Grand Space Opera 3D Entry: Jay Sprenkle

#1

This looks like a great contest! I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.

#2

I’m undecided about what to do with this. I was thinking about a grand sweeping vista of some
tremendous achievement. It might not evoke much emotion in the viewer though. I can evoke
emotion by making the image small and personal, but that’s a bit at odds with the theme of the
contest!

#3

“Tik’rin wondered what they would find on the other side of the gateway. The road to this moment
had been a long one for the Triagen race. It had been almost half a thousand years since Tir’aun
had dreamt of their race swimming among the stars. So many failures before scientists had found
a power source able to lift them above the waters of their home world and into space. The
discovery of the secret of opening a gateway to other places would let them travel the galaxy.
He wondered what they would find once they got there. His job as commander of the first
Triagen expedition was to be ready for anything and to bring home his people. They would
choose peace, if that option was left to them. If not, the fleet would be ready for any challenge.
If they were attacked there would be blood in the water.”

Preliminary sketch of Triagen launcher ship
Triagen race symbol

#4

nice…but in order for this to count you have to use the cgtalk submit entree section

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/grandspaceopera/submit_entry.php

it won’t count for the efferent until you use it

#5

“Tik’rin wondered what they would find on the other side of the gateway. The road to this moment had been a long one for the Triagen race. It had been almost half a thousand years since Tir’aun
had dreamt of their race swimming among the stars. So many failures before scientists had found a power source able to lift them above the waters of their home world and into space. The discovery of the secret of opening a gateway to other places would let them travel the galaxy. He wondered what they would find there. His job as commander of the first
Triagen expedition was to be ready for anything and to bring home his people and the knowledge they would gain. They would choose peace, if that option was left to them. If not, the fleet would be ready for any challenge. If they were attacked there would be blood in the water.”

The Triagen evolved from an octopus like creature on a watery world. They had to overcome many obstacles to finally get to space, but once there they were at home swimming among the stars.

#6

This was no big problem to model. I used
one of the max primitives, converted it
to a poly, and did a few extrusions. I
decided to do all the detail as texture
maps instead of modeling it all since
it would look fine and be a lot easier.

I thought it would be really simple to
UVW map it as well, but it ended up
being a lot harder than I expected. I
wanted to map all the faces to the same
place on the map image since they would
all be the same. The faces that weren’t
parallel to a world axis just wouldn’t
line up without a lot of manual tweeks.
There is an option to align a planar map
to the normal of the face but
it always came out twisted. I
finally just detached the faces, mapped
them, then attached them again. That
worked out much better.

#7

A lot of these will be visible in the
background. They’ll be small so I won’t
need to put much effort into them.

#8

I thought I would try to get a feel for how the composition will work.
In the size they require for the contest it looks like it will work fine with the concept sketch I have.
The depressing part of this whole contest is comparing my work against all the REALLY fine artists here.
I’ve learned a lot even if I don’t come anywhere close to winning. It’s certainly helping my motivation a
lot too!

#9

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