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3DStar Wars Gladiator Star Destroyer environment/animation
xiaorobear521
Posts: 155Member
Hello again, sorry I don't use forums super regularly! At the start of the pandemic I started to make a Star Wars space battle animation and dropped off (old thread here). In the time since then I've gotten a lot better at a variety of things, and only my low poly TIE fighter model is really up to my current standards. That was also before Mandalorian Season 2 came out, so there's been lots of SW inspiration since.
So now I'm working on a new SW project: a narrated animation fairly inspired By ECHenry's ship videos (and Howard Day, Angelos Karderinis, Skyforge, and other talented SW fan artists work), just flying around and exploring a medium sized imperial ship, the Gladiator class Star Destroyer. So I've reigned in the complexity by taking away the space battle aspect and ramped up the amount of models needed. I've been working on a LOT of assets, making everything myself because I enjoy the modeling/texturing parts. So I'm going to dump a lot of stuff here and update periodically. Everything is WIP. The assets are all pretty low poly / realtime ready because my hardware's not great.
Animation will start with a lambda shuttle dropping out of hyperspace. I have a test animation of that.
We'll get some shots of the lambda approaching the hangar and landing
Some shots flying over the star destroyer... It's important to me that I can fly right into/out of the hangar without having to cut to a separate high detail model of just a small section of the ship, I like continuous shots.
The Gladiator class is a 600m long ship from the old '80s droids cartoon, recanonized through more recent appearances like the Armada game. I don't love their design for it and might take some cues from The Mandalorian's light cruiser. It's between that and a real star destroyer in size. I have only roughly blocked it out, and photobashed some possible ideas. The SD and light cruiser here are just official photos, not my models or anything.
The armada one has small hangars on the sides connected to the main flight deck, but the original cartoon version did not. Instead I will maybe add a very small hangar on the back for a TIE shuttle (the kind of ship Captain Needa took to the Executor in ESB. A fan design for it was canonized with the TIE Fighter Owner's Workshop Manual book that I'll mostly follow.)
We'll maybe fly over the bridge (I don't know if I want to do a detailed bridge interior because then I need realistic looking humans...) follow a TIE shuttle leaving that hangar, and also have a look inside a laser cannon gun deck in the side trench of the ship, based on the ones seen on the death star in ANH, with death star gunners and stormtroopers and a mouse droid. (the dirt here is also over the top and not well-placed)
I haven't finished the stormtrooper models yet but here's his blaster:
I may also have a local ship and a couple of alien crew members visiting. I feel like one of the benefits of the gladiator would be impressing remote systems with a hangar large enough to park your ship inside, as opposed to the arquitens light cruiser or many smaller ships where you have to dock with them. I've been working on some alien models so I may use one of those. And a couple R4 droid colorschemes, the two on the left are based on imperial astromechs seen in the movies on the death stars.
So... I have a lot of stuff done, but also a lot to go. And again, everything is very low poly, between like 1000 and 10,000 tris for each asset. Details are textured on in Substance Painter, primarily by drawing a height map and then using procedural layer masks, no modeling any panels. Not for any good reason, sometimes it would be faster to just model and bake a mask or bake a height map for some of this stuff. But I'm kind of enjoying this workflow, it's kind of simple and meditative and satisfying. (Except for that pa'lowick alien above with the droids, that was a somewhat high detail sculpt in Blender and then retopology in Maya. Haven't rigged it, don't know if I will use it for this.)
Sorry it's a big post, I'm basically just throwing every Star Wars thing I've got into one big scene. Hopefully something nice comes out of it!
So now I'm working on a new SW project: a narrated animation fairly inspired By ECHenry's ship videos (and Howard Day, Angelos Karderinis, Skyforge, and other talented SW fan artists work), just flying around and exploring a medium sized imperial ship, the Gladiator class Star Destroyer. So I've reigned in the complexity by taking away the space battle aspect and ramped up the amount of models needed. I've been working on a LOT of assets, making everything myself because I enjoy the modeling/texturing parts. So I'm going to dump a lot of stuff here and update periodically. Everything is WIP. The assets are all pretty low poly / realtime ready because my hardware's not great.
