Orca Of Time

"GLYPHICS" is a Sci-Fi adventure film I'm writing for fun. The story is focused around a small band of scientists from an era long past who were thrown into an intergalactic war. As it turns out their deep space research ship "ORCA" proves to be an invaluable weapon to the alliance due to it's experimental time traveling ability. Here I will post elements of "GLYPHICS" pertaining mostly to the design of the "ORCA." If you'd like to see more work from my studio, please visit MoonShot Studios or check out my blog. Hope you enjoy and please share!

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Video Game Assets

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but that’s because I’ve been hard at work teaching myself how to program video games!  I don’t have anything quite ready yet, but I do want to share a low polly model I’ve been working on for one of my upcoming endeavours!  This is a shuttle craft / cargo carrier I’m making as the player’s ship in the game.  This is a low polly model of it, in the actual game you’ll probably never see it this close... sadly.  As you can see, it’s inspired by the space shuttle quite a bit, the surface is made up of tiles and the back engine area closely resembles that of the famous orbiter.  Anyway, lots of fun and lots of work!  I had to figure out how to unwrap the UVs so everything would be in 1 shader...

This ship, as well as Earth, was modeled and rendered using Blender, I made the texture maps in photoshop.  

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So here is a low quality animation rendered from Maya so I could actually get the spheres to look right.  I’ve also updated the shaders with higher detail land mass and more realistic lighting, for the most part.  There is still some tweaking left to do.  The only thing that’s really done is the sound effects!

I’d say right now the specular on the ocean is the trickiest part.  

Some detail.

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I’ve updated the video with a newer planet AND a shattered moon!  A lot needs to be done to make this better, mostly animating the lighting on the planets as the camera passes by, but otherwise I think this looks nice.  Man, the tidal forces on this planet would be CRAZY!  I wonder what @BadAstronomer or @neiltyson or even @nasa would think...

The updated version of the planet has a more accurate atmosphere shader, as well as a ramp to orange on the clouds so when they go to the dark side they turn orange.  It’s subtle but I like it.

So my shattered moon was fun.  Just playing around with the shatter effect in Maya.

Here is another with a different shatter seed.  I also added some dust.  I need to work on the texture mapping on these, also I’d like more pieces.

Also at work, I was working on the above animation and the Aja Kona card pumped out this image to my color grading monitor... Sometimes it messes up really nicely :-)

Unfortunately I could only take a picture of this psychedelic version of the scene! Pretty tubular. 

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Here is a quick concept animation I did for a feature film that shall not be named at this time.  Just a sketch, really.  Also some stills of the planets by themselves.  One moon, the “rust moon” I made the texture from pictures of a rusty beam in my office...

The “Rust Moon” and below is the original texture I took with my iPhone...

I’m pretty happy with how these are turning out.  Have a little more work to do on the earth like planet, though.

If you’re wondering about the nebula in the video, that’s actually a REAL photo of the Orion Nebula taken by the Hubble telescope.  Absolutely amazing.  

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Added engines, some lights and a hand drawn texture for the front.

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So taking a small break from the ORCA.  This is a concept I have for one of the enemy factions in the story.  They have highjacked a bunch of supply freighters and repurposed them to carry troops, and big deck guns.   If this looks familiar, that's because it's loosely based on 3 other ships.  The back, which I haven't finished modeling is based on the medical frigate for Star Wars.   The second influence is from the IDA Frigate from Escape Velocity: NOVA, which is itself is based on the medical frigate.   Then lastly, probably the biggest influence is the Sulaco from Aliens!  One of my favorite ships from one of my favorite movies!   I hope to get back to the ORCA soon, but it's fun designing the other elements.

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Incase you were wondering what I'm looking at, here are some screenshots of the wireframe of the bridge and engine in progress.  I can't navigate around the scene with rendered textures anymore as it'll crash the computer D:

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A few more control panels.

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Profile sketch of the new engine design for the Orca.  The old engines were just place holders.  We'll see what happens when I actually model it...

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Ok, one more.  But probably no more for a while!  Yay joysticks!

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Some more images.  Updates will probably slow down as I plan to have more dramatic changes between updates.  These control panels are taking forever!

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Starting to build out the control consoles on the lower deck.  Lots of detail, causing rendering headaches... but after conversing with my VFX buddies here in Hollywood, we've found a work-around!  Minor crisis avoided.

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Playing with a floor pattern for the lower deck.  Added some gadgetry to the control consoles.  Added another chair! 

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Got some new chairs and a control board for the captain!

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Windows, floor and more gadgets!  This fogged glass floor ads and hour to the render -_-

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So here is the animation breakdown "Orca's Last Stand."  Once again, it's more of an animatic than a finished piece, more on it later once I have a high polly model of the ship with shaders!  The music is once again Brian Tyler's "The Impossible Wager" from "Children of Dune."

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Update on the bridge, I now have a ceiling.