Project PEACEKEEPER - WIP thread

Kattevoer

Hey there! 

My name is Felix van den Bergh. I'm creating/directing a short film in Unreal Engine 4, which I work on in my free time. I started somewhere in 2016 and have been flying under the radar ever since. Recently decided that I might as well post the WIP stuff while working on this project.
So... what's Project PEACEKEEPER about? 

In short, without going into any story details, the project mainly takes place on and around an orbital weapons platform. This weapon system drops heavy tungsten darts. The kinetic force released when these dart land on earth, with a speed of 11km/s, is equal to that of an small atomic bomb. Over the course of this short movie the spacestation/weapon platform gets blown up. 

I'll try and regularly update this post to make it reflect what I'm posting on my twitter. https://twitter.com/Kattevoer
Questions, feedback or critique more then welcome!

-Felix

Kattevoer

Guess I'll start at the beginning. 2016. Decided I was going to model a spacestation. Started with some simple NASA-looking paneling. Modeled in Maya, baked and textured in SD.

Here's the high-poly:


Baked, testing the material ID mask with some flat textures and values. Also got he POM shader working in UE4. 


My SD setup is one where you have a master .sbr, with sub-sbr's in it (in the centre) that get blended with eachother based on material-ID mask (bottom left). This way I can quickly add or remove certain types of material (plastic, titanium, etc) based on what the material needs. 


Testing the aluminium material. 


Questions or feedback more then welkcome! 

Kattevoer

Hey! I wanted to start posting stuff from the beginning of my project but failed to mention the skybox in the background of all of my screenshots. It's the first thing I made for this project.



It's half a sphere (for the stars) and a plane (for the earth) and a small poly for the sun. 
The sun has a lensflare placed over it. There's also a strip of additive haze or atmosphere blending the earth shader and the black together. 
I should also note that nothing is actually being lit, all shadows and highlights are done in the shader. 

Kattevoer

Lexi

Wow that looks amazing!!

Kattevoer

Lexi said:

Wow that looks amazing!!

Thanks Lexi!  

Kattevoer

More 2016 work. This is the modeled texture atlas from the previous post, ingame.

Kattevoer

The "Orbital Close-In Weapon System". Started modeling this before I started building the spacestation. I was figuring out my prop/asset pipeline. It's a gun on a space arm to counter incoming missiles.






(I have no idea why the cam is slightly tilted, lol)

Kattevoer

My OCIWS textured and ingame! The idea is it would act similar to a phalanx CIWS. A CIWS tracks and destroys incoming mortars. The one for the spacestation would do the same for incoming anti-satellite missiles.

Kattevoer

Greeble!
Well, ... detail at least. These are the highpoly models of construction elements that will help make the spacestation sillhoute look more detailed.

defragger

Kattevoer said:

the project mainly takes place on and around an orbital weapons platform. This weapon system drops heavy tungsten darts.

uhm, this might be a small problem because you can't drop stuff from orbit without slowing it down. The centrifugal forces compensate for gravity. Which makes stuff like space stations maintain their orbit in the first place. You can't push or shoot it down from the space station either, because every force equals a force in the opposite direction which would cause the space station to slowly leave orbit in the opposite direction as well.

You would need some sort of impellent on the darts which would make them missiles basically. Now there would be still an issue with the cases floating around the space station forever. The missiles would need to be attached to the space station directly without the cases I guess.

Just a thought!

But great project and I really like the visuals so far.

Edit:

another issue. The tungsten dart hitting the earth would have a tiny area of impact. It would disappear into the earth basically. Maybe it would be great for hitting underground bunkers I guess but it's not comparable to an atomic bomb which detonates in the atmosphere. You wouldn't be able to see the result of the dart impact from space at all.

Funny thing. I have accelerated medium sized tungsten bits to 200 mph and dug them up from the ground afterwards. The hole in the ground is so small that we had to use metal detectors to even find the areas of impact in rough terrain. Don't ask how and why

Kattevoer

Hey defragger!
Thanks for you post

defragger said:

uhm, this might be a small problem because you can't drop stuff from orbit without slowing it down. The centrifugal forces compensate for gravity. Which makes stuff like space stations maintain their orbit in the first place. You can't push or shoot it down from the space station either, because every force equals a force in the opposite direction which would cause the space station to slowly leave orbit in the opposite direction as well.

You are right in the sense that you cant "drop" stuff from space! I should have said that the dart's get de-orbited or sent into reentry to be technically correct.
The idea is that the crate carrying the dart slowly leave the space-station, where (at a safe distance) the crates open up and gently, using small thrusters on the 2 crate parts, take on a static position next to the station and eventually are de-orbited to burn up in the atmosphere.

The dart then starts to decelerate, using small thrusters on the front of the dart, causing the orbit of the dart to shrink to the point where it intersects earth. So yeah, it's not simply "dropping" a dart like you would do that from a plane or so. :P

It's based on this concept. On the wikipedia page it already lists a bunch or problems with the concept, but I'm taking some artistic license to say that in this story they worked out the flaws, and affects are a bit more dramatic. 
That same artistic license is why I'm using phalanx type anti-missile defence systems (which use bullets) instead of anti-missile lasers. "Because it looks cool".  

