Modelling and Rendering the TMP Enterprise

[Science Officer]

Hi Folks,

I've had a busy week so I haven't had much chance to work on my project as I'd like. I decided to go back to the "Ceramaprise" file I salvaged in my earlier post. Having looked at a number of space shuttle images, I think I've got something better but it is incomplete.

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3811/et4a21.jpg


The key points are:

1. The “stage” now consists of one directional light casting parallel rays and a sky object onto which is mapped a Earth-like texture.
2. Lowering the amount of radiosity just enough to prevent the sunlit side of the hull from being washed out.
3. The fake earth has been properly positioned so that its light doesn't contribute so much to the underside of the saucer.

The image doesn't have any spotlight illumination as this hull doesn't use my remodelled saucer. I’d say that once the spotlight illumination is added, the bottom of the saucer will look a lot better. At the moment it's a big oval area that looks a bit lifeless. I also think that the specularity and reflection maps for the hull need to be tweaked slightly to make things like the aztec pattern more obvious.

Cheers,

SO.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Hi Folks,

I've had a busy week so I haven't had much chance to work on my project as I'd like. I decided to go back to the "Ceramaprise" file I salvaged in my earlier post. Having looked at a number of space shuttle images, I think I've got something better but it is incomplete.

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3811/et4a21.jpg


The key points are:

1. The “stage” now consists of one directional light casting parallel rays and a sky object onto which is mapped a Earth-like texture.
2. Lowering the amount of radiosity just enough to prevent the sunlit side of the hull from being washed out.
3. The fake earth has been properly positioned so that its light doesn't contribute so much to the underside of the saucer.

The image doesn't have any spotlight illumination as this hull doesn't use my remodelled saucer. I’d say that once the spotlight illumination is added, the bottom of the saucer will look a lot better. At the moment it's a big oval area that looks a bit lifeless. I also think that the specularity and reflection maps for the hull need to be tweaked slightly to make things like the aztec pattern more obvious.

Cheers,

SO.

I think you just about nailed it. It looks much more natural this way.

Like you said, the aztec pattern spec could stand out a little more, if you want it to, but it looks good as is.

 

[Taranis]

Stunning work .. I about to start the Classic Enterprise, but have plans to work on the refit .. inspiring

 

[Captain Robert April]

Wow.

 

[Warped9]

Wow, indeed.

 

[Gojira]

Great work!

 

[BolianAuthor]

Sweet work.

 

[AnyStar]

ooo pretty!

 

[Science Officer]

Hi Folks,

Following my Easter break and browsing the site for the first time in a number of months, I've decided to resurrect my old project.

The last time I left it was with a hacked together version dubbed the Ceramaprise because it was influenced by the space shuttle. A more ceramic than metal finish.

As that was a bit small I decided to do a bigger render over the weekend (3.5 hours radiosity/illumination pass and a 1 hour reflection pass). I then composited the 2 renders together in photoshop adding 40% of the reflection pass.

The result is below:

Still a few small errors to fix. As stated on the Playing with the refit Enterprise... thread, I'd really like to integrate some replacements parts I've done so that I can have decent spotlight illumination.

If I get any time, I'll knuckle down and do it!

Cheers, S.O.

 

[Science Officer]

Hi Folks,

I found time over the weekend to work on the project. I've now integrated the following new components:

1. Saucer bottom and portholes.
2. Saucer rim and windows.
3. Sensor array.
4. Thrusters.

These new components have a much smoother surface due to a higher polygon count. The bottom removes some of the disjointed reflections, most notably around the left hand side phaser. This behaviour also causes some of the problems with the spotlight illumination.

The textures in the grooves of the "deflector grid" around the rim are too dark and will need lightening up a little. I also switched the sunlight shadow from hard to very high quality soft to remove a few problems.

Next weekend I hope to do some work on integrating the new spotlights.

Cheers,

S.O.

New render...

 

[Warped9]

^^ Awesome!

 

[Science Officer]

Hi Folks,

Well I couldn't stop working on this and intergrated the new illumination.

I haven't spent long on it. Just changed the intensity - the port and starboard lights use half the intensity of the bow spotlight. I then just composited the result over my render from yesterday. Needs some more work yet, but I'm very happy with it. The new saucer bottom (with its high polygon count) has removed all of the errors I was seeing. I need to investigate some changes to the specularity and see what happens if I make the Aztec just a little more obvious. The result is below.

Cheers,
S.O.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Looks great.

 

[USS Mariner]

Looks very good. Someday I'd love to see somebody use a pearlescent finish on this thing as it was originally built.

 

[Science Officer]

Looks very good. Someday I'd love to see somebody use a pearlescent finish on this thing as it was originally built.

Thanks for the replies - please feel free to suggest any improvements.

Pearlescent finish - I've tried it, but it's not that easy. There's certainly no shader to do it in C4D 8.2.

The problem (if I understand it correctly) is that the colour you see is dependant on both the cameras and light sources angle to the hull.

It is normally possible to do half of it - the cameras angle to the hull. If the ray from the camera grazes the hull, make the colour redder. But that would be wrong because it comes down to a both camera and lights source rays grazing the hull.

If there is a way of doing it, I'd really like to know!

Cheers,

S.O.

 

[publiusr]

The phton torpedo bays look really prominant. I like that.

 

[wjaspers]

Looks very good. Someday I'd love to see somebody use a pearlescent finish on this thing as it was originally built.

