3DA Space Odyssey Clavius Base landing pad

japetus · March 2015

I've been sitting on this one for a long time, but recently started it up again. Just trying to do the landing pad seen here:

I started in 3ds Max but then moved into Zbrush to use the IMM tools and the new polymodeling tools to speed up the creation of the flat greebly areas. That's about the best reference I can find and no one has really done a very good and accurate model so I'm just kind of winging it a bit as I go and trying to get the general form. I made some of my own IMM brushes and am using some of ZBrush's standard greeble IMM brushes as well.

Tralfaz · March 2015

This is going to go great with your Aries. It is hard to find good references of the Clavius moon base. Are you going to be working with screen caps from a Blu-ray?

LockeFP · March 2015

This is one of the only models in 2001 that bothered me: there is no reason to have those leaves retract into the ground. It wastes space that could be useful in other areas. It seems more reasonable to me to have an iris or something similar. But that's still some damn impressive work for the era. Sometimes I really wish movies could move back into that type of production. It would make things ever-so-much more visceral and real. But I digress.

Looking really nice on the model! Your attention to detail is very good and you have (from what I can tell so far) no mesh errors in a fairly complex piece. What scale are you working on with this?

japetus · March 2015

Thanks guys, I have most of the dome built in 3ds Max, on my home computer and haven't yet married the two over.

LockeFP, I agree it's weird to have something like that especially since the Aries ends up being retracted into the ground, but damn if it isn't cool! I'll be making this at a "life-size" scale since I have a 3D Aries model that I'd like to put in there.

Tralfaz yes I have some screenscaps from the blu-ray I was given plus some photos I found of the model but which are unfortunately only slightly helpful as they are not too hi-rez, but the dome is off. So like I said not much ref out there, but I'll do my best and make it interesting looking, if not exact.

japetus · March 2015

Been working on sculpting the moon terrain and I think it's turning out pretty well! The lunar surface was always a big road block for me in the past, but I'm getting pretty happy with it. Will probably put in a few more large craters away from the base or make a larger crater object for the background, we'll see what the angle ends up being! There is some weird stretching going on in certain areas, I'll smooth those out and fix them up...

Saquist · March 2015

Reminds me of Moonbase Alpha too.

japetus · March 2015

Saquist wrote: »

Reminds me of Moonbase Alpha too.

Yup, moonbase alpha was very much based on this guy...

japetus · March 2015

An updated version, I made some cratered geometry using World Machine and then brought that into ZBrush and made it into an alpha to get some quick groupings of craters...nice handy program!

TALON_UK · March 2015

Looking great, loving your Lunar surface detailing.

:thumb:

japetus · March 2015

Ok, worked on the dome greebles and the interior landing area...greebles looking pretty good i think! On the first image...not sure if it's my monitor cuz they are so different...does the image look a little blue or REALLY BLUE on people's monitors? I need some new monitors..

Chris2005 · March 2015

On my screen, the top image has a kind of a saturated gray-ish blue color.

The bottom image looks like the scene has been lit with a white light.

japetus · March 2015

I can't believe I started this thing August 2011, worked on it for a bit in the years between then and now (according the file dates). I'm rahter disgusted at my past self for some bad modelling methods from years ago! Making it a pain to modify some of this...

japetus · March 2015

The latest

evil_genius_180 · March 2015

This is looking really good so far. I'm going to have to pull out my DVD of the movie pretty soon, this is putting me in the mood.

TALON_UK · March 2015

Looking good. With that previous image comparison, to my eye the first one looked just right in relation to the screen cap at the beginning of the thread, the second image just looked almost monochrome by comparison, no colour at all other than grey and the red of the landing lights. On the latest image there is a bit of the moon surface in the lower right hand side of the screen that looks a little blurry, so you might need to take a look at the mapping in that area. Other that that? Its looking awesome.

japetus · March 2015

Thanks Talon, yeah it's really such a grey on grey type of image, I'll be doing post color correction to make it bluer or something in the end. I've added some interior rooms and worked on the materials a little. I added some normal-mapped paneling to the underside of the dome...I want to replace some of the greebles on the outer wings of the base, but I think this is getting pretty close! I will also of course add my Aries model in the center, maybe another one out on the other landing pads.

Tralfaz · March 2015

Beautiful work. I can hear the music playing in my head as I look at these images.

japetus · March 2015

I put my Aries in there...then did some color correction really fast

rojren · March 2015

Oh, wow. That's great.

TheGreatRaja · March 2015

Very Nice!

Tralfaz · March 2015

That is really amazing. Didn't realize just how large the domes were in relation to the Aries.

TALON_UK · March 2015

japetus wrote: »

I put my Aries in there...then did some color correction really fast

Awesome, great work.

:thumb:

BlueNeumann · March 2015

Incredible. So cool to see this thing come to life.

medjai · March 2015

Awesome!!

Tralfaz · March 2015

Thought you might be interested in this japetus. The original Aries 1B studio model has been found and is up for auction. You can read about it and see some photos over at the RPF.

Aries-1b-studio-model-found-intact

japetus · March 2015

Thanks Tralfaz!! That's really awesome. It's surprisingly worn down. I wonder if that's age or it's it's how worn it really was, more than I expected. Time to update some textures

japetus · March 2015

Holy crap that model is HUGE...I had no idea...there are some sweet decals there too!

japetus · March 2015

I updated my Aries model (enough) with the new photos that Tralfaz posted, thanks!! Mostly it was adding some decals and fixing a few of the greebly bits that were never quite defined in all the models I saw since there wren't many photos of the real thing. I also went through and added the ribbing and to the areas between the passenger windows and down near the bottom of the sphere. Before all this stuff was just bump mapping and I was never quite happy with it. Nothing too bad though thankfully. I'm aslo rendering it with Corona which has such beatiful GI and shadowing. So much better than stupid old mentalray...

japetus · April 2015

Think I'm almost done...worked on adding more detail around the base, took some creative liberties since their just isn't much reference out there. Also decided (for now) to use my normal maped terrain instead of the super high poly one...it just gives a bit better results in my opinion. I've done some comping in Nuke, trying out some Optical Flares too which I finally got a license for. Will tweak it more tonight i'm sure...

evil_genius_180 · April 2015

It's looking outstanding.

mikala · April 2015

Fanfreakintastic!

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3DA Space Odyssey Clavius Base landing pad

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3DA Space Odyssey Clavius Base landing pad

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