue to see a slideshow of my alternate USS Enterprise
Having fun with an iconic Sci-Fi Design: An alternate USS Enterprise
Its been a long time since I lasted posted (over a year in fact) so I decided to show something I’ve been working on in my spare time. I guess you could call me a fairweather Star Trek fan. I grew up watching The Next Generation as a kid as well as the six films starring the original cast. I don’t know the ins and outs of the show or how transporters, warp drives, or the reverse tachyon side split burst array influx emitters work but I knew episodes like “Darmok” or “Best of Both Worlds” were damn good television.One thing I liked more about the original series, and the movies as well, was the design of the Enterprise. Simple shapes were combined into an aesthetically pleasing design which suggested it could be repaired or maintained by Scotty and his underlings in the far reaches of the galaxy without retreating to any (space)ports, like sailing vessels of long ago. Yet when I first saw the new Enterprise design for 2009 re-boot film, I thought it was extremely ugly and jarring, despite sharing the same basic design features and principles as it’s 1960’s predecessor.
3D Missiles
I have added some new images in the gallery section. These images are renders of three different missiles constructed in Cinema 4D. The missiles were created for a project depicting a desert combat animation. The rest of the animation used models built by other people so I have not included them in the gallery. The three type of missiles I modeled are a Hellfire, a TOW 2B, and a Tomahawk.I also modeled interiors for the missiles to showcase during animations. In television shows about military hardware, such as tanks or planes, the animation switches from a fairly realistic style to a draft style while information about the weapon or object is displayed. After the information is displayed the animation reverts back to the realistic style. The following is a brief animation I created emulating this approach. (more…)