Star Citizen...The Gladiator...ART DUMP

Trevelyan .

Hey all, long time no post! I thought I'd share some images of The Gladiator, a carrier-based torpedo-plane and space-to-ground dive bomber that I created for Star Citizen.

It was originally concepted by the talented David Hobbins and Andrew Ley, I then further refined the design as I developed the real-time asset.

There are also additional shots on my Artstation:

https://www.artstation.com/artist/trevelyan

And (shameless plug) I've just started a facebook page for WIPS, tutorials, links to good scripts, job links and whatever else springs to mind, so for anyone interested, give it a like here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Matthew-Trevelyan-Johns-Art/651692338300583

Anyway! All shots shown here are of the in-game model, rendered in the Cryengine. I was responsible creating the entire ship through it's full production cycle (modelling, texturing, shading, additional design work for animated elements, lighting, LODs, proxy work, damage states)

Hope you like it! (Warning picture heavy post).

Exterior Shots:

Trevelyan .

Interior Shots

Trevelyan .

Detail Shots

Obscura

I don't have any critique or feedback, it looks cool, as the whole game in my opinion.
Can I ask how much tris it used? Also, I see a lot of individual materials, how much it used , including all the decals, emissives, etc.?

Also, I was expecting more supportloops, and less chamfers, after seeing some videos and screenshots. Did you baked whole parts from highpoly, or relying on "med-poly" normals? I would be interested in the used methods.

RILKE

This is looking really, really good.
In fact, I have the same question did you baked from the high poly, for the major parts or only for detailing.

Obscura

So basically a part of what I would like to know :P

Melazee

Oh hey! Fancy seeing you here! (it's Yasmin by the way). As usual, I love it Insane how many polys you've managed to get into that ship, it looks great.

DavidCruz

Nice work, I like the colors and interior the most but everything looks good congrats.

Zezeri

Lovely materials, nice model ! Good work!

As far as I know, most Star Citizen Starships use chamfers and edge loops to get nice edges. Then a multi material with various tiling textures to achieve high texel density.

Each of the "material spheres" above probably represents one sub material.

Obscura

Sorry, but again, the above post is basically what I was expecting, but I see only chamfers, and almost no supportloops, however they are a lot more powerful, because you don't have to manually make the vertexnormals perfect. Still, I'm very interested to see some technical breakdowns .

Aerial_Knight

how long did that take????

3dshay

Very nice !!!! nothing to say! would love to see some textures and lighting setup!

Trevelyan .

Hey guys, thanks for your comments!

In regards to the technical questions, like Zezeri said, the ship uses a master material, with a bunch sub-materials. These are generally broken down into categories like 'metal', 'painted metal', 'chair upholstery' etc etc. Each shader has it's own texture inputs and can make use of a secondary blend shader controlled by vertex alpha if we deem it necessary - great for achieving subtle wear and tear in areas of occlusion.

Sometimes these shaders contain details baked from high poly models...But the entire ship itself is not baked from a single model. It's simply far too big to be custom baked and still retain decent texture resolution (plus making design changes to custom bakes are not fun!). So we use edge loops and custom vertex normals to attain the smooth, high poly look to everything and floating decals for livery and numbering etc

As for the lighting setup, these shots were taken in our real time PBR test scene (courtesy of our Principle artist Nathan Dearsley), which is a scene with various light modes we can cycle at the flick of a button, if you check out my website you can see those same 'material balls' in each of the different lighting scenarios.

I do want to add that there's no way we'd be able to make ships look nearly as good without the expertise of my good friends and colleagues Nathan Dearsley and Neil Mcknight, without their combined knowledge and hard work, the ship development pipeline wouldn't be nearly as technically advanced and definitely wouldn't allow us such creative freedom

Hopefully I'll get some videos of all of the animated parts of the ship too, the cockpit and landing gear animations took a long time to figure out, but are worth a look

Hope this answers some of your questions

Ged

thanks for that, nice to know a little about your process as a team, awesome work getting such high quality across the board. I guess its basically like texturing an environment in pbr materials because the camera can get so close or far.

