Donny's Enterprise-D Interiors (Unreal Game Engine)

[Donny]

Well, needless to say I dropped off the boards for a bit. Had to take a break from the constant work I was putting myself through, and a much needed break from the obsession of all things Trek. Made a few life changes, caught up on non-Trek movies, TV, and games, and just enjoyed my free time in general.

However, I got the itch again. I started working on some Enterprise-D interiors shortly before I took my break. I made a few changes in my modelling and texturing techniques, and I think the results speak for themselves. There are subtle things like the illusion of chamfered edges and extra detail made possible by heavy use of normal maps, baked-in ambient occlusion, and a few more things. I am kicking myself for not using these techniques in my TOS project, but it is a learning process after all!

I don't have a grand plan in mind to do an entire representation of the Enterprise-D's interiors (I doubt it would even be possible), so much like my previous projects, I'll just be working on a few key areas here and there. And for anyone interested, I'm depicting the interiors as seen in TNG's last season.

Oh, and due to someone (whose name I will not mention) using some of my TOS screenshots and modifying them without my permission, I've decided to include a stamp on all my screens from now on.

Here's what I have so far:

Corridors:
Welcome to the Enterprise Hotel!




The basic layout of this string of corridors is meant to resemble the actual set on Paramount Stage 9








I love this little corridor nook. The "jaws of life" doors were a pain to model.


Transporter Room

This was the most fun I've had modelling in a long time. Hopefully here you can see how much detail I've put into the room, right down to the panelling on the walls.


I'm building all the LCARS from scratch in Adobe Illustrator using various references. Coloring on the LCARS is a bit tough, due to the variation of on-screen appearances.








A seldom seen view from the transporter pad


I'm particularly proud of the transporter pad. A custom normal map is applied to give the illusion of indentions of paneling in the surface, but in reality it's a completely flat surface. A gaming engine wouldn't be able to handle all the polygons if all those lines were actually modeled into the surface.


This nook is as it appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual CD-ROM


Turbolift:



Let me know what you think!

 

[Blip]

They're awesome! Admittedly I'm only connected via the mobile right now, but these look realistic enough to reach out and touch....

My only crit is that you're using the wrong era font for your watermark...

 

[SPCTRE]

Positively stunning.

A bit like the first time I was playing the demo for Elite Force, exploring the Voyager's bridge, looking at your work makes me want to run around and peek at every nook and cranny. Awesome job!

 

[blssdwlf]

Looks beautiful Donny. And thank you for describing some of the techniques you used. Very insightful. The only quirky thing I see is that some of the shadows have a jaggedness to them. Is that a function on how UDK samples the scene to generate shadows?

 

[137th Gebirg]

I can't even see the texture repetition in the carpet - it actually looks freshly vacuumed! This is one of the best interiors I've ever seen - well done!

 

[Robert Comsol]

I'm tempted to say "as usual" but there is nothing "usual" about this fine and outstanding work.

Having visited the transporter room set 26 years ago in February, Donny's transporter room looks more realistic and authentic than the "real" thing (the only one minor thing, it's really nothing, is the "flat" look of the - what you call it? - sound-absorbing panels in the transport chamber. I guess it would be a nightmare to add "depth" to these)

Beautiful. And regardless whether you are a TOS, a TMP or TNG fan, Donny has now recreated studio sets from all three, how much more could you possibly ask?

And it is good to have you back. I for one have no issues whatsoever that you take long breaks, considering what you bring with you each time you come back.

Bob

 

[RoJoHen]

I don't even understand how awesome these look.

 

[Donny]

Looks beautiful Donny. And thank you for describing some of the techniques you used. Very insightful. The only quirky thing I see is that some of the shadows have a jaggedness to them. Is that a function on how UDK samples the scene to generate shadows?

