Starships & Jumpships
As someone who has never modelled any type of vehicle before, I’m going to really need to focus on some prime examples and references for support. Above, I’ve inserted a partial screenshot of my collection on Sketchfab. This array of brilliant work has really helped me understand how broad this topic is and should inspire some designs of my own, once the ideas generation stages are underway. Included in this collection is some fantastic work by McCarthy3D, one of my favourite users of this platform, who specialises in sci-fi-esque, and Halo inspired, vehicles and weapons. Alongside his work stands classic designs from large franchises, such as Star Trek and Star Wars, ranging from heavy carriers to tiny speeders. I’ll be referring back to this collection often, especially during the initial sketching stages.
For the collage inserted above, I’ve tried my best to include a broad range of shapes, sizes, and designs, in hopes of inspiring me to think outside of the box. Despite leaning towards more sleek concepts, it’s still very interesting to browse more bulky, carrier-like builds. This collection of concepts and cg include signature ships from various franchises, including Halo, Destiny, Star Trek, and Star Wars. Despite looking for something that’s sleek and built for speed, in design, I really love the idea of no sharp or hard edges, as demonstrated by “Valkyrie“. Some of these examples don’t look like they’re capable of warping/jumping, and that’s something that I’ll need to take into careful consideration when designing my own starship.
To help me learn the best techniques in creating AAA standard vehicles and props, I’m going to be diving into a plethora of YouTube tutorials, Artstation Pro courses, and I might dip into Udemy, Cubebrush, or Gumroad, if I get a little desperate; all of which I’ll document during task 4 – problem solving. For now, I’ll be doing my best to utilise the workflow taught by Emiel Sleegers to produce the best possible result I’m personally capable of.
Space HDRIs
One of the most important assets in this project will be the HDRIs I create for the skybox. These images will make up the largest portion of background space, so it’s crucial that these HDRIs are high resolution and appealing to the eye. Colour scheme is also something that should be considered heavily, as everything must compliment the theme nicely. Although some of the examples included above are hidden behind watermarks, I still believe they make for fantastic reference images. As of right now, this project will require 2-3 separate HDRIs. One for the initial planet, one for the warp, and another for the destination. These can be either contrasting, complimenting, or opposing colour palettes. I’ll make sure to refer back to the basics of colour theory to help me decided which is appropriate according to the planets on display.
Spacescape is a free tool for creating space skyboxes with stars and nebulas. Despite being so incredibly anti-user-friendly, it does come with a few beginner tutorials to help users start out, as well as 3 examples that are free to use commercially. I’ll need to look into customisable skyboxes in more detail through UE tutorials online, because (ideally) I’d like to rotate the stars and nebulas at slightly different speeds to make the scene appear more dynamic. I’ll also be repeating this process over each planet, creating separate layers for the planet and its atmosphere/clouds.
Destinations
I was initially going to limit this category to planets, but I think a colourful asteroid belt would also suit the scene really nicely – if I were to include an astroid belt as a destination, I would have to consider animating the celestial bodies to fit the environment’s general flow. Hopefully, after skimming over this collage, you’ll be able to better visualise what I’m trying to produce: the large expanse of space, partially covered by an arch of a planet; in the foreground, a jumpship will appear to glide on the spot.
I think it’s quite obvious that I’m not going to be travelling to space to take some high resolution photographs of each planet’s surface, so I’m going to have to rely on third parties for base colours and Photoshop/xNormals/B2M for normal map generation – it’s important that I read the policies on usage for each website that I visit so that I don’t infringe on any copyright laws, as I’d like to publish my work on my portfolio later on. For the purpose of this research stage, I’ll be comparing Textures For Planets and JHT’s Planetary Pixel Emporium. Textures for Planets is a free program to bulk generate dozens of unique planetoid wrapping textures for planets, asteroids, and moons, allowing users to split their generated bodies into several layers, including the planet’s surface, general atmospheric noise, and multiple cloud levels. This software is easy to use and producing fictitious and diverse results. However, these results are also low res and semi-stylized in appearance. In contrast, JHT’s PPE is a distributor of high resolution, photorealistic texture maps for real planets and moons inside our own solar system. The downside of this alternative is the inconsistency of detail and texture map availability between planets.
Creating a large scale environment is not something I’ve personally ever attempted before, and the task itself seems quite intimidating. So before I try to dive into any practical work, I should first start with looking into what resources are available to me online. These findings, or lack thereof, with help shape and development my plan in the earlier, more important stages of ideas generation. Through some brief searching, YouTube returns a small handful of useful results that demonstrate interesting methods to creating giant space levels inside of UE. I’ll be relying heavily on these findings and my own educated guesses to produce this body of work; it’ll be risky so it’s important I keep a backup plan.
