Alpha presentation feedback

After presenting my alpha build I have to say my confidence has been shaken a little bit. To start with feeling under the weather hampered my presentation so my usual rapier wit was not present, along with a little lack of preparation and trying to rush though to meet the 5 minute deadline. Some of the questions however caught me off guard and really made me consider if I was heading in the right direction with using Mental Ray. Yes it is the definition of the module, learning an advanced 3D method but if it looks terrible, is hard to do and takes ages to render then what really is the point? I wanted to be different as everyone was using UE4 to create their projects I wanted to do something completely different that would look better and after seeing everyone else's presentation and hearing the feedback I really am thinking about using UE4. I'm going to try out my scene in UE4 to see what it looks like but I have to make a decision fast as I am going to need to learn either UE4 animations or Mental Ray. Trying to learn both at the same time will be too much and both will look terrible. On the whole the presentation has not convinced people I'm on the right track but in fact has nearly convinced me that I might be going the wrong way about this whole project.

Small texture update

The textures for the Prometheus have been finished and I decided to put them into Marmoset to see what they look like. I'm very happy with how the textures have turned out considering that it is mostly hand painted in Photoshop. The shipyard and shuttle textures are also completed. I also added a glow map to the Prometheus's engines as the emissive map wasn't giving me the results I wanted to make the nacelles really pop when rendered. I am seriously considering re exporting the Substance Painter textures and Diffuse, gloss and specular as I have decided on rendering the scene in Maya. I just feel that I will get the best result using Maya and it will also give me a great opportunity to try out Mental Ray rendering as it uses advanced methods to get a decent looking render. 

The start of texturing

I started to work on the textures before the work sneaks up on me and I run out of time. My original idea was to use Substance Painter to create the whole texture however I felt this would have been too difficult to create certain things like the blue parts to the warp nacelles and the escape pods so I decided to create the base in Substance and then take the maps into Photoshop to add the details. I first created the name and registry, as this is a important part of the ship I had to see how it looked. The result was less than pleasing. I managed to find the font used for ship names on the show however when I added it to the UV map it pixelated a little too much for my liking and so I decided to create an Alpha for it so I could have it in the maximum detail allowed, I also did this for the registry underneath. My next step was creating the nacelle glow which I made using a circular gradient and transforming it to fit the nacelle, this was the same method for the bussard collectors too. I then made the entrance to the shuttle bay, using Voyagers shuttle bay and a little bit of Prometheus reference I created a sort of 'welcome mat' for the shuttle bay and added the ship name and registry. I added some detailing to the nacelle pylons and normal mapped them as they are raised on the actual ship as are the escape pods which I made from scratch by simply making a hexagon with a red cuboid cut to make corners and S.O.S stenciled on. The deflector was fairly simple, I made a light blue circle, cut out the middle and put an Outer Glow effect to replicate the reference image.

My next step is to create the dreaded panel gaps. It is going to need to be very precise and fit both the UV map and the actual curvature of the model and I will need to come up with a way to create it so that it looks at least similar to the reference images. The Aztec detailing shouldn't be too hard as I have created them from scratch before however getting them to link together will be a challenge. I then want to make the textures animated, mostly the impulse and warp engines and the deflector lighting up. I have experience with animating texture glow in Max during college and hopefully Maya will allow me to do something similar so I can get the slowly powering up effect I want and the warp engine glow before the ship rockets off at the end of the show reel.

Retouched playblast with music

It took me a while to find a track I liked. I really wanted to use a slower version of TNG intro but couldn't find one that would go with the timing of my playblast. My second choice was a track called Rebuilding The Enterprise from the Star Trek Nemesis where the Enterprise is being rebuilt. This would have gone very well if it wen't for the fact that it is 50 seconds long whereas my playblast is 1 minute 10 seconds and the first 30 seconds are virtual silence and that the timing is completely out of sync with my fly through.
The music I finally settled on was the main menu music from the game Star Trek Legacy. This turned out to be very nearly perfect as he start is slow and builds slowly with the first reveal of the ship, the rises in the music coincided nicely with the reveal of the ships name and the track has a natural 'quiet down' around the minute mark which is perfect for the ship flying off and requires only a fade out in terms of editing. It also gives the warp effect a chance to be heard. I'm slightly disappointed with this sound effect as it sounds odd and not quite like the warp effects I know and wanted however it is the only decent 'clean' effect I could find. There were a few clips from the 2009 Star Trek films however they sound awful and won't fit with my ship in the slightest as the 2009 ships are a completely different design to the classic ships. I like my ships to be detailed right down to the engine sounds.
I will attempt to get a more detailed warp sound from Star Trek Online as I can record game play and take the audio from my ship warping to a new area. If this works I can have a clean, completely accurate warp sound effect that I can time to my playblast.

