The Rust Bucket - Spaceship Repair Pump (UE4)

ActionDawg

On its final mission before being sent to scrap, the work to be done by the 50 year old repair ship known to its crew affectionately as "The Rust Bucket" has come to a halt due to a malfunction of one of its extendable pumps. As a vessel designed to service the largest and most profitable space-born structures, no time may be wasted. Ship-side attempts at determining the issue have proven unsuccessful and a crew member has been dispatched to diagnose the problem on the on-board computer terminal.

See more on Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rRy986




Rendered in UE4 with raytracing. Scroll to the bottom of the Artstation post for a youtube clip of the LCD material in action.

Among many others I'd like to thank Steve Harlow, Alan Linssen, Adam Nield, and Joe Seabuhr for their excellent advice and feedback on this resurrected project. Adam Nield graciously provided the base mesh from which I customized the astronaut, known by no other name than The Space Dude.

Any and all feedback is wanted and welcome!

Amasahir

First off.

WOW this looks absolutely incredible, The materials look very nice and the lighting looks spot on great compositions too!

I would say definitely go back and work on the monitor/screen, I'm not the brightest guy when it comes to physics but it seems like it would make lots of sense for the screen to have more cracked/ice like detail around it. even masked dirt or dust could add to the 50 year oldness of the overall piece. Maybe even a cool LED underneath the glass to give off some kind of depth and layering to the screen.      

Ashervisalis

Looks cool! I think the depth of field isn't really helping the art much; the blurred planet and stars makes everything in focus seem like a toy. The lighting also throws me off, it looks like there is a really bright light source behind the camera.

TheGabmeister

I also agree that Depth of Field might not be suitable for this scene. At first glance, I thought I was looking at a miniature astronaut.

Other than that, fantastic work.

ActionDawg

Thanks for the excellent feedback yall! It's greatly appreciated and I will take them into account for the future.

I definitely agree about the screen needing wear. Thats something I neglected in trying to get all the other qualities of it up to snuff. I accidentally deleted my old LCD material from a previous project and had to remake it in the timeline I gave myself!

While I understand where the thoughts on DoF are coming from, I also received similar feedback on this shot during development but disagreed there and now. I didn't want an overly sharp background competing with my subject. Instead I chose to maintain my desired composition, and am fine with a toy-like look for that shot. Personally the look of artificial DoF has a satisfying softness to me and I feel the scene conveys relative scale all the same.