Sci FI Cannon Assignment

For this assignment I was asked to look at a 3D paint-over video and apply some of these techniques to a sci fi cannon design that I will make in 3D. We were given the choice to use the one presented in the video however I think I just like my designs, as simple as they are.

Here is the video of the paint-over:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL7nV7WwJKg

I made a few notes on the techniques I will most likely be applying to my paint-over...

1:53 - The model is rendered and moved into photoshop to begin the paintover
2:07 - A Texture is added and then transform > skewed to fit the perspective of the area
2:27 - To have a texture wrap around a cylindrical object, the warp tool is applied to the texture
2:55 - Extra details are added in that do not originate from 3D

First I did a quick moodboard on different cannon shapes, movements and structures:

I really like the idea of a stationary cannon that can have dual-axis movement rather than going back to the old style cannon movements with only vertical axis aiming.

I did some quick designing to discover what the final cannon will look like:

I then started modelling the cannon in 3D.

Here is the base of the cannon:

I then modelled the main cannon body:

I then linked  the base and the body together and added some extra aiming details:

I then exported the model into Maya to set up the 3 point lighting. Here is the resulting render:

I then rendered an image into photoshop and painted the base colours onto the model to give it a sort of army camouflage look. Who knows, maybe in the near future the army is still obsessed with the colour green.

Finally I added the textures to the model and here is the final result:

Final Scene

Here is the final landscape area scene. I am not that happy at how the detail of the plant life came out and could be vastly improved upon. I plan on adding a lot more vibrance and variation to the final landscape in the future.

Here is the render with the base colour:

And here is the final piece with added detail:

Vegetation Designs

Here I have a couple of designs for the plant life using the referencing from the water droplets:

Alien Landscape Development

Here is a moodboard including some landscapes I really like the look of:

The things that really appeal to me for alien landscapes are really unnatural, almost artificial spires, constructs or formations that still retain the natural-ness of the world around them implying that they are infact organic.

Another thing that appeals is a really blobby looking environment, as if a small child had got ahold of some experimental anti-gravity play-do and decided to have some fun with it. If subtlety doesn't work, then why not have something that screams 'I'm not normal!'.

Also a very large or close up planet being visible in the horizon always informs the viewer that this is a different world. A big factor which decides if something isn't normal is the scale of things. If there is a really large planet in the atmosphere and it takes up half the sky then it really does give a sense of scale. One thing I want to try for this project is have a visible planet, but half buried in the sand of the planet the viewer is on. Implying that this planet is so large in its scale that it can even have crashed planets on its surface.

And the final detail is the colour. The world we live in can look very colourful at times yes but more often than not its close to one level of colour in common weather conditions (No offense england) and its something we're very used to. If another world has the ability to have so many shades, tones and levels regardless of the weather or light level then it really seems otherworldly.



I also have some ideas for plant life in this environments, using the scale factor and colour factor. I got the idea when generally surfing the internet and stumbling upon these images of water droplets colliding with eachother:

Now the second I saw this image it really gave me the idea to make twisting oddly shaped mushrooms that glow and have weird organic decorations that probably serve no purpose. The image alone almost look like trees from another world, combining that with how the scale will be depicted I'm sure it will seem very alien indeed.

This design does seem very similar to the kind of wild plants featured in James Cameron's Avatar, and I think it'd be a good idea to get some reference images from the film itself, seeing as it is about an alien landscape.

Final Wrinkle Character

In the end I chose the slug. I really struggled with this project since despite my research I still don't fully understand how wrinkles are made and formed (Although I did get a C in biology so I guess that's gone away now). I feel strongly that this project could have gone at lot better mainly because this is my first 3d paintover in a while and It was hard getting back into mudbox after using sculptris but excuses aside I would like to come back to this project at some point and improve upon it.

Here is the final sculpted design in mudbox:

And here is the paintover:

Wrinkle Designs

For the project I want to do some sort of animal made to have extra limbs for some sort of indication that it lives in a tribal stage of its evolution. I didn't really want to go for a kind of humanoid with wrinkles so I found   insects and animals that had wrinkles already. At the moment I am deciding whether to do a turtle or a slug...

Here is a quick depiction:

Wrinkles Moodboard