Bedrock

Sounds kinda like how the Alien Isolation guys did their environment, very interesting. It looks like every ship is a serious undertaking, damage states, rigging the moving stuff and everything else! :0

Trevelyan .

Ged you're absolutely right, when you're tackling one of these ships it's good to approach it like a level, it's made of numerous parts that can all animate, detach, damage, erode, etc etc...i'll hopefully get a few shots of the ship with damage applied at the weekend, the entire thing has a framework that sits underneath the exterior hull, when you take damage the amazingly clever shader is blasted away to reveal the framework underneath.

And Bedrock - Our very own Nathan Dearsley played a huge part in the development of Alien Isolation, we're extreeemely lucky to have him on board for Star Citizen! As for the ship being a huge undertaking...it's probably the hardest thing I've ever made, but super rewarding!

Thanks for all your comments guys, i'll try to get a few more pics at the weekend of the stuff i've talked about

Obscura

Thanks for the answers! Its good to know that there is time in the industry for adjusting vertex normals. Or is there a secret or plugin or something, that makes this easier and faster? Is there any chance for some texture flats?

Trevelyan .

No problem Obscura! Glad to share, as for the vertex normals, you're right, we have a custom tool set that allows us to easily manipulate them, making things slightly less arduous. I'll grab a few textures at the weekend too if I can for those interested

Ignacio_G

Ohhhh this is so good! I'd love to see the actual texture/trim sheets!

Stirls

Awe-inspiring work man.

Obscura

Do I see it right that the easiest way to explain whats going on with the ship's texturing and materials, is that its an extensive use of "decals", and tiling materials under them? Even this is how you have put the bolts??

Soldier63

wow, I love the game and even further I love the ships! As I have always been interested in any kind of space scenes/ships, this game with it's beauty is the top of the mountain for me! Do you guys stream? I would love to follow such a ship creation step by step!

Neoncypher

So awesome - love the orange of the fuselage interior bits, great touch.

philhowlett

Awesome work Matt! Hopefully we can get some shots of the Retaliator soon...

amirabd2130

really awesome job man :thumbup:

Trevelyan .

Thanks a lot for the nice comments everybody, really appreciate your kind words!

Obscura - that's correct for the most part, tiling textures and decal use for details, even for the bolts, the only exception on this particular ship is the yellow interior texture, I baked rivet marks and panel lines into it and just manipulated the uv shells as best I could to make it work for me

Soldier63 - thanks man! As for streaming...Unfortunately we don't currently (it would be a very long video!) But i'm currently recording myself working on some personal 3D models and will have those vids up on my facebook page and youtube channel in the near future - all links to my stuff are on my artstation page btw, which is linked at the top of this post.

PhilHowlett - yeh budddyyy, you guys need to get some Tally shots up soon! She will break the internetz.

As i've said anyway, i'll get some texture flats and a couple additional images this weekend hopefully! Thanks everyone

Obscura

Awesome! Thanks for all the informations!

ephalanx

Very good job man! Love the work put into these ships. I've been looking at your ships from the CIG assets, and I've dissected the Gladius, and a quite a few others to include yours. I'm glad to hear that I seem to have gotten the understanding correct as far as you mentioned.

One thing I am curious about with concerns to your damage system. I see that there is vertex coloring on a separate UV map? Wondering how you get that to work with in CryEngine?

So when the ship is damaged you show the alternate damage textures and also change the alpha to see the ship hull/cage model beneath? Also how are you breaking away pieces? Should I separate areas off that need to break away still?

Also is there a particular reason why 3DS Max is in use for the modeling and then the move to Maya for animation. Is there something particular that 3DS Max is really needed for? I work primarily in Maya so that is the reason I ask. Not that I cannot in Max, but I'm not as skilled in that.

I've been a part of TNGS(Ephalanx of team Tri-Tri - Drake Silverback) featured in the Fan Ships sportlight, and in the modding section for a bit now and also working on my own models for SC for about 2+ years and I'm feel like just beginning to crack some of the code on how these ships should be setup. Any assistance would be appreciated if possible. I really want to get one of these finished and setup as best I can so I understand the process.

Again, very, very clean and awesome work, I hope to get to that level one day.