These WIP shots of the Nikola Tesla are modelled and rendered in Anim8or, the final animations will be rendered in Carrara for speed. Materials have not been decided in most cases and much modelling remains to be done.
The first shot shows the redesigned bridge exterior, the structure altered to allow side windows. The alignment of the bridge is at 90° to the rest of the decks and an access tube runs through each deck and ultimately down the centre of the spine to the engine rooms.
The second shot is an early WIP of the bridge interior. The main instrumentation graphics are in place, switch gear, controls, overhead graphics panels etc. remain to be built.
The control stations are, from left to right, Navigation, Command Pilot, Pilot (essentially co-pilot) and Engineering/Operations. The central feature is the access hatch to the central crawl tube and to the avionics/data processing bays below the bridge (this will undergo further modelling to make it look more like a hatch and less like a storm-water drain!). Interior surfaces are yet to be textured and several layers of further detail will be added.
The display graphics take a long time to construct, these are the result of about 20 hours work and are based on a combination of ship controls and those seen on the space shuttle. Certain areas will be animated such as attitude gimbal and scanner displays.
The ship is still missing a lot of external parts, mainly the 5 massive fuel tanks (3 along the top of the spine, 2 below), the lander vehicle (below the spine in the gap where a 6th fuel tank would be), and the cargo container pods down each side of the spine. Along with these will be communications tower/dish, manipulator arm(s), additional habitation pods, and of course texturing and bump-mapping. Some of these parts are under construction by other members of the team, check out
http://www.wreckamovie.com/missionbackupearth if you want to join.
All comments, crits, submissions etc. are, as always, gratefully accepted.
