WIP: Belbullab-22 Soulless One
I’d like to show you the Work In Progress of a model which I made in January 2011. I was watching Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith and there I saw Obi-Wan Kenobi, capturing a gorgeous shaped, perfectly streamlined ship. It didn’t take a long time until I decided to rebuild it in Max.
After searching Blueprints or other enlightening pictures in vain I modelled the raw shape with the aid of 2 cartoon pictures and another 3D rendered model of the ship. The rest was created by my own discretion and pleasure.
I started with the fuselage of the ship. The apparently nice union of round and sharp-edged shapes were a challengeto model, that’s why many smoothing issues attended me on my way. I didn’t like the canopy very much so I replaced it by a one-piece-of-glass canopy.
As at every beginning of a WIP project I created 2 standard cameras for rendering, one sidewise ahead and one sidewise rearwards. So it’s easy to recognize the differences between the different design steps.
After refining the fuselage and attaching the rudder the wings (or the connecting component between fuselage and engines) were modelled and I really liked their profile, so I let them be as they were in my reference pictures.
The next step was the attachment of the engines or at least their mantle. Again a challenging procedure to model those elegant formed entries.
Since the model drifted out of the camera’s view, I repositioned them to reach a better sight. I also created a Skylight which increases render time a lot but the Belbullab looks quite better with it’s softy casted shadows. I finished the engines and attached another one in the rear of the ship which blasts directly into the rudder and makes this at least a little functional.
Finally I added some details like radiator grills and some tubes in the rear and splited up the ship’s surface to reach some more structure and contrast on the planking. Furthermore I created landing skids.
That’s it about the modelling part.
For a realistic render I used Vray 2.0. In Star Wars are many ships very reflective and glossy so I wanted to asign some chrome material. With Vray the material handling is very easy and uncomplicated, I really appreciate that. The first renders were studio renders and material tests.
But I wanted to create an everyday situation, so I umwrapped the scene with a spherical HDRI panorama and let it illuminate the scene. Further I definitely made the chrome ultra-reflective and I added a noise bump map to the material to reach that dented look with which each riveted, chromy airplane is cursed. My model doesn’t have any rivets, however.. The shadow on the street is casted on a flat object which is invisible when rendered except for it’s shadows, a so-called Matte/Shadow-object.
This is the final result of the WIP Belbullab Soulless One and there are many discrepancies like the too bright casted shadow or the ugly blue reflections in the rear view but I made many valuable experiences for the future in this project. Of course, these issues can be erased by photoshop or other image processing software but this isn’t my goal.
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bb3d - this blog is a work in progress 