Thanks for the replies - please feel free to suggest any improvements.

Looking really good. Improvements? Don't know if you would call it an improvement, but the real model did not have that much reflection, or should I call it different reflection? What I mean is the following: looking at the bottom of the saucer I can see the deflector reflection, but I can't remember that happening in the movies, yet the model was reflective, so something ..... was different, don't know exactly either.
Second, and I don't know if this should be an improvement, the spotlights, the ship was not really lit with the spotlights from the model, but with little mirrors from another lightsource, but I really like yours more.

Pearlescent finish - I've tried it, but it's not that easy. There's certainly no shader to do it in C4D 8.2.
The problem (if I understand it correctly) is that the colour you see is dependant on both the cameras and light sources angle to the hull.
It is normally possible to do half of it - the cameras angle to the hull. If the ray from the camera grazes the hull, make the colour redder. But that would be wrong because it comes down to a both camera and lights source rays grazing the hull.

If there is a way of doing it, I'd really like to know!

Think LW and Max have those shaders now, that is, I read something about that.
Don't know about C4D, but with the old 3dsmax it was possible to "imitate" the effect, depending where the lightsource/camera angle is.
Think it is in the TWOK departure sequence where the ship flies overhead, and the camera follows, where you can see the colors shift from bleu to red and vice versa.
I imitated this effect by using a different aztec colored bitmap in the specularity slot, so when looking AT the saucer you could see the specularity color (from the spotlight), and when the ship went overhead the specularity disappeared and the color of the diffuse map could be seen.
Other than that, the only the way to do it, as I did it, by modeling the aztecs and give them materials instead of bitmaps.

 

[Gepard]

Don't know if you would call it an improvement, but the real model did not have that much reflection, or should I call it different reflection? What I mean is the following: looking at the bottom of the saucer I can see the deflector reflection, but I can't remember that happening in the movies, yet the model was reflective, so something ..... was different, don't know exactly either.

I'd say it needs a higher level of reflection blurring, which would wash out more of the detail.

 

[wjaspers]

Saw you posted a question in Anystar's thread for me.

Think my mesh is much denser than yours, needed to do that because I modeled every single hullplate/aztec, because I did not wanted to use bitmaps. Problem with modeling the hullplates/aztecs, is that you need to model it smoothly before cutting it.

Here is a wireframe of the windows:

The saucer itself (no bridge and no sensor array) is 1.3 million polies (triangulated as max does it), that would mean in LW, 0.65 million polies. If C4D works with quads the same as LW.

I saw also that you use a phong shader, don't you have a multi layer shader?

 

[Science Officer]

Hi Wil, Gep Malakai and Publiusr,

Thanks for the replies.

Wil - I know what you mean about the reflections. I too was somewhat baffled by the lack of them on the saucer in the films. The shooting model was slightly reflective, but I think the secondary hull was more reflective than the saucer.

This image taken just after TMP finished shooting shows some reflectivity. You can see a reflection at the base of the warp pylon. Also the scene you did shows reflections from spacedock lighting, just like the original (where the ship leaves and you look along the line of the nacelle).

http://www.cloudster.com/Sets&Vehicles/STMPEnterprise/STMPent10.jpg

My take on the TMP-E has always been not to produce a "perfect copy". I'm just feeling my way along trying out different ideas to produce something that looks photo-realistic.

Gep Malakai - On the reflectivity - to blur anymore would cripple render times. For a reflection pass, it currently takes about 1 hour to render an image at 1280x1024 pixels and that was before adding the new lighting rig. However if the aztec finish was exaggerated, it would remove some of that uniformity. I've never been too happy with the large variation in reflective finish on the shooting model. I want some variation, but not to that extent. I also think that real world reflection differs from what my shader can do. I think in the real world, reflections become more visible and sharper as a surface becomes parallel to the camera's line of sight. I can vary the visibility, but not the sharpness.

Wil - On the lighting - yep I've deliberately moved away from the usual approach of adding ghost lights above and below the saucer. It just didn't look right due to:

1. No inverse square falloff. Generally it's just flat ovals.
2. Sometimes the studio illumination clips the edges of some other part of the model.
3. Reflections never matched the intended source.
4. Depending on the shot, the shape and intensity of the illumination changed. This is seen during the leaving spacedock scene.

I'm slowly narrowing in on a good balance of lighting and shaders. I don't think I'm far off getting the overall look right. When I remember back to what
I used to produce, I've come on quite a bit!

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/3980/rendertest8.jpg

Replacing the existing texture maps is something I've got to do at some point. I'm sure you've all seen that amazing 6000x6000 pixel render of the new Enterprise above Titan. It's in an entirely different league - but it's something I aspire to.

Wil - I'm glad to see my polygon count is not as exceptionally high as I thought! I've got just enough polys to do a slightly simpler version of the Aztec pattern. The stats are:

Rim, windows and hatch: 104776
Saucer bottom. "deflector grid" and portholes (not including sensor array): 24535

I deliberately went through the model and removed as many triangular polygons as possible. They too caused some interesting effects in shading and reflections.

The problem I have is that I've got to remodel the top of the saucer. I know it's going to be tricky as it's got to work with a lighting rig in the same way as the bottom of the saucer. And then I've noticed specularity issues on the neck which means that needs remodelling too!

So much to do!

Cheers,

S.O.