Warp Drives & VFX
A warp drive is a theoretical superluminal spacecraft propulsion system in many science fiction works, most notably Star Trek and I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. A spacecraft equipped with a warp drive may travel at speeds greater than that of light by many orders of magnitude. In contrast to some other fictitious technologies such as a jump drive, the warp drive does not permit instantaneous travel between two points, but rather involves a tangible passage of time which is relevant to the concept. A spacecraft at warp velocity would continue to interact with objects in “normal space”. The collage of images collected above include a range of interpretations and visualizations of those interpretations from various artists in a handful of film/game franchises. As a big fan of Star Trek and all things space, I find differentiating between the terms crucial to understanding the art behind the universe. If you think space is pretty, warping could blow your mind (depending on the artist).
Out of all the seemingly difficult assets involved in this project, this looks to be the most taxing and complex process. There aren’t too many resources regarding making these visual effects for Unreal Engine, so I’ll most likely end up dedicating a large portion of my time experimenting with the engine’s features to produce a result I’m happy with. In addition, I may have to experiment with blueprints further for the transition between idle and warp, and then again for arriving at the chosen destination.
Jumpship Shapes
Mantaray
During task 4 – Visual Ideas & Tests – I’ll be experimenting with shape language, silhouettes, and general appearance through both traditional and digital 2D concept art, as well as blockouts to support the process. However, I find these two overall shapes most appealing – the mantaray inspired style, and a 2-part design. Both include thin, light, and aerodynamic components that suggest they’re built for stealth, speed, and light combat; this is something I’d like to highlight throughout the creative process. I hope that these ideas are expressed adequately through these example mood boards. Because I’m not a great 2D artist, I’ll most likely focus on the silhouette of the ship rather than sketching the design in a 3/4 perspective. I’ll save these details for the blockout and a paint-over.
2-Part Divide
Partly inspired by Wipeout for the PS1, this example is divided into 2 symmetrical parts, with the cockpit in the middle. However, I must make sure that this design appears to be able to travel through space rather than hover across a race track. In my own work, I should make sure that the divide is tight and closely knit as not to affect the ship’s speed and acceleration. To get this aspect as accurate as possible, I’ll make sure to experiment heavily with silhouettes; this an extremely important part of the creative process.
Silhouette thumbnails are among the most helpful and productive methods of design when it’s necessary to produce a large quantity of variations of concepts within a short period of time. It’s not a method used by all concept artist and it’s certainly not a necessity to design a creature or a character purely based off of a silhouette shape. That doesn’t go to say that all designers don’t subconsciously focus on shapes and designs that make a strong impact on the viewer. We often refer to a silhouette as a black outlined shape, much like a shadow. This doesn’t always need to be the case, as a simple line sketch or simple shades of value can still provide the same effect and are just as efficient.
Jumpship Details
Induction Vents
There’s not doubt that large spaceships and shuttles are ridiculously loud while they’re within an atmosphere that’s dense enough to carry sound, so it would be highly plausible for manufacturers or modification hobbyists to experiment with components that make their vehicle a little more quiet. After talking to my dad, who has 27 years of experience working with car manufactures, he suggested I add indications of induction kits across my own design. This involves filtering air through the vehicle to dampen noise, and it should be noted that these may have to seal off as the jumpship leaves the atmosphere. Although large vents will be modelled, some smaller ones could be added through hard surface normals, via baking or alphas – inserted below is a slideshow of screenshots identifying different induction vents scatters through my initial Sketchfab collection.
An induction kit is quite simply an air filter. Most cars have air filters mounted in an air box. These filters are generally constructed of paper which filters out the particles from the air and prevents these from getting into the engine. The airboxes are designed to reduce the noise of the engine and have various vanes and angles cut to maximize this noise reduction. Because the air is not flowing freely through the filter there is potentially a loss of power due to the turbulence caused by all that sound deadening. To make up for this loss of power the air filter surface area is a lot larger than the intake tubes so manufactures have effectively closed the gap between, noise reduction and performance. (Source: TorqueCars.com)
Cockpit
The location of a ship’s cockpit or bridge is dependent on a few major factors, such as the fictional universe, ship class, and time period. In most fighter or racing type vehicles, the cockpit is located in the front, behind or under glass shielding; this is to ensure the pilot can see everything in front of them at all times. Heavier carrier classes tend to follow this rule but are more likely to stray because they often take off vertically due to their large loads and mass. However, in universes such as the Star Trek franchise, people carriers don’t usually rely on forward-facing cockpits at all. Instead, they are controlled from a bridge, or command center, and all that needs to be seen by eye is displayed on a screen – but there are a few exceptions. In conclusion, the location of the cockpit adds to the overall shape and feel of the build, and emphasizes what the designer is aiming to portray, but it doesn’t define the purpose or end goal by itself. The slideshow inserted above consists of an array of screenshots taken from my initial Sketchfab collection which include an arrow to help identify the cockpit on these specific designs. The last example (from Star Trek) doesn’t have a visible control center.
The following GIFs were taken from Bungie’s Destiny 2 and are here to serve as reference images. Be patient though, they do load in eventually.
Level 3 Year 2 