Lightcycle Prototype

"1984 - Two years after the mysterious disappearance of Kevin Flynn, shareholders of Encom International commenced refitting its now dated Encom Tower, during the refit a significant amount of work was required to be carried out on the main server banks housed under the tower itself.
No one could have anticipated what was found, behind locked doors, labelled simply the LC/1P, Flynn and Ducati had clearly been reshaping the front of motorcycle technology.
Representatives at Ducati remain tight lipped over the discovery, could this be a missing part of the puzzle over Flynn's disappearance?"

 

 

Mclaren MP6/P

'2056, Cancer is cured, Formula one piloted by Navigators is the pinnacle of motorsport once again. In a bid to go back to thier roots and hopefully regain previous dominance as seen during the Senna / Prost times, Mclaren have turned to their classic Marlboro racing livery powered by Honda. The MP6/P's development has been a long one, original prototypes where developed and tested by human drivers dating back at far as the early 90's ( secret heritage photos can be found ), but were deemed too radical for track design at that time, boasting a hybrid of an electric four wheeled system mixed with full on combustion drive at the rear, these prototypes although having very simple aerodynamic design had incredible low speed traction.
Body design purposefully primitive to punch a non turbulent flow of air out of the rear boasted overtaking opportunities, but in return would have unpredictable results within heavy breaking overtaking manoeuvres to the delight of onlookers.'

 

Navigator Finals

Will be going away next week with new awesome work commitments so decided to tie this guy up before I go, then move onto some architectural pieces over the next couple of months ( been talking about it for ages to people and they seem very intrigued by what I have planned, so more Concrete x Tadao Ando x Tron spaces to be made. ), done some more different takes on grades/scenes etc.
Many thanks again to Ben Mauro for the inspiration on the inside working of his head, which in itself has inspired more ideas for the future, and calls also go out to all the peeps who created such an inspiring world full of stunning artwork for Halo 4, one of the USNC helmet designs inspired me to do this!
Oh ye, in other news, I now work for myself, Crytek were kind enough to approach me and ask me to work on a fantastic project they are putting together and give me the opportunity to start to establish myself on my own two feet, scary but I'm hoping it will lead to other things and life adventures in the future, I can't wait to get going with a lot of my close friends and colleagues again ( all be it from home ).Hope you like the Finals, 1080p links below each image.

High Res here

 High Res here

 High Res here

 ECU/Brain workings:

 High Res here

 High Res here

 High Res here

Thanks

Eye / Vision Prototype

TT Navsystems are the choice of vision and tracking hardware when configuring Navigators.
Lightweight, easy to configure and highly advance sensors can send thousands of images per second to the pilots ECU, unlocking what is known now as 'FlyVis' ( inherited from how flies actually see. ), essentially being able to adept to constant velocity changes, anticipating counter measures required for craft manoeuvrability especially in tight situations.
Cockpits are no longer a wash of dials and output displays, once the early eye prototypes were accepted weight was cut from everywhere legally possible in each craft, complimenting their already sleek / no fat designs.

Navigators, cont....

This week with the little time I've had, I've mainly focused on getting the facial parts of the head in place with shaders and so on.
New eyeball models were put together with slight changes to proportions of the iris etc to a level I felt looks slightly better than earlier versions I'd done. I've gone through in excess of 5 lighting rig set-ups to check shaders work correctly in both light and dark situations, they were fairly close but didn't pop as much in daylight, so a happy medium has been found, so they can also work well in less contrasty environments as seen here.
Put this render and post together today, was kinda happy with the look so thought I'd share. Some subtle overlays, dust on lens etc....
More ( hopefully finished bust ) next week...

Navigators

Something I'm working up for the Navigators ( pilots ) of the craft.

Navigators although reminiscent of humans are not. The sport in its early stages went through seasons of purely functional robotic pilots but it was found that audiences couldn't relate to this setup, the governing bodies of the sport made a descicion to insert synthetic humans as navigators for onlookers to relate to in an easier fashion. In doing so the rules changed, craft were no longer rigged with thousands of sensors and piloting software to tune, instead this is now all installed into the navigators ( the link between craft and engineers ).
Rules also stipulate that each navigator must have dual 'Black Boxes' installed, aiding in investigation of several catastrophic incidents.
As technology was ripped away from the craft themselves, hardware and software in navigators surpassed everyones expectations, once again the 'pilots' were the stars, although not human, some becoming household names and flagships for sponsors and advertsing.

All work in progress....

Enviro's are a go, floating ships need cranes.

So, a little later than planned due to other commitments ( secured awesome new job!!! hells ye ), I've been putting together the first feeler for the general interior spaces, lighting and materials that hopefully are starting to work well together, and the inevitable problem of craft transport within these spaces, I toyed with a few different concepts, everything from mechanical arms, small tracked bots under the hull and so on, but felt it was all going a little crazy and toned it straight back to a conventional crane rig ( more believable and pushed the paddock/garage feel I wanted for this area ), a front jack like rig is on the cards too, anyways, I should be back on top of this now, tie up all the loose ends for this scene, time line the lighting boot up sequence and get a sweet spot quality vs speed for animation purposes ( the scene with basically be something similar to this http://vimeo.com/38857793, then onto a new craft and wind tunnel test area for these ( whilst getting to grip's with fluid dynamics more so for smoke effects flowing over hull ). Cheers.

Blockout, charge point seen at  top of the shot.

Crane test with charge points at the rear.

Viewports

Small update, shaders work in progress.

I've spent the week playing around with parts of the first ship again, as I generally do when starting shading and textures etc, its never a straight forward model then next phase thing to me, more of a collaborative approach in adding or taking away details as I work on shaders, and generally deforming surfaces so certain shaders react better to both light and reflections.
Still playing about with gamma correction in post too and trying to find the sweet spot, Gamma 2.2 is always a little to washed out but gives you a good 'flat' bench to start working with in getting contrast and polished blacks back, whilst still maintaining crisp white highlights. I'm also considering all cockpits are illuminated in a Tron'esk style, to make sure details and silhouettes are always visible. So she is almost there which gives me a good solid asset to start throwing into various environments and testing motion shots with.

 

See you next week with finished interior and hopefully some environment block outs.

First Racer complete ( almost )...

So the first craft is basically modelled now, rear thrusters / bottom diffuser, cockpit, seat etc are all in place, stripped of shaders ready for a fresh start ( rendered out out orthographic views in passes for mock ups of liveries in PS ) , also started UVing in some subtle split lines along the main 'run' of the ship, I've been thinking quite a bit about the animation and adding little things to the craft all suggested in this image. I generally like things to actually function and make sense as well as look OK. Also in my spare time I've been playing with some fluid and smoke dynamics for reasons I'll update on later ( once I'm happy with the result ). ( Right click - view image for text to be readable, sorry ).

Cockpit in place:

Each team will also naturally have fans / followers, mocked up a racing season handbook cover, little natural touches as books and everyday things I'll try and cram in, without it all going too 'out there' so to speak, grounding things you may say.

Thanks for stopping by.