C104 Ballista
A heavily modified lunar cargo transport for military operations. After GSA spies discovered Weltrum has secretly developed a new generation of lunar fighter craft, higher-ups immediately recognized the urgent call to replaced their aging fleet of Gen I lunar fighter craft. With no upcoming project coming close to matching the enemy craft’s capabilities, they looked towards the most modern craft in use, a new lunar cargo transport. Borrowing ideas from other projects, the C104 was hastily created to intercept unidentified bogeys in/heading to GSA territory.
PROCESS
Concepting
In order to better understand the look of the craft, I started concepting Gen I to III lunar craft. Eventually, deciding on a Gen II sketch shown below.
It was a rough design and faced with a very little time for the amount of work, I decided to speed up the process by using a 3D blockout to help figure out the rest of the craft. Modeling and concepting at the same time. While it was a big risk in case there required a big design change, I had a solid plan and knew what parts were more risky than others. Slowly chipping away at the design, some parts ended up being scrapped for time.
Modeling
One of the biggest design challenges was the fuel tanks. The original drawing was designed with 4 tanks arranged in a diamond which did not work in a 3D space. After a bunch of variations, I finally came up with a layout that both looked as close to the original sketch and provided a great silhouette in both lander and flight mode.
All modeling was done in a subdiv workflow in Maya 2023.
The finished lambert model
UV
To get the texel density correct, I made a UV checker material and assigned it to a UVed piece. From there I sized the UV until I didn’t notice individual pixels from a desired distance.
UVs were also organized with each V row taking up one side. Right sides were mirrored versions of left sides, allowing me to reuse textures.
V1: Left
V2: Right
V3: Center
Texturing
Before texturing, I did color scheme tests to decide on exactly how I wanted them to look. I went through many variations and ended up choosing a mix of my favorite designs.
Texturing was all done in Adobe Substance Painter.
Decals and logos were designed and created in Krita.
Finished model
Environment
With such a tight schedule, concepts stayed as rough drafts and set the stage for what the final scene would look like.
The main terrain shape was created in Gaea and Mudbox while the surface was created using assets from FAB.
The texture for the terrain was created in Mari using NASA photos of the lunar surface to accurately texture lunar craters.
Before
After
Compositing
Comp was all done through Nuke.
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