3DTech Flooor Tests

soulburn3d

Here's a few starship hull tests I've been working on. I made these images to explore variations in greebling and hull plate shapes and configurations. The tests are a little less practical and a little more abstract, but they have been really helpful, and should be a great source of inspiration and practical experience the next time I decide to make a full fledged 3d model of a starship or space station. Parts were modeled in 3dsmax (many wires were done using my wirebundler script), rendered with brazil, some was painted in photoshop (so the image isn't 100% 3d, but the majority is), and many patterns were inspired and produced by Darktree, Bercon Noise and Filterforge procedural patterns.







More to follow in the coming week.

- Neil
http://www.neilblevins.com

L2K

pretty cool

ulkesh

Those would make for some cool wallpapers.

Aresius

interesting work.

ST-One

Cool stuff.

madmatt

I like...:D

hazend

Very nice.

tobiasrichter

Cool stuff, Neil - as always. IA’d suggest maybe a few less pipes in the underlying sections and a little more "tech" gadgets there.

Tobias

soulburn3d

Thanks everyone, glad you dig them. I have another 3 to 4 images on their way, some of which are a little less pipe centric (and one that's pipe crazy <G>). I'll post em soon.

- Neil

Jedilaw

Oh, very nice stuff. I'm very interested in that wire bundler script, think I'll have to DL it from your site and play around a bit. Out of curiosity, are the procedural patterns you referred to build into Max? I'm not familiar with them, but it's been a while since I was really digging around in the UI.

Basill

Those are awesome. Especially for the "greeblie" minded.

soulburn3d

Thanks guys.

Jedilaw, afraid those are all separate plugins. Filterforge and Darktree are for purchase, the Bercon Noises are a free plugin. Max's built in procedurals aren't terribly powerful sadly, almost nothing is new in that area of max since max 2

- Neil

fractalsponge

Wow, that's amazing.

So, if I'm reading this right, the large panels and the circular greebles are hand modeled, the small panels are a procedural texture (normal map?), and the wires are procedurally generated by a script?

Syklon

What everyone else said, that's awesome. I especially like all the subtle details on the plating, if that's all procedural its seriously impressive.

Starship

Welcome on board Neil!
I know your website from a looong time. ItA’s good to see a wip from you here.

Jedilaw

soulburn3d wrote: »

Thanks guys.

Jedilaw, afraid those are all separate plugins. Filterforge and Darktree are for purchase, the Bercon Noises are a free plugin. Max's built in procedurals aren't terribly powerful sadly, almost nothing is new in that area of max since max 2

- Neil

Ahh, I see some examples on your site. So are you using those noise maps as an inspiration for the pattern of the paneling, or have you incorporated them in as bump maps? The panels look modeled to me, and god knows I've spent a lot of time yutzing around with paneling (not as much as Fractalsponge, but then, who has?), so if those results can be obtained with maps instead of modeling I'd be very interested to know about it.

EDIT: Just skimmed your bio. Without getting too fanboyish, allow me to say I am a HUGE fan of all things Pixar, so having someone from that hallowed land visit us here at SFM is definitely a treat.

soulburn3d

fractalsponge wrote: »

Wow, that's amazing. So, if I'm reading this right, the large panels and the circular greebles are hand modeled, the small panels are a procedural texture (normal map?), and the wires are procedurally generated by a script?

Thanks Fractal, your work on this forum has been a huge inspiration to me, so I'm honored that you like my work. Your breakdown is pretty accurate, although the procedural bits have been hand modified after the fact to make them a little more organic. So for example, the smallish plates are several procedurally based 3d patterns, mostly based on Worley Noise, then I bake that out and add paint on top, then used as a bump. So I'm using the procedural to do the heavy lifting of adding detail, and then I use hand paint to avoid it looking to uniform or repetitive. The wires are made using a script I wrote called wireBundler for 3dsmax, here's a more organic example of what it can do...



The script is more of a placement tool than a creation tool, all the wires are hand made, then layed out with the tool. Then again, I bake them to meshes and modify them to make them look nicer.

Syklon wrote:

What everyone else said, that's awesome. I especially like all the subtle details on the plating, if that's all procedural its seriously impressive.

Thanks Syklon, as I mentioned, it starts off procedural, but then I add a handpainted layer ontop. While I love procedurals, it's faster to get exactly what you want where you want with hand painting

Starship wrote:

Welcome on board Neil! I know your website from a looong time. ItA’s good to see a wip from you here.

