Star Ship Polaris

[dayxday1000]

Overall, I think it looks great. My suggestion to make it look less like things are running together is to change the lighting of the room. To my eye, the entire room should be darker with certain sections lit up as if by small lights or spotlights. The foreground console and crewmen should be brighter and the areas that are further from the camera (to the left and to the right of the central engineering shaft and controls/displays) should be darker. The increased contrast would add a better sense of depth to the room.

Examples of what I'm talking about can be seen here and here in these stills from the film "Das Boot" and here, in this image from a video game.

 

[Maurice]

Circular rooms often confound perspective. The radial lines on the ceiling are maybe contributing to that.

Lay in a few figures farther back in the room and see if that helps.

I'm not worried about atmosphere and all that if we're going to be using a 3D model rather than a matte painting.

One nitpick: lose the green on the dials. There's no green on this ship.

EDIT:

Two other things. The viewer's eye is going to be drawn to movement, i.e. the actors, or—in a busy environment like this—into anything that reads as negative (empty) space.

I'd suggest dimming the light on the ceiling beams and to let the foreground gizmo the console is hooked to either fall into shadow or put darker colors on it.

 

[Maurice]

P.S. I edited the message above instead of writing a follow-up, which might've been a mistake if Vektor had already read it.

 

[B.J.]

One nitpick: lose the green on the dials. There's no green on this ship.

You keep mentioning this. Any particular reason that I maybe missed?

 

[Psion]

One nitpick: lose the green on the dials. There's no green on this ship.

You keep mentioning this. Any particular reason that I maybe missed?

I'm guessing it was some kind of set-design and costuming mantra intended to avoid green-screen problems. And, being oft-repeated, it took on a life of its own.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Could have been something like that, yeah.

 

[Maurice]

Not. Telling.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The conversion to Lightwave format is finished and the texturing is coming along.

 

[GalacticWierdo]

I can't help but feel like the ship seems to be glowing in a way -- like the light is hitting it in places where it should be able to reach. Otherwise it's absolutely stunning.

 

[Maurice]

Ambient light I suspect.

 

[Psion]

I can't help but feel like the ship seems to be glowing in a way -- like the light is hitting it in places where it should be able to reach. Otherwise it's absolutely stunning.

Ambient light I suspect.

Yeah, I doubt that should be considered a "finished render" rather than a render of the nearly-finished model. Lighting and animating the model will take a bit of work beyond tweaking the mesh and finalizing the textures. This image is probably more just a "here's where we're at" render.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

BTW, here's how the modeling is going on Main Control:

Some of the apparent differences in proportion/perspective may be real, but many are the result of lens settings and temp lighting. I haven't figured out virtual camera settings that quite match Vektor's rendering - and in any event, NEO FX will set the final matte renders up based on the camera data from the green screen shots.

 

[Vektor]

BTW, here's how the modIeIing is going on Main Control:

Some of the apparent differences in proportion/perspective may be real, but many are the result of lens settings and temp lighting. I haven't figured out virtual camera settings that quite match Vektor's rendering - and in any event, NEO FX will set the final shots up based on the camera data from the green screen shots.

Wow! That's just plain AWESOME. I'm actually impressed at how faithfully that translates into 3D. And don't fret about not matching my illustration perfectly. I did that entirely by eye so the perspective and proportions may have nothing to do with how things line up in the real world--or virtual world as the case may be.

By the way, you might hold off on the lower console stuff I did to hide Maurice's lower half. I'm working on an update to that which could change it pretty radically.

 

[Psion]

Wait. I see green.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I use green as a placeholder for areas that animations are going to be mapped onto.

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Dennis, I have to say that you and your team are doing a phenomenal job with this. I'm really looking forward to POLARIS more than I am anything else.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Thanks.

 

[Vektor]

Dennis, did you actually match this space to the dimensions of the Polaris 3D model? Just curious if it actually does fit.

Also, has there been any feedback from NEO FX about the model? Any problems with the poly count? Any foreseeable rigging or animation issues? I've never built a model for actual visual effects production before and I'm interested to know how it works out.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I haven't matched the CG set to the model at this point, no. I may do that soon.

I also haven't turned the model over to NEO yet - I did the conversion and I'm working on the textures and basic rigging. I'll probably give Michael a copy of the mesh in the next week, so he can start laying out a couple of shots we want soon - that won't be a completely finished model, but he can work with it in LW Layout (the rendering and animating part of the program) while I try to finish up.

At around half a million polygons I can guarantee that there's not going to be a poly count problem. It's rendering fine on my desktop, which is scarcely a power machine.

 

[Santaman]

Nice ship! nice ship!