Vehicle: Damaged Spaceship

#1

Hello world! :slight_smile:

I’ve been visiting the Cinema4D forum for quite some time now, but this is my first post in this forum.

I am working on a short animated sci-fi movie (just a hobby project) and am currently in the process of finishing up my models, I’ll be able to start animating and rendering pretty soon. However, I’ve been a little bit stuck with this spaceship for some time now, so I decided to dare asking your opinions and ideas regarding it.

I am having some trouble deciding on stuff (greebles or whatever they are called) for the internals of the ship where the rear section has been shot off. So, any ideas are very welcome!

Of course, any other comments and critique is appreciated as well!

Here first is a closeup of the section I am working on. Needs a lot of cleaning up, thickening of some of the struts and more cabling, not to mention texture work.

Pate

#2

Here is an overview of the damaged ship. It is supposed to look like the rear section has been shot/torn off. Am I anywhere near that goal?

ShipStructure02.jpg965x694

Pate

#3

Here is a picture of an undamaged (besides minor debris scratches) ship, for reference.

ShipBody01.jpg965x694

Thanks for reading this far, I hope I didn’t bore you to death with such a clichey (is that a word?) scifi project!

Pate

#4

Thats some really awesome detail and lighting. :applause:

#5

Originally posted by cyberjunkie
Thats some really awesome detail and lighting. :applause:

Thanks for the compliments! Though I’m not sure what you mean by awesome lighting, it consists of a single hard shadow spotlight. :slight_smile:

I am still working on the rear section, will post an update when I have made some noticeable changes.

I’ll need to add some more battle damage as well, not sure yet how to approach that. We shall see…

Pate

#6

well, i hate to spoil it for you, although this is a nice job, there are some things terribly wrong. The spaceship’s design is… just not nice, and what’s the point with this image? What is it trying to depict? The damaged spaceship doesn’t really look damaged at all, just yet being build. All enviromental elements are missing and any clue that something has damaged the spaceship is also missing.

#7

Originally posted by diazgl
well, i hate to spoil it for you, although this is a nice job, there are some things terribly wrong. The spaceship’s design is… just not nice, and what’s the point with this image? What is it trying to depict? The damaged spaceship doesn’t really look damaged at all, just yet being build. All enviromental elements are missing and any clue that something has damaged the spaceship is also missing.

Thanks for the reply!

The spaceship is an old atmospheric-capable cargo shuttle that has later been militarized (the docking ring and weapons pods added, along with reinforced hull plating). I tried to make the design reflect this, a mixture of sleek aerodynamic main body with some space-only modifications. If you can pinpoint some specific problems you have with the design, please let me know. Though, I think the design looking “nice” is a rather subjective matter. :slight_smile:

The point of this image is just to showcase the model. As it will be used in an animation, I am not concerned about putting it into a scene yet.

Perhaps it looks still being built because the current damage is not extensive or random enough? I am attempting to fix this problem next. I’ll hope to have an updated image in a few days.

Thanks for the criticism!

Pate

#8

it would help you scetch in a piece of paper the orientation of the hit, how would it affect your structure and what was the projectile… was it an energy beam(aka starwars)? was it apiece of concrete? was it a missile (3 possibilties here, missile exploded on surface, after piercing the haul, or in proximity)

#9

Perhaps something on the material of the spaceship? I mean, it looks kinda fake at the moment. It would help to download some reference photos if you havent already…

Also, those booleans on the front are kinda spoiling it for you. I think your design is close to the NASA space bus.

Also you are right on the hard lighting, but add another source or use the 3-light rule to light up the shadpws, they are too dark at the moment.

Also, your solar power cells (I assume they are) are kinda off. They are not reflective and are missing specularity.

Notice the materials and shadows on the link I give you.Spaceman

#10

@sumatra: Thanks for the tip! I hadn’t actually thought much about the kind of weapon that has caused the damage. I only have an idea about how the rear section was torn of (the upper fuel tank ruptured/exploded first, which then caused the other two tanks to explode as well).

@diazgl:
Yes, the materials are still quite unfinished. I am rather fond of the general aluminium feel, but I need to add a lot of wear and tear. I have some reference photos, the problem is I don’t much like the look of the space ship material in any of them. :slight_smile:

The design looking like a NASA vehicle is not a bad thing in my opinion. It is supposed to be an alternate universe ship, with a technology level very close to our current level. So, this is not a futuristic ship. The Reaction Control System works much like in a space shuttle, besides the addition of the extra jets in the weapons pods.

I have a scene with a proper lighting waiting for the finished ship, so I haven’t spent any time working on lighting the plain model.