Thanks. I've actually been a lurker here for several years, this is just my first project that really seemed right for a board like this.

Jedilaw wrote:

The panels look modeled to me, and god knows I've spent a lot of time yutzing around with paneling (not as much as Fractalsponge, but then, who has?).

Some of the panels are modeled, mostly the larger stuff, also, mixing modeled panels with bump mapped panels helps to confuse the audience, so people can't be sure which is which

As for my employer, glad you're a fan. I just wish we did more scifi stuff

- Neil

Jedilaw

soulburn3d wrote:

Some of the panels are modeled, mostly the larger stuff, also, mixing modeled panels with bump mapped panels helps to confuse the audience, so people can't be sure which is which

As for my employer, glad you're a fan. I just wish we did more scifi stuff
l

What, Wall-E wasn't enough? Incidentally, did you work on the Omnidroid in the Incredibles?

BTW, if you guys are doing Cars 2 and Monsters, Inc 2, and Toy Story 3 (okay, that's one's done), somebody needs to poke Brad Bird in the ribs and get him to work on a sequel to the Incredibles. I know, I know, he's doing M:I4, but surely he'll have some downtime on set to work on a script...

Helot

Amazing stuff! Glad you joined up, love your site btw.

fractalsponge

soulburn3d wrote: »

Thanks Fractal, your work on this forum has been a huge inspiration to me, so I'm honored that you like my work. Your breakdown is pretty accurate, although the procedural bits have been hand modified after the fact to make them a little more organic. So for example, the smallish plates are several procedurally based 3d patterns, mostly based on Worley Noise, then I bake that out and add paint on top, then used as a bump. So I'm using the procedural to do the heavy lifting of adding detail, and then I use hand paint to avoid it looking to uniform or repetitive. The wires are made using a script I wrote called wireBundler for 3dsmax, here's a more organic example of what it can do...

You're too kind - thanks for sharing this stuff - I now really want to make more panels .

tobian

Superb! I sure could use a plugin like that to do pipe bundles, I end up doing all that kind of thing by hand. The mix of procedurals and modeling has an absolute sweet spot, fantastic work! Inspirational stuff, and ditto fractalsponge.. I think I will be hitting the surface of my station again soon!

Syklon

Ah, I see, gives me some new ideas for what to do on the hull plating for my Leviathan, thanks. Looking forward to seeing the rest of these you've got coming.

At this rate we're going to see a giant surge in paneling activity on these forums

soulburn3d

Jedilaw wrote: »

What, Wall-E wasn't enough?

One robot film is never enough

Jedilaw wrote: »

Incidentally, did you work on the Omnidroid in the Incredibles?

Nope, I was doing environments for that film primarily, although I did model/shade/light all of the robots in the supersuit sequence in E's lab though.[/QUOTE]

Jedilaw wrote: »

somebody needs to poke Brad Bird in the ribs and get him to work on a sequel to the Incredibles.

Brad doesn't respond to poking But he knows we'd all love to work on it if he gets the itch.

Helot wrote:

Amazing stuff! Glad you joined up, love your site btw.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

fractalsponge wrote:

I now really want to make more panels

By all means, I'd love to see em.

tobian wrote:

The mix of procedurals and modeling has an absolute sweet spot, fantastic work!

Thanks dude, I try to do my best to use the advantages of both ways of working. Of course, it's a lot easier when your surface is flat

Syklon wrote:

gives me some new ideas for what to do on the hull plating for my Leviathan, thanks.

Cool, I've seen some of your ships too, good stuff, I've certainly been inspired these past few months by all the work on this forum, I'm happy to be able to contribute something to the mix.

- Neil

publiusr

All great for Borg designs. Any thoughts to adopting your wares--having them taper off so as to do ready-make antenna farms?

tobian

Yep, I wish I had the luxury of flat areas to work on, sure would be nice!

soulburn3d

Here's another two...





- Neil

VALKYRIE013

well.. Thats inspiring! way excellent!

SgtChainSaW

Amazing stuff. Love the balance between large and small details. Seem like everytime you look at it you seen more and more detail. Amazing.

[Deleted User]

That really is rather impressive

soulburn3d

Thanks guys.

SgtChainSaW, trying to find the right balance between large and small details is probably my most important goal in these images, glad you've found it successful.

- Neil

IRML

really cool, the style suggests something of massive scale to me, it would look great on a high detailed homeworld ship, or some other old school / book cover type design