Artwork > Finished Works and Works in Progress
Mission Backup Earth - the TV Series (hopefully)
ENSONIQ5:
Thanks for the feedback dwsel, much appreciated. I am also waiting for somebody to claim the suit design so I can fit out the suiting-up area near the main airlock.
Re the points you have made:
- Table texture: anisotropic textures are notoriously hard to simulate. I have tried this before in Carrara with limited success, and it involved a very complex (slow) shader setup. Since at this stage I have no idea what shots (if any) will actually be taken in the galley I am reluctant to overload the renderer unnecessarily. The galley could just be background, glimpsed from the control room through the open doorway, with no actual close-up shots.
The overcooked texture fault in the previous render was due to an over-bright lighting setup resulting from the large number of overhead lights. I have adjusted this, though again the lighting setup is not yet finalised as it needs to match the live shots (and vice-versa).
The table leg and seat base material has also been revised.
- The floor texture has been revised to make it look less pristine. Again, as it is unlikely that the floor will be seen in the final shots, I am reserving further work until the shot schedule is complete.
- The cans were actually a dull aluminium in the previous shots, the flat white appearance was the result of the uniform soft lighting (that's why photographers choose this lighting setup!). I have revised the material a bit and lowering the overall light level also served to improve the metallic appearance. I have also revised the key colour to be more metallic, but again this is not really apparent due to the flat, diffuse lighting.
- I have revised some of the wall edges, bevelling where appropriate (and where it won't mess up the UV mapping) and smoothing in other cases. Whether this is sufficient or whether the UV map requires rejigging depends again on the shooting schedule. With so much to do I can't spend much time fixing things that won't be seen. This is true of the wall texture resolution as well, if a shot does show a section of wall in foreground I will revise the texture for that part only, so rendering time does not suffer.
- The floor texture issue in the second render above is a moire effect, caused by interference between two dissimilar patterns. This will be reduced in the final renders with full AA and render accuracy settings.
Re additional props, absolutely the more the merrier. I really need to move on to other rooms in the base (airlock, corridor & hub, habitat etc.) as they have been mentioned in the existing storyboard, and the control room needs more work as well, particularly since that's where the bulk of the action happens.
EDIT
The seat texture and shape was always a place holder and it always annoyed me, had to redevelop them. The texture will need dirtying up a bit.
Modeler_in_the_Myst:
In contrast to the smears and coffee rings on the table surfaces, the seat cushions look too clean in my opinion.
It also makes them look rather samey.
EDit: *blush* re-read your post, yeah, I see now your planning to change that. All right then.
$imon:
Hey Ensoniq.. I like the tables a lot better now, but I have to agree that the seats do not match too well. They look a bit like they are taken from a 70's diner instead of a space station 200 years from now.
I know you're going a bit for a used- and nothing-too-fancy look, but I think you should try to incorporate some elements that are futuristic. Maybe I've watched some movies that are a bit over-futuristic, but I think the designs would be a bit more stylized and futuristic looking. (maybe a bit in the direction of http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/16600000/Moon-sam-rockwell-16677357-500-208.jpg from Moon? )
I guess what I'm trying to say is that your materials look a bit rough and heavy, whereas if it all had to be shipped billions of miles from earth, I think they would design things a bit smarter using lighter materials instead of heavy cushioned couches, rough metals for walls, heavy oven/stoves? etc. And maybe a bit more lighter, slicker and compacter things that have been invented in the 200 years from now?
I like the addition of some personal belongings on the wall, but the pictures look a bit forced.. I'm sure you were going to change that still though.
Modeler_in_the_Myst:
One possible source of inspiration for a good 'look' for a space outpost is the Sean Connery movie, Outland. Ignoring the primitive computers and 70's fashion, it really looks how I personally would expect a space outpost to look, gritty and functional, like an oil rig.
A place to work, not to live.
A little detail but noticeable all the same is to maybe change the inside lip of the mugs to a smoother curve. Right now it looks too sharp. The plate might also benefit from a few more polygons or a subdivision.
ENSONIQ5:
Thanks guys, all very good points. As far as possible the Triton base will have been constructed from locally sourced materials, this being by far the cheapest way to construct something like this. The walls of the 'bunker' section of the base, where these rooms are, are made from a concrete-type material, possibly made from mixing carbon fibres (produced from the hydrocarbon-rich surface layers that give Triton it's pinkish hue) with water (also abundant in frozen form) that has been chemically modified to raise the melting temperature. Water/fibre based concrete has been shown to have properties eminently suitable to construction of this type; it's crushing resistance is not as strong as concrete but its tensile strength is significantly better (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete).
I totally agree re the interior fittings being quite heavy and I dithered on this point considerably before committing to these models. While we are trying to stick to 'science-fact' rather than sci-fi as far as possible with this series, it is important that the audience understand the industrial nature of the base. The image from Moon looks to me like a present-day dentist's office... while this may well be the industrial look of the future it doesn't convey the concept of 'industrial' at all. I based the design concepts for the galley equipment from those facilities on modern naval and commercial ships, my thinking was that this sort of equipment must be extremely reliable since replacement would be astronomically expensive. I found it very difficult to combine 'futuristic' + 'well used' + 'lightly made' + 'robust & reliable' so I pretty much fell back on well used and reliable, these being the most prominent points in the design brief.
Regarding the seat, although to a certain extent I wouldn't expect seats to change all that much over time (since human backsides will pretty much stay the same in that period) I agree regarding materials and construction techniques. Possibly the seat fabric would have been shipped without stuffing, the padding being produced locally from expanded hydrocarbon-sourced plastic foam. In this case the cushioning might follow a far more basic design rather than the current upholstered look. I will revise the cushioning shortly, I have an idea that might work ok.
The pictures on the walls are a start, really. The plan is to put many more things on the walls, like kids drawings, posters, calendars, cartoons, whatever; the sort of thing people stick on the walls to remind them of home. The problem is the time it takes to construct and map this sort of stuff is incredibly restrictive, the existing photos represent about 5 or 6 hours of work. The shooting schedule has not yet been finalised and it could well be that there are no actual shots in the galley area at all (its original idea was to show 'more rooms' beyond the control room, basically just background detail). There are other areas I need to move on to, I figured I'd rearrange and add more details as required by the shots... if it won't be seen there's no point modelling it!
I remember Outland well (with the explosive head-swells!), unfortunately there's not a lot of interior imagery available. The design inspiration for much of the other interior spaces is probably most like the Nostromo from Alien, though perhaps less deliberately oppressive and 'drippy'. You're quite right re the integrity of the cup and plate MITM, these models were originally only going to be seen high on a shelf so the accuracy/speed balance was a bit heavy on the 'speed' side. I will replace these with finer models, and probably with a metallic rather than ceramic appearance.
Sorry about the text wall, I have been working on nothing else for a couple of months now and it seems I can carry on about it indefinitely!! Thanks again for the feedback and I'll have some revised images up soon.
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