Pluto Station

[tobian]

Hi all

Well I thought I would introduce myself properly, because you're all probably thinking (likelly not) why is that guy who takes like 3 weeks to rearange a couple of quads on a face, isn't he finished that pink man by now hehe

Well 'Pink Man' is part of this project...



I've been working on the Pluto Station for err 2+ years or so, as I have learned the programme, so has the station in turn added a new layer of complexity: As my style develops, and I learn new methods, and my computer speed gets higher (hehe) I add more too it. The station it's self is based on a planform and design I worked out back then. it's largelly the same, only I have massivelly refined the detailing on it. People do ask me.. are you just keep going to add to it ? Well no, I just want to finish it all to an acceptable level of detail... The problem is, it's working out like the Forth Rail Bridge... As soon as I finish painting it to the end, I have to start over at the other, because I raise the bar!

Quick couple of Q and A, as I get asked the same things over and over!

Q: When will you be finished?
A: When it's done.

Q: Can you now render the whole thing, I wanna see?
A: Nope.. the model is spread accross multiple files, so it takes too long to reassemble while I am working on it. The oldest pic of it whole is http://comby.star-fleet.org/test72.jpg and i've added a heap more on it since then, as it's almost a year ago! But I haven't got the pieces in a fit shape to be re-intergrated to the point it was at.

Q: How many polies does it have?
A: Not sure, 2-3 million, again hard to know as 1) I often optimise sections of the mesh and 2) it's hard to guestimate without assembling it: Se above.

I'm currently rendering it in Fprime a lot these days, due to the rendering overhead, but I hit a memory wall with F-prime when i only had 1 gig of memory, but I haven't tried since I got the new computer with 2 (and I am thinking of upping it to 4 hehe) Most of the textures on the station are (now) simple layered cubic mapped textures subtly applied in multichanels. The panel work I've recently been doing comprises of hull segments from a random (artistically) selection of surfaces, with slightly different spec/diff/gloss and texturing, to create the illusion of more complex painting, as it's WAY to timetaking to UV the whole thing!

Any questions or comments welcome, and crits, though these are of course WIP's spanning a few months, so if you spot any mesh errors I probably already zapped them a while ago!

[Jim M]

Its very good my friend, but where is the Pink Man?

Oh and I love all the bevels!

[tobian]

Hehe, posted on here a while ago http://www.spinquad.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14203 It was my first WIP shown, but I haven't done much with him since I did that, i wanted to get back to the station!

And cheers!

[spunkyfl]

wow I just got way to overexcited about this. yeah sure the pink man was good and had some things that needed worked on, but then you come and pull this outta nowhere, its awesome and I absolutely drooled over all the detail you have done so far, very nicely done, not to much to crit on as of yet.

[MLynch]

Excellent work so far, tobain! Wow! It feels like Star Trek meets Space:1999... very cool. And I really like the level of detail your putting into it - both in modeling and textures.

My only comment is that in this shot it looks like there's some rust going on... I space their wouldn't be any water vapor. ...at least not in a liquid state.

Otherwise I love what you've got here. I can't wait to see more.

[tobian]

Yeah I'm gonna swap those surfaces round a little, the rusty surface was just to add a bit of interest to smaller decals. It was a bit of a fight to decide on how those surfaces would work, and they are all very much a WIP, and I will likelly go nodal when f-prime does likewise, so I can add anisotrphic specularity and such!

Much of the lighting in those renders is just using full scene radiosity in Fprime (with A LOT of passes) - hence the long rendering times hehe - lighting rigs for the station become mind boggling. I set up a lighting rig for the inside of the round cargo bay, with a spinning pont light for each light source.. something like 96.. which just killed renderer hehe

The bit I am working on right now is the docking boom, which I had previously 'finished' but I am now bringing it up to the same standard as my new core section, and fixing the scale of things, which is why I got round to making pink man! I have some pics links here and here whereyou can see how I made up the original interior and textured surfaces

Cheers for the kind compliments all!

[tobian]

Hi all, not had much time to work on the model recently, but other than some work on the shuttle bay I've been trying to finish the coridoor segment. I think I'll add a few panels on the round, but it's just about done. Need to tweak the metalic surface a smidge, but it's nearly there, and the extra bright panels are a bit hot, but otherwise I'd have to add in invisible extra bright surface panels for the radiosity solution as if I lowe their brightness from anything but blown out ube bright, they don't have much impact on the scene. FYI, other than an area light outside the object, for external lighting, that's all being lit by the object's luminosoty, and reflectance. Hope you all like!

[mathius]

those images above are awesome!! id love to be able to do constructed models that well, but outside of organic shapes i struggle!

its a great style, kinda feels like a union of Starwars and StarTrek! brilliant!

have to say tho, i prefer the hallway in the top images as this one above has very heavy texturing which i find distracting from the scene. just a thought. the clean look at the top works almost perfectly i think.

keep it comin!

[tobian]

I think it's the crispness of the reflection and the strength of the texture which is spoiling it a little, I guess I have to micronoise a little more, and maybe add more reflection blur (as well as knock back the texture!). While I know what you mean the above images lacked any sort of specular highlights or sheen, because of the lack of light sources, so sadly I have to do em in reflection which is much expensive in render time!

[tobian]

Hopefully you like this one better! the micro-noise worked out a treat! Also dulled the reflection texture a little - and then let it bake for about 5 hours LOL

[ZAPPER1998]

Looks awesome so far, love the textures, nodal or old surface editor or both, ??

[Iain]

These are really good.
When you look at work like this you imagine it would be easy to come up with sci-fi designs as it's been part of our poular culture for so long but it's not.
Every time I try it it just looks plain daft.

[ZAPPER1998]

These are really good.
When you look at work like this you imagine it would be easy to come up with sci-fi designs as it's been part of our poular culture for so long but it's not.
Every time I try it it just looks plain daft.

I agree, totally.....

[tobian]

I am just using regular lightwave surfaces, untill Lightwave 9.X when it supports F-prime I REALLY wouldn't like to think how long that would take in renderer

Cheers for the compliments guys! The hard part about Scifi is making things up out of your head, and thinking of the functionality of the piece. I've been struggling with this model for a few years, so don't think it's easy! Once you have got your basic shape (probably the hardest part hehe) The best way to model is to rationalise form and function and work out roughly where things go. That's why the interior and the exterior in most of this model marry up - it's just hard work! In there, there's a vent in the recess of the cieling (which I was trying to get in frame, hence the odd angle), which marries with the vents and purge systems on the roof of that section. Why they have a purge system down the length is not mine to say, other than 'cause it looks nice hehe

[MLynch]

Really coming along nicely, Tobian.

And looking at your work it's obvious that you put a lot of time into considering the functionality of the design - which really helps lend a sense of credibility to the work.

Looking forward to more.