Animation will start with a lambda shuttle dropping out of hyperspace. I have a test animation of that.
We'll get some shots of the lambda approaching the hangar and landing
Some shots flying over the star destroyer... It's important to me that I can fly right into/out of the hangar without having to cut to a separate high detail model of just a small section of the ship, I like continuous shots.
The Gladiator class is a 600m long ship from the old '80s droids cartoon, recanonized through more recent appearances like the Armada game. I don't love their design for it and might take some cues from The Mandalorian's light cruiser. It's between that and a real star destroyer in size. I have only roughly blocked it out, and photobashed some possible ideas. The SD and light cruiser here are just official photos, not my models or anything.
The armada one has small hangars on the sides connected to the main flight deck, but the original cartoon version did not. Instead I will maybe add a very small hangar on the back for a TIE shuttle (the kind of ship Captain Needa took to the Executor in ESB. A fan design for it was canonized with the TIE Fighter Owner's Workshop Manual book that I'll mostly follow.)
We'll maybe fly over the bridge (I don't know if I want to do a detailed bridge interior because then I need realistic looking humans...) follow a TIE shuttle leaving that hangar, and also have a look inside a laser cannon gun deck in the side trench of the ship, based on the ones seen on the death star in ANH, with death star gunners and stormtroopers and a mouse droid. (the dirt here is also over the top and not well-placed)
I haven't finished the stormtrooper models yet but here's his blaster:
I may also have a local ship and a couple of alien crew members visiting. I feel like one of the benefits of the gladiator would be impressing remote systems with a hangar large enough to park your ship inside, as opposed to the arquitens light cruiser or many smaller ships where you have to dock with them. I've been working on some alien models so I may use one of those. And a couple R4 droid colorschemes, the two on the left are based on imperial astromechs seen in the movies on the death stars.
So... I have a lot of stuff done, but also a lot to go. And again, everything is very low poly, between like 1000 and 10,000 tris for each asset. Details are textured on in Substance Painter, primarily by drawing a height map and then using procedural layer masks, no modeling any panels. Not for any good reason, sometimes it would be faster to just model and bake a mask or bake a height map for some of this stuff. But I'm kind of enjoying this workflow, it's kind of simple and meditative and satisfying. (Except for that pa'lowick alien above with the droids, that was a somewhat high detail sculpt in Blender and then retopology in Maya. Haven't rigged it, don't know if I will use it for this.)
Sorry it's a big post, I'm basically just throwing every Star Wars thing I've got into one big scene. Hopefully something nice comes out of it!
Post edited by xiaorobear on
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Here is a small test of a tiling texture for just the wide flat areas of the Gladiator hull (I think I might have the normals inverted...), as well as a basic camera move just showing the relative size and positions of things.
(Higher quality link)
And an early start on the TIE Shuttle and on the 'Death Star Gunner'
I'm also going to have a low-detail interior for the TIE shuttle, just to be seen from the outside. Here is a comparison of that (untextured, unfinished) with my TIE model, which is my oldest model I still consider good enough to use. Definitely makes a difference!
That sounds like a healthy attitude. Seems like your models aren't the only inspiring thing in here.
The cockpit definitely adds realism to the TIE, regardless how low poly it might be. Are you planning to build some for your other ships as well? They sure would benefit from it. Especially the Lambda shuttle, since it has such a wide window.
You know, I really wasn't planning to until your comment... I decided to try one out. This one's a bit tricky because in the movies / even in the Mandalorian, the lambda shuttle glass is 100% opaque. I made a couple of tests, one without tinted glass (and a glitch where the background doesn't show thru the glass correctly), one with tinted glass, and neither are right yet.
