Ok
well I was quite pleased when I
heard I was going to get to build
this little guy for the new Wicked
Pixels shortfilm that will be released
by the end of the year. He's based
on a real spider, but of course
I have taken lots of creative license
making him nice and cool and techy
looking. So here you go, here's
his making of...
BUT,
Before I get into it I would just
like to say something... Since
lately there has been some debate
about it. FIRSTLY I would like to
say that this Spider was inspired
by the amazing works of Neil Blomkamp,
I am not sure if he's still at Rainmaker.
But he created his Arachi-droid
while working there. You can check
it out at www.rainmaker.com
in the showcase gallery in the calender.
A lot of my creations are inspired
by ALL sorts of things, and I apologise
if any credit was given to me that
was unworthy. I hope you can respect
the fact that just to CREATE this
guy in 3D is good enough. Oh before
I forget I was also inspired by
the work of the awesome CG Spider
in Wild Wild West. Hope I haven't
missed any.....
I
didn't do too many design sketches
for this guy, since I knew he had
to look like a real spider I knew
what I needed
to achieve in an overall
direction, in terms of the technical
mechanics side I new what I wanted,
and I knew there had to be tons
of detail.
The
MTS.Arach is a Mobile Targeting
System, so he doesn't actually get
down and dirty they're basically
there so that Fighter Jets and other
units can track where their weapons
need to impact, so these little
guys get sacrificed basically. They
have a little added bonus to them
that's quite cool, but unfortutely
you'll have to wait for the short
film to be released to find out
what it is. They're a little bigger
than the size of your hand fingers
stretched out.
Modelling
The
modelling process began with the
legs, there were
going to be eight of them
and they were going to be
noticed more than anything
so they had to have detail, and
LOTS of it. I decided to go for
a polyarmour covering, like a protective
coat over the mechanics instead
of exposing the raw mechanics to
elements. This also gave me the
ability to change the look of the
spider quite quickly by changing
it casing, but there's more on that
in the texturing section.
(Above) Sections
of the the Arach's legs. These two
parts, well three actually being
his Lower Leg, what I call his foot
and his toe. I am sure there are
more spider anatomy type terms for
them, but hey, come on ! Everything
was modelled in normal polygon mode,
for the wires and polyarmour I used
nurbs.
Alright,
I'll admit it sometimes I do go
a little far with the modelling
detail, but I knew I had 4-5 days
so I made sure I used them all up
and I did, here's a look at his
body and head and stuff. I even
added in the little chompers, not
sure what they are really called,
I guess I can call them teeth, those
things he eats with. Anyway Here's
a closer look at those. (Below)
Texturing
While
I am building my models (ok this
is kinda lightwave specific) I name
all my surfaces, normally would
be something like MidLeg.MainSurface.Brackets.Bevel,
this helps me keep track of what
I am doing, cause I have quite a
lot of surfaces at the end. I usualy
give most all things different surfaces,
I know I end up just copying the
same surface setting to other surfaces
very often, but I'd rather have
the ability to make it a different
surface than not, and have to go
back into modeller and try and give
it it's own surface name. You know
... "Rather have a gun and
not need it, than need a gun and
not have it." - come on, what
movie is that from ? Anyway...
(ok I don't even like guns, well
real ones, it's just a little quote
I am not a gun toting crazy eyed
freak looking for kicks)
So
back to naming, I usually break
my surface naming conventions down
in some sort of hierachiel tree
sorta thing, how do you spell that.
So the object would be Spider.Leg.Right
and the surface
MidLeg.MainSurface.Bracket
In this case the Bracket is attached
to the main surface and that is
found on the MiddleLeg wich is located
on the Right Leg of the Spider.
Well anyway, not very exciting that.....
Ok
so now I have named all my surfaces
and they have weird and funky colours
so I can see them easily.
And from here I start texturing.
Ok
a little further down the line now,
I have textured most of my surfaces,
I am going to show you how I go
about actually surfacing a material,
no maps, well not really. So everythings
pretty much done now, we're just
gonna do the PolyArmour that covers
the main parts of the spider. It's
that lovelly purple colour in the
image above.
Ok,
I pick a basic colour for the amour.
I put some fractal noise, well it's
called Turbulence, on the surface
so it's not one solid colour. To
get the pattern and size of the
noise right I make it a funky colour
so I can see what I am getting.
Lightwave has a really cool surface
editing thing called VIPER, it's
a realtime surfacing thingy, so
I can make a change and see an imediate
update of my changes.
So
using Viper I step by Step give
my metal it's base colours, and
procedural dirt and stuff. Read
on
the right.
Next
I get my specularity looking right.
I use the same layers of procedural
maps in the colour channels to alter
their respective specularity. Viper
Rocks.
Next
I get to work on the reflection
I use some ray traced reflection
for anything in the scene and a
reflection map for that added cool
metal look. The Reflections are
done using the same principles of
specularity, layer by layer.
Ok
lastly I get to my bump mapping.
Again using the same properties
for the layered procedural textures,
I created my bump maps. I want the
dark dull areas fo dirt to be like,
mud or something that has stuck
to the surface so it will be bumped
out. The shiner smaller parts, will
be where the metal has actually
been dented or scratched, so they're
gonna be dented in, bumped in if
you will.
So after adding bumps
and dents my final render ended up
looking like this.
Rendering
Ok
well that's all for the texturing
side of things. Now we move along
to the lighting and rendering. This
isn't a complex environment to light
so it's pretty simple and I am gonna
cover it relatively quickly, but
there are some pretty pictures to
look at, so that's cool *grin*
All
I have in this scene is the Arach
a floor and two lights. The floor
is just plain white with a low specularity
and
about 25% Reflective. Below
is a screenshot of my scene and
how some of the things are laid
out. I used two lights in my scene
with each a different colour.
One is brighter than the other (A)
it's at about 125% intensity and
is a slightly blue shade of white.
It is the main light and will light
the majority of the scene and spider.
The other light (B) is there to
really just highlight edges and
bring detail that would otherwise
be in darkness out. I don't like
to overlight my images, I LOVE contrast,
love moody images, don't like floodlit
stuff. Light (B) is about 50% intensity
and is a pale orangey yellow gold
colour. So as you can see lights
A and B are almost directly opposite
each other, it's a nice little lighting
techinque that I use and works well
with most scenes where you're showing
off a model or a character. Light
(A) is slightly above the spider
in the scene, and light (B) is slightly
below, well almost, but it should
be lower than light (A).
If
you want to really get to grips
with your lighting and rendering,
check out "
[Digital] Lighting and Rendering
" by Jeremy Birn and George
Maestri (Editor) cool book, I have
it and it's worth a good read.
Ok
Well enough's enough, here are some
final renders...... enjoy.
There's
a cool wallpaper of this one so
be sure to get that it's at 1152x864
res.
Download it Here >> SimTech
Arach WallPaper
All
the above renders took about 15-20mins.
Facts & Info
-
There are 1 230 893 Polygons in
the Arach
-
Total days modelling 40 hours, about
5 days
-
Total days texturing (not too sure)
probably about 3
-
Rendering times can range from 10mins
to 3 hours
One
more before you go. Little camo
dude for those desert wars. Used
radiosity on this one, no lights,
used a luminous dome around the
arach. DON'T ask how long the render
took *grin*
