The Puddle Jumper model includes an Ancient drone and an extremely low-detail interior. And copy of my unfinished high-detail interior is included for anyone who would like to have a go at modeling and texturing it.
Puddle Jumper Showcase
“Puddle Jumper” for Lightwave 9, Released December 31, 2007
“Puddle Jumper” FBX version
So, here we have my next step in the wide world of explosions, from the explosion-and-smoke-filled universe of the new Battlestar Galactica using Raffs’ excellent Cylon Basestar. Rendered in Lightwave, with all of the effects done in-camera (so to speak) with particles and hypervoxels.
The picture actually started life some four weeks ago. It was originally going to be poster-sized, with three Basestars in various states of explosion. As time went on and I continued to finesse the shells and fireballs, I slowly found myself losing interest. Rather than dropping the picture, I repurposed it, changing the framing and reducing the image size to my old standby, losing one of the Basestars, and having only a little bit of explosion in the hopes it would finish rendering before I completed my higher education. I gave it a once-over in Photoshop to add some bloom and improve the color of it, along with a pass of film grain (followed by a .5 pixel gaussian blur, so the film grain actually looked like film grain and not weird pixelated distortion).
I considered having some missiles coming out of the Basestars, but decided against it because, like I said, I wanted to be done. I’ll make a missile setup later, in all likelihood.
The backstory to the image is that it’s from the battle in the flashback sequence of “Battlestar Galactica: Razor.” While the Cylons were focusing on the Battlestar Columbia, the other two Battlestars had the chance to switch from defensive to offensive fire, and this is their first salvo headed for the Cylon Basestars. The quote is something that will later be said by what these Cylons were fighting to the death to protect.
My first Doctor Who picture is inspired by the finale of the second season, wherein the Doctor parks his TARDIS next to a supernova so he can have enough power to say a final farewell to his companion, Rose Tyler.
I briefly worried that using an actual 3D model of a rose as the basis for the fire of the nova would be a bit too on-the-nose, but it ended up being nearly impossible to tell what it was originally, anyway, even when you know what to look for.
I recently realized that I’d been putting off making a scene of Saturn, even though I knew what I had to do to make it work. Seizing the opportunity to do some work in Layout again, I made a scale reproduction of Saturn, it’s rings, and five or six moons (the ones I found good maps for). I’ve already made similar set-ups for Jupiter and Earth. While I was working on it, I came up with ideas for three pictures using it, so here they are.
“Gossamer” is just a beauty shot of the planet.
“Take Us Out” is a Star Trek picture that’s something of a riff on the end of the computer game “Starfleet Academy,” where the Enterprise-A is seen in drydock around Saturn.
“Ouroboros” is a Stargate SG-1 picture, based off the first season cliffhanger. I felt like the the picture needed a quote, but I couldn’t think of anything specific, so I searched Google for quotes relating to the word “serpent” until I found something that was apropos to the situation.
…a puddle jumper!
Now that the modeling of the exterior is finished, I believe I have enough invested in it to start up the WIP thread. I’ve started on texturing, and I believe I have a good base for the hull texture above. I’m painting alpha maps for it so the mottling isn’t so uniform. I already finished animating the unfolding of the engines, though I’ll need to work out a new way to clip the objects so they don’t show up inside the cabin of the ship when they’re retracted. The method I’m using now only works when the ship is pointed along the Z-axis.
Also, I’ve finished texturing on the drone weapons, complete with a low-detail version for those scenes when you have thousands of the things flying every which way.
—
Added July 22, 2007
I’ve finished texturing and the light set-up on the exterior. I’m going to try to figure out how to get this clip-mapping fixed, though. Being able to only point the ship in one direction is a bit limiting for cinematography. After I’ve gotten that done (or given up in hopes of figuring it out later), I’ll get back to modeling the interior.
Also, I’ve rigged the engines so I can throttle their brightness with one slider. In fact, with the complicated retractions this ship does, I have to say, sliders and Master Channels are an absolute Godsend.
—
Added July 23, 2007
As for the engines on the Jumper, those are a magical wonderland of cheating. The engine bays on the original are about twice as deep as mine (the reason the bays on my model are shallower is so the rear compartment fits in at something close to its actual proportions), so the actual engines fit in with a bit less of a problem. However, it seems clear that the pivot they rest upon jumps off of its track while it’s retracting, so the engines can point straight up. Also, the wings themselves just pull into the body, without any sort of fake compartment or rationalization as to how they could possibly fit into the ship. Part of the fun of making this model was realizing exactly what compromises were made in its design, right after I made the same ones and thus knew what to look for.
The best look at how the engines retract (and how the VFX artists hide the fact that its physically impossible for them to move the way they do) come in the opening shot of the episode “Trinity,” and in a number of shots in “38 Minutes” (thought the best angles from those episodes aren’t included in those caps).
Seriously, after reverse-engineering this whole thing, I’m thinking about doing a writeup on the Jumper, mostly a taxonomy of the 3+ distinct 3D models of done on the show.
Now, this picture was an interesting one for me to make, since I tried a few new things. The contrails were a first for me, and I’m happy with how they turned out. The heat ripples coming out of Serenity’s engines also worked well. After a little polishing in Photoshop so the rendered elements blended in with the photographed stuff, I’m ready to call it done.
From humble beginnings…
Seriously, I did this picture because I was frustrated with another project and felt like making something I could call finished, but I didn’t have any images in my head. So I decided, what the hell, I’ll duplicate a professionally made picture and call it a lighting exercise (and, hey, good lighting is important, and being able to figure out whatever the lighting setup was used at a glance is danged useful). So I picked the first (and so far, only) CGI still from the new Babylon 5 direct-to-DVD anthology series, “The Lost Tales.” This particular shot is from the opening sequence, and is itself a redo of a shot from the final episode of Babylon 5.
As with most of my recent pictures, the magic happened in Photoshop, where I began my customary bloom effect. Also, rather than just reducing the saturation of the picture, I duplicated the image on a new layer, made the duplicate grayscale in the channel mixer with a bias toward the blue channel, and then reduced the opacity of that layer. Finally, I applied a slight gaussian blur so that the Photoshop grain didn’t look so perfectly pixeled.
Screencap from “The Lost Tales” that this picture is based on.
These are the icons seen on the DRADIS displays of Colonial vessels in the 2003 version of Battlestar Galactica. Updated January 23, 2008 with Cylon Com Relay icon seen in “Razor.”
DRADIS_Icons_1_23_2008.zip In Photoshop format.
dradis1A.ai Galactica 2D Field DRADIS Screen background in Illustrator format, created by Matthew Haley
dradis2.ai Galactica 3D Field DRADIS Screen background in Illustrator format, created by Matthew Haley
BSG_DRADIS_Screens.zip Galactica 2D, 3D, and countdown clock in PSD format, with image sequences for 2D/3D sweeps.
Pegasus_DRADIS_Screens.zip Pegasus 2D/3D Field DRADIS Screen background in Photoshop format, with image sequences for 2D/3D sweeps
DRADIS Showcase with scan-line monitor effect
DRADIS Showcase Clean without the scan-line effect.