Another adjustment I made to my playblast is by adding my name and 'Vehicle and Prop artist' to the side of the shuttle the camera follows on the advice of a friend who wanted me to go for a Guardians of the Galaxy vibe and suggested that I should add my name, 3D artist and Vehicle and Prop artist in graffiti to the side of my shuttle to the song Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum while having exhaust belching from the engines. I immediately shot this idea down as this is the complete opposite of what I wanted however I was intrigued by the 'advertising' idea for the shuttle and I believed that it really could work given the right camera angles and if the camera lingered on shuttle long enough for the viewer to read it. I think this is an interesting idea that, at least in the testers, works rather well and it is something that will hopefully stick in peoples memories for the right reasons.

I also added the background planet with the textures made in Grand Designer. To get the atmosphere effect though I had to create a new sphere and add the clouds alpha to it then added an incandescence colour to create a glowing atmosphere. I also added duplicates of the ship yard to create a little more life in the scene and make it feel like this is a hub of activity instead of a random shipyard in orbit of a random planet.

Playblast link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdgPi0yjENc&feature=youtu.be

The 3rd playblast attempt

After the feedback given during the presentation I re animated my playblast to do what was suggested and the early tests look promising. Following the shuttle to reveal the ship is a really nice transition and even in the test looks very good. I have also slowed down the sweeping shots too and given time to show off key parts of the ship like its name and registry number, the deflector array and the nacelles, although all 4 are the same only one was needed. The umbilical cord detaching still seems a little fast as does the lead up to it where I plan to fly past the nacelles as the power up finally finishing on the impulse engines as they power up, then cutting to the umbilical detaching with the particle effect so this will probably need to be slowed down. Also as the ship goes to warp the stretching animation seems a little too long so that needs to be sped up, aside from those little problems I believe this playblast test has been a success especially for the camera angles. I feel that they show off the model well and once it is textured and lit will really show off the model to its full potential.

Here is the link to the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKkXMggZNjU

Grand Designer

After the feedback I got after the presentation I decided to check out Grand Designer to create the planet I would need for my scene and I have to say it is a very powerful tool. After about 10-15 minutes I created a planet, the link to a quick video is below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dSZdHO60Sg

This impressed me very much but unfortunately I reset it by accident. This is where I found that I couldn't reload the preset I made of it. Every time I tried to reload it, it wouldn't. I have no idea why.
This was frustrating however not as frustrating as the fact that I can't export the planet as an FBX file, only a Unity file or UE4 project. The problem for these are Unity won't export as an FBX or OBJ file. I found a work around for this by adding a section of code into the project file but this didn't work. Neither did UE4 which refused to open the file for what I suspect to be an engine build conflict with the exported file and the build I have installed. It would be very useful if I could export it to FBX as my planet has rings on it and it would be hard to get right if I were to make it in Maya. I can export the textures but as they render out as PBR they looked a little funny in Maya, as I intend to do my final render using Maya software.
This is a bit of a double edged sword. On the one hand the software is very powerful, easy to use and gives some really fantastic results and on the other it is impossible to get the finished model into Maya where it is needed. As I have a spherical plant this isn't a massive problem but I also added rings too it which I really do need and if I wanted asteroids in my scene I really would need to export them into Maya. More research will definitely be needed on this and I will hopefully find a solution.

Second playblast

After feedback for my first playblast I was told that not only was it too fast, which I already knew, but the actual camera shots needed much more work. The result can be seen below in the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ublB8AYqMlo

To get an idea of what would be good shots I watched some clips, mostly from Star Trek, of ships in space dock the best video of which was the ending of Star Trek Nemesis where the Enterprise was being repaired in space dock. The panning shots gave me good ideas on how to show off my model to its best. After slowing down the animation I also decided to do close passes of the ship rather than the whole dock. I am going to have to make the textures very high quality because the camera goes so close. I kept the warping away shot as I really do like that idea and gives a little more life to the model rather than just slowly pulling away. It also gives a clear ending point to the reel.
During the feedback I was also given tips on time management and what I need to prioritize. After that I decided that as my model was mostly finished I would focus on researching particle effects for my air explosion from the retracting umbilical cord and Adobe After Effects for the warp away flash. I have some experience using After Effects so I believe I will be able to get a nice looking effect for my finale, hopefully giving it the punch it needs.