I think I'll probably tint the glass darker, but also increase the brightness of the interior material, so that you still get a hint of the very low poly forms in there. But right now it's too clear, especially when you see the wing through the glass. Maybe adding pilots will help too. Still, I've already done the hard part, I'll get it looking right soon.
I loved all that you showed us. Please, keep posting!
And here is an extremely small sculpt for an imperial officer to be standing behind the pilot in there, also something I can reuse in windows of the star destroyer.
And how the officer turned out, around 600 tris. TIE pilots will be next at this level of detail, for this and for the TIE shuttle.
Didn't get a ton done this weekend, but I am close to finishing the Zeta shuttle's textures, and also modeled and quickly textured an interior for it. This model really isn't meant to hold up even as close as the lambda, but even though the cockpit is extremely simple, that added depth will really help it out in moving camera shots.
If you don't want to blast the whole cockpit with light, what about a single additional light behind the pilot, not strong enough to effect the entire cockpit but strong enough to give him a bit contrast?
For now, this weekend I cut out the windows and made an interior for my TIE fighter. The exterior is a couple years old and was never meant to be seen up close, and isn't up to my current level of detail or texturing style. BUT, it still works pretty well, so I'll probably keep leaving it alone.
Higher quality link
And here is what the interior model looks like in substance painter viewport screenshots. Not super accurate, not super inaccurate.
Very small update: I got a little closer to blocking out the final shape for the gladiator-class star destroyer, updated the scene lighting a bit and added the planet from that hyperspace shot.
Thanks! It kind of is. I found a NASA satellite photo of a dust storm and did some photoshop to it (mainly the spherize filter). Unfortunately it's not high res enough to fill the frame, especially because spherize exaggerates the size of the center, so I can only have it as a distant planet and not recreate SW planet shots.
Busy weekend, so that's all for now!
Here is my progress so far:
Sculpt (I just sculpted the mouth shut, I'm not very experienced with fur and didn't want to mess with the complexity of animating dog-like lips at the same time as trying to do fur):
Retopo in Maya:
Skin texture in Substance Painter - I looked at a hairless deer pic for ideas :
Fur in progress in Blender - I don't like doing stuff that isn't software agnostic or realtime-ready... but I tried to do hair cards for a SW alien once before and didn't get great results, so this is using Blender's hair particle system and doing very expensive renders:
I still need to make some nice eyes, those are currently just black spheres in there. And then hopefully I can just slot the head onto a generic flightsuit body and have an alien, ready to be detained by the Empire! For just a couple of shots, and then I can go back to low poly hard surface stuff that renders fast.
Edit: Added eyes and eyelashes. Just for testing purposes I dropped some pilot accessories from a previous project around him, but he'll have a different full-body outfit later.
Alien friends!
Seriously your thread is the most interesting for me around here in the moment. I'm always looking forward to the weekends when you have new progress to show.
I wonder when your story is taking place in Star Wars history? Is your Bothan just any Bothan or is he one of the many Bothan Spy's who had to die to bring the Rebel Alliance the information they needed for theirs attack in Episode VI?
I think I will only show animated aliens in about 2 shots on this project, 1 medium, one wide, with a small group of aliens being escorted off their ship in the star destroyer's hangar bay by a couple of stormtroopers. But if this animation goes well, I will have them around for future use.
Thanks for asking! The scope of the animation I have in mind doesn't require committing to a specific time slot, but it will be either
No matter what, the key feature of the setting is that it's in a more unimportant region, where older tech might still be around. I liked in that one Rebels episode how a naive rebel teen mistook a light cruiser for a Star Destroyer because he'd never seen one– in my setting, this regional imperial force would hope to project imperial power with their lone 600m Gladiator-class, without locals realizing that it's really a second rate mini-star destroyer that wouldn't be taken seriously in the core worlds.
The benefit of this is that I can do whatever story or ship variants without running up against canon. If an imperial ship is inaccurate I can just say that this remote posting has been maintaining their force with local parts, so things are no longer standard-issue. I don't need to make any larger ships or large fleets, I can just keep things small scale and flexible. So, not tackling the famous bothan spies, just having a random bothan for fun.