Sort of. The shadows and lighting you see here are baked-in, meaning that it is calculated before rendering and is static. The lighting itself is rendered onto bitmaps and applied to the surfaces of the models. They tend to get jaggy when depicting diagonal shadows, because of square nature of bitmaps. It's something of a pain for me, as I try to get the best looking shadows possible (lighting has always been one of my highest priorities).

There are options in UDK to have dyanmic lighting, which is much cleaner, but the downside with that is that there is no global illumination, and shadows are much less realistic as a result. Not to mention that dynamic lighting takes a big hit on performance when rendering. Most games built with UDK use a combination of static lighting and dynamic lighting. There are cases where I will use both (such as the Enterprise-D's Engineering set), but in most cases it is unnecessary.

It's one of those things I have to live with, until UDK is upgraded, perhaps. UDK is still a very good free-to-use engine, despite it's few limitations.

]My only crit is that you're using the wrong era font for your watermark...

I had trouble finding a good font in the style of the TNG credits. The one I had looked terrible and not very authentic, so I stuck with the one you see above. If anyone knows of a good TNG style font, please send it my way.

 

[137th Gebirg]

The movie font was also used for DS9 and Voyager title headings, so it could be considered era-correct, even though the subject matter is strictly TNG.

 

[Sgt_G]

Okay, fess up: you snuck onto the studio sets and took photos, didn't you?

 

[JarodRussell]

That is extremely cool. Can you show a few wireframes and some textures? That would be great.

 

[Tiberius Jim]

Sweet sassy molassey, this is awesome. And these are rendered using a game engine? I would love to see a video of any of these sets in action. This would be perfect as a follow up to that old Simon & Schuester "game" Captain's Chair. I used to spend so much time poking around on the bridges in that thing, and this would be about a billion times cooler.

 

[Toxteth O´Grady]

These look fantastic!

I long for a software program that allows you to walk around in near-realistic renditions of all of the Star Trek sets. I was hoping that Star Trek Online was going to feature this, but almost all of the interiors in that game are original designs exclusive to the game.

 

[Donny]

That is extremely cool. Can you show a few wireframes and some textures? That would be great.

Here are some in-game shots with the wireframes showing:

Here you see that, for instance, the "K-Beam" recessed areas are actually textures that give the illusion of detail.








Okay, here you see that the transporter pad is a perfectly flat surface, and all detail is provided by the texture.


And here are scaled-down versions of the various images I created (based off of a high-poly model I made) that make up the texture (or shader, which is the more correct term) which gives the illusion of detail to the transporter pad.


From left-to-right, top-to-bottom, they are:

1. Ambient Occlusion Map - This is used to subtly shade crevices and recessed areas to help give the illusion of depth.

2. Transporter Pad Diffuse Map - This gives the shader it's color

3. Reflection Mask - This image tells the shader that the white area will be reflective. In combination with an inverted image (not shown), I can tell the shader that the two masked areas get varied degrees of reflection.

4. Trim Diffuse Map - This image simply provides the color information for the trim around the edge of the transporter pad.

5. Glow Diffuse Map - This image gives the center pad it's color, and is given a command to "glow" when rendered.

6. Normal Map - This image was generated from a high-poly model in 3DS Max. This tells the engine how to render specular highlights to give the illusion of depth. This effect is more apparent when moving around in-game as opposed to still images.

All these images are combined with UDK's powerful shader editor, given commands and tweaks, applied to the geometry, and after lots of trial and error, results in the images you see above.

 

[Tosk]

Holy cow. ...All I can say.

 

[JarodRussell]

Thanks a lot!

The K-beams also use Normal maps for the details, right?

 

[blssdwlf]

Yes, thanks for the look behind the scenes at the wireframe and mapping

 

[cardinal biggles]

You've really outdone yourself here, and that's saying a lot! Awesome work, Donny!

 

[Robert Comsol]

Here are some in-game shots with the wireframes showing.

Holy moly - it's the Matrix (and Donny must be Neo because he actually sees things we usually don't).

Bob

 

[Kail]

Fantastic work!