Yeah, the solar cells are somewhat of a problem. I downloaded a lot of reference photos, and noticed that solar cells are actually not blue. They look like black glass unless they are reflecting blue sky. Since there is no blue sky in space the panels should be black, but then they did not look at all like solar panels! I’ll work on them again at some point.

I started working on some damage textures. I’m not very happy with the result, but I think the hull looks better than without the textures, at least. :slight_smile:

ShipStructure03.jpg965x694

Still a lot of work to do…

Pate

#11

It seems the damage is almost only at the hull plating, i’d suggest if a tank blew up or something, you could put some broken pipes where the tank was connected, also it looks a bit to ‘clean’ at the back.

also some bend out plating would be nice (if the damage was done by an explosion, with an imposion it would look a bit different of course)

you could also leave out some (broken) hull plates to make it look older and more used. :wip:

but overall it looks great,
one question though, how does it fly through the atmosphere? you got some anti grav fields underneath or something?

#12

Originally posted by SpooX
[B]
…

you could also leave out some (broken) hull plates to make it look older and more used. :wip:

but overall it looks great,
one question though, how does it fly through the atmosphere? you got some anti grav fields underneath or something? [/B]

Yeah, some missing or replaced hull plating might give an interesting look, I’ll try that.

I think when the ship was atmosphere-capable it had a delta wing and a vetical stabilizer for atmospheric flight. Those were removed when the ship was converted to space-only military use.

Here is an updated image again, I did some more texture work on the rear. I think it is starting to look like an explosion damage.

ShipStructure04.jpg965x694

Next I plan to work on the rest of the hull plating.

Thanks for all your comments, I am finally seeing some progress with this ship!

Pate

#13

yeah, you’re on a good track, keep it coming!!!

#14

Hi again!

Here is a small update. I have been trying various laser scorch marks and other damage, but haven’t yet found anything that would have looked good in my opinion. Need to do some more testing…

Anyways, I added a dent on the side of the ship and did some other minor tweaks and additions.

ShipBody02.jpg965x694

Pate

#15

that is a very nice model! ok, maybe just add some mode debris behind where its damaged, making it more spread out perhaps? How did you do the plate armour?

#16

Originally posted by BlackWolf
that is a very nice model! ok, maybe just add some mode debris behind where its damaged, making it more spread out perhaps? How did you do the plate armour?

Thanks!

Yes, I could add some more damage to the rear section, but I also want the ship to have some hits from laser fire, both from previous battles and from the most recent battle that caused the serious damage to the rear.

The plate armour was done in a “brute force” method. I used box modeled cage inside a hypernurbs object to get the overall shape of the ship. Then I converted the result to a polygon object, and selected square groups of polygons (mostly 3x3 or 4x4) diagonally, like only the back squares on a checkerboard, and inner-extruded these 0.3mm and then extruded them 1mm. Then did the same to the remaining areas (white squares on a checkerboard, if you will).

I hope that description was clear enough? I could also post a wireframe if you would want to see that?

Pate

#17

one other thing about the damage section.
You must think of what was the usage of the destroyed space. Right now it seems like a ‘room’ with no access to the front of the ship and not any connection to the back.
One other thing is we dont get to see some structural frame, it seems that the engine was in the cutted off piece of the hull, so the underlying structure in the piece we see would be more apparent since it would have to support the hole ship.
And a last thing that would add to realism, try to enchance the damaged crossection by adding multiple levels to it, right now its like a corrridor and then the armor.

Texturing is coming along nice, keep it going :slight_smile:

#18

Thanks for the suggestions, sumatra!

The destroyed space was the fuel tank area. It has only some localized penetrations in the firewall between the engine/fuel tank compartment and the cargo/passenger space, to make the firewall withstand such catastrophic events as has just happened to this ship. :slight_smile:

You are correct, though, the damaged area should have some loosely hanging wires and hydraulic lines, at least. I haven’t yet gotten round to adding those.

Here is a see-thru image of the undamaged ship, which I used to decide on the location of various external elements of the ship.

ShipSeeThru.jpg965x694

The engine support structs, which were located behind the fuel tanks, have been blown off in the explosion. To save weight the ship does not have any internal chasis, it uses an aluminium honeycomb structure, much like the Space Shuttle.

I purchased a book “The space shuttle operator’s manual” as a reference for this project, and also have been using the structural schematics from Shuttle Operational Data Book when doing the damaged section.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/sodb/

Yes, the damaged cross-section is a problem, I agree. The armor plates should have a thickness to them, which is rather difficult to achieve when relying on textures as much as I did.

On the other hand, since this model is to be used in an animation having some motion blur, I think making the mesh heavily detailed might not really be needed. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the comments, I’ll see what I can do about the problems!

Pate

#19

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