If this animation, which really is just an overview of the gladiator class ship with a few small vignettes taking place in and around it, with some in-universe narration, goes well, then I would follow up with a space battle, either with rebels or with some other faction (I like Hapan Battle Dragons from legends, so a fight with Hapan forces could be cool. But unfortunately, they're humans, which are less interesting, and I don't want to animate humans. Maybe I can do an alien pirate force with a stolen Hapan ship, similar to how in the droids cartoon a pirate force had a stolen star destroyer.)
As for this weekend's updates, I'm allllmost done with my TIE shuttle model- here is a cheesy fake miniature-looking render.
After a few more greebles and stuff, I'll be able to texture it very quickly with the same substance painter smart material setup as the TIE fighter revision (and the same pilot/cockpit textures). So hopefully it'll be all done tomorrow and I'll be back with some nice renders.
Edit: Oh also I'm doing a mynock too.
Ha well, if that means he might survive this, I'm all for it.
And speaking of "impressively unique things", your work might be the first fan made work with a mynock. Very intriguing.
Bizarre, isn't it? I don't really get why they haven't shown up more- even in official movies/shows, I'd expect one to be attached to a beat-up ship just as a fun little reference, but there's none.
Anyway, I textured and did a couple test renders of mine- had to leave the background on to show the slight transparency of the wings. TIE shuttle hopefully later tonight.
Now that you mention it I would say the same, but to be honest, I never thought about them very much as well.
It might be because canon is mostly considered as some sort of natural law. Meaning on screen they have been seen in the belly of a space slug and so it's law that you have to be in the belly of a space slug to encounter them. Even though the fact alone that Lando and Leia knew what they were, means that they also have to exist somewhere else. I always considered them as the Star Wars version of a marten. Always hungry and with an appetite for cables and wires.
Are you doing this just for fun or are you planning to have it in your animation as the aforementioned fun little reference? In any way it's nice to see them getting a bit attention.
Ah, this also made me remember that Solo has a throwaway line about Mynock Roasts on Ardennia, so they are indeed known.
One will be in one of the small vignettes. I want to give a small reason why we often see stormtroopers/spacetroopers stationed outside on imperial space stations and ships, so I'll have a spacetrooper shoot a mynock that hopped from a local freighter to chew some power cables on the side of the star destroyer, and then have to go clean it up. Will make some extra closeup-ready greebles for them to be on.
Here was a random test screenshot of the mynock on the lambda shuttle, with everything to scale, and the lambda geo is nowhere near detailed enough to hold up in a shot like this.
Time for another mid-weekend update- I've been up to a few things: trying to finish the last 5% of texturing on the Zeta shuttle (just a few places are still unpaneled, and then I need a little bit of color variation)
I started texturing the TIE Shuttle, but haven't gotten very far yet. As you can see I only model stuff that affects the silhouette, adding panel details and things in just the texture. So, bit more work to do all over the ship to get that down.
After a couple of tests, I also started composing background music for the animation. I've always had a slight interest in making music but don't have any music theory knowledge/training or anything, and previously haven't been able to make anything high enough quality. But for this animation it's all just background, nothing that needs to be timed with action or anything. At present I don't want to spend the money to properly compensate a composer and wouldn't ask someone to do it for free. So, doing it myself, and I think it's going well. Just slightly happier variations on the Imperial March, that will have narration over it.
Here is a twitter video with placeholder narration and just random test clips as seen earlier in this thread... because it's easier to share video than audio. Just trying to get an idea of what things could be like.
Maybe tomorrow I will finish texturing one of those two ships!
The Zeta is looking great. Just wondering if the wings are moveable or will you just show it in landing position?
The colour of the TIE Shuttle looks a bit too dark and too blue for my taste right now, but I don't want to judge before we see the whole thing.