Kattevoer

More Greeble! 
Now textured and ingame. I was quite pleased with how it worked with the POM shader. Adding some random valves and putting the hand-rails made it instantly feel ISS-esque imo.

defragger

ok, it's sci-fi after all so who cares really. It's a cool and interesting concept.

I like the small details. Will be following for sure.

Kattevoer

Thanks defragger!

Kattevoer

More for my spacestation: a detail texture sheet!
 - Random pieces of spacestation surface detail that look somewhat functional.
 - A wip close up of detail.
 - Defining materials using vertex colors.
- Result.

teodar23

really nice!

are those micro shadows from contact shadows or done in the shader (pom shadows)?

Kattevoer

teodar23 said:

really nice!

are those micro shadows from contact shadows or done in the shader (pom shadows)?

Hey teodar23!

If you are talking about my last post; the first 2 pictures were rendered in Maya! It's the highres model from which i bake the heightmap that's used in UE4. 
 
The earlier posts however do show POM shading being used. I rely on POM quite a bit I'll post the finished shader from my last post ASAP. 

teodar23

i was referring to the in-game shots. i see that the planet has also some shadows for the clowds or is that just a picture?

Kattevoer

teodar23 said:

i was referring to the in-game shots. i see that the planet has also some shadows for the clowds or is that just a picture?

The planet shader uses a simple parallax to offset the clouds from the earth and the cloud shadows.

Kattevoer

Some old 2017 WIP shots testing the materials.

What work-in-progress stuff are you most interested in seeing? Shader setups? Modeling and texturing stuff? More of the skybox? Concept-art?

Kattevoer

More work-in-progress stuff. The space stations solar array!
I was going to go with a nucleur powered spacestation but prefered the look of the giant solar panels.
Made in Substance Designer.

Kattevoer

A more recent screenshot of a module on the space-station for Project: PEACEKEEPER.

This is the "Optical Target Acquisition Array", used for finding targets to drop some tungsten on!

teodar23

noice!

one gripe though, the specular on some of those faces are too uniform, maybe break the roughness a bit.

i mean the faces with the bolts...

Kattevoer

teodar23 said:

noice!

one gripe though, the specular on some of those faces are too uniform, maybe break the roughness a bit.

i mean the faces with the bolts...

Hey! Thanks for the feedback! (and sorry for the slow reply) 

Yeah, I know. Haven't really worked on the material except for getting some temp scratches workin on exposed edges etc. Need to do a proper pass on the titanium substance and rebake some textures I guess! 

Kattevoer

Sketches of the astronaut suit and a rifle for in space. The rifle was really fun to design. I went with a disposable heat-sync/barrel for overheating problems, and big triggers for astronaut gloves.

Kattevoer

Concept for the crew-return-vehicle.
Old-school spaceshuttle cockpit, size (maybe a bit bigger)- and shape of the X38, and some tail fins!

  Tried making it retro, current-day, and scifi all in one.

Kattevoer

Interior/cockpit concept art of the crew-return-vehicle.

Kattevoer

Here's a render of the assault rifle.
Big triggers for clunky astronaut gloves, and a replaceable heat-sync barrel for overheating problems in the vacuum of space.

Kattevoer

Texturing the gun, and so far only in Substance Designer.
Still needs decals and proper shading.

Olingova

I really like the design coming along!! Looks like you got some weavy bakes on the edges of the triggers or is it jsut the lighting that make it look that way?

Kattevoer

Olingova said:

I really like the design coming along!! Looks like you got some weavy bakes on the edges of the triggers or is it jsut the lighting that make it look that way?

Hey there! Sorry for the late response.

The bake is fine. It's just a low-res screenshot I believe! Redoing the gun now in Painter as I've spent too much time in Designer ignoring the fact that my painter skills never really developed. (Wonderful program, but omg why cant I merge texture sets on export lol!)  

Kattevoer

I've been working on something cool!

Here's a teaser. It's a long way from being done.. but the (slow) progress is as good as any.
Can't wait to show more. (I can sculpt cloth now, lol)

Kattevoer

Spacesuits. The high-poly is around 44 million polygons, low-poly and ingame asset around 145k.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Are you planning to keep the low poly suit decimated, and is that valid for animations at this density?  I'm assuming it was the fastest method to get it all retopologized, right?

Kattevoer

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Are you planning to keep the low poly suit decimated, and is that valid for animations at this density?  I'm assuming it was the fastest method to get it all retopologized, right?

Hey Brian! 
Plan is indeed to keep it decimated. Rigging will happen on a lower poly mesh and get reprojected on the decimated mesh. 

Kattevoer

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/bKXQJm

New Artstation post is up! 

Kattevoer

Whoohoo! 

After a solid week of late night UV mapping, I have been finally able to bake the EMU space-suit! That feeling seeing the first Ambient Occlusion bake is what makes those months of work worth it...

Kattevoer

Some more close-ups of the suit bake!
Follow me on twitter for more WIP stuff

Kattevoer

I finaly got around to learning Substance Painter this weekend and have fallen deeply in love with it!

Kattevoer

Oh shit!  

I finished the space-suit! Modelled the hardsurface and tech stuff in Maya, sculpted the cloth in zBrush, and textured in Substance Painter (plus some tileables made in Photoshop).

4 texture sets, all at 4K. 2 for tech/cloth on and around the helmet, another 2 for the body and gear.