3DExodus Colony Class Vessel

Sphynx

Been a while since I actually posted any WIP here on SFM, so here goes.

I'm putting together a few projects at present, partly commercial and partly in prep for more education, and it suddenly occurred to me that with software development and lecturing hogging my time I have no completely finished, coloured artwork younger than about 18 months. The aim of this project is therefore to put together a portfolio piece that I can use to generate a number of associated images.

This is an Exodus class colony ship - within about 500 years, but using current concepts, so it's more futurism that full blown, rubber-band SF. The Exodus class is about 5.2km in diameter, about 3.5km in length. Six-segment rotating space-city type vessel built for transporting large numbers over long distances. While the source-universe this is from has jump-technology, it is in fixed places outside planetary systems - the long duration flights from habitable planet to the jump points therefore still means years in flight.

Each segment is self-contained from the point of view of sustainability - commerce city (for people permanently living on the ship / undertaking trade between systems), large arboretum / oxy and sewage renewing forestry area etc.

I reckon about 60% of the detailing is done, then onto materials. Initial aim is an Exodus in planetary orbit, with a busy loading / unloading scene of small craft in HD aspect.

I've added an experimental texture to the basic for rendering - seeing as how it's meant to be over 5km in diameter, I don't want to go for an easy-to-see plating system. Always felt that these looked fake, as the plates would have to be tens or hundreds of meters across in some cases. i've instead gone for a sort of half-mechanical / nano-grown structure, I'll increase the spec a tad for final renders, and leave the rest to detailing and lighting.

Kmpr´rak

Uncommon design, but not bad as a project!

lennier1

Looks like a good start.
Kinda similar to the orbital stations in Cargo.

Chanur

Interesting design!
I would place a transparent glass torus on the city modules so that the people can walk outside the buildings without a spacesuit

Sphynx

It's an idea, but not really viable for this source universe.

On the one hand, thats a lot of air, but on the other very dangerous. They've strong transparent materials, but it's a large single-volume space - a breach means a heavy loss. The arboretums a slightly different for a number of reasons, but even they have re-inforced structure work.

I have a space-city for a different universe that has the concept, but I'm not going to implement it on this one.

Admiral Danev

Looks pretty cool man, cant wait to see more.

Looking forward to the end product scene you mentioned too.

Sphynx

No new geometry on this, just a test render at the other end of a cinematic that I put together (about 1200 frames) in order to check out a suspicion.

The original idea was that I would be layering three transparent images over the top of each other in the arboretums and for a static smallish (i.e. up to 1920) image this should have been good enough. It's already been planned to print this as a poster however (1st frame), so the res has now gone up by a factor of 10, as well as the moving shadows from the animation.

As a result, looks like I need to put a load of geometry into the forested areas or that section is going to look very out of place compared to the rest of it. It's about 100m deep, so flats are just not going to do the job.

The materials all over the commerce areas will change BTW. at present everything other than the transparent shields over the arboretum is using the same basic material.

Freak

Very Cool Stuff.
Have you thought about closing the end off. so you have an atmophire in the middle. Ala B5?

Sphynx

Not for this one - at the end of the day, while that would also be a massive volume of air, this is not a static station. This one is designed to actually go places so it's probably wiser not to leave any obstructions across the middle (save one particular one, that needs to come in soon). A 5.2km diameter disk catches a lot of bugs on its windshield.

This is really just one big ship, spun into a circle so that it can benefit from artificial gravity (using the rotation method, this size ship needs to rotate at about 0.58rpm to maintain 1g).

Admiral Danev

looking good, yeak i agree to leave it open, too much good detail would be lost on the interior

Aresius

Looks interesting. Nice work.

Sphynx

Paused on development of the Exodus for a few days as I needed to set this thing into context - as a result, I've spent that time putting together a template planet that I can use in an animation (i.e. I can move around it, rather than rely on a backdrop image) and use to build other non-existing planets that this thing will visit.

After adding the lighting, I'm pretty much satisfied that I want to remove all textures from the Exodus and rely purely on a plain white specular surface, with all detailing based on modelled geometry.

There about a dozen small ships in this image, but most are not visible yet - partly because they will come into sight during the planned animation, and others because the current materials are merging them into the background.

Sphynx

It was a family day today, so not much done. Finished adding the window-light emitting materials as well as add a name plate. I've ended up with some light spillage from the nameplate floods, but I have a suspicion where this is coming from - a bit off as the mesh is sealed, but hey... still in progress.

Floods were added with a slight green cast with the aim of introducing a little more colour into it, but I think that I'll drop back to white on the plate.