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Making Of: Primateran

By Tamas Gyerman
Web: Open Site Email: tamas.gyerman@gmail.com

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Date Added: 24th November 2009
Software used:
Photoshop, Cinema 4D, V-Ray

Introduction
Hello, my name is Tams Gyermn. I've been interested in Sci-Fi since my childhood; I love
spaceships, creatures and all kinds of fantasy stuff.

For this picture, I wanted to create a scene that showed a part of the world of the "Primaterans a
civilization that prefers dark corners of the galaxy, hiding from their enemies until their armada is
strong enough to destroy them.

The idea was to create huge, blue planet in a dust cloud, with a meteor field and ships.

This image was created from scratch. I didn't produce any concept sketches or use any kinds of
references I just used my imagination.

Creation
The starfield was the first thing that I created. It was built up of many smaller images and then I put
the perspective lines over it (Fig.01).

Fig: 01

The scene was split in three main parts: foreground, background and the middle region. I gave each
part a different color specification.

After setting up the perspective lines, I started modeling the first ship (Fig.02). As you can see in the
image, I used basic objects like cylinders and cubes, in combination with the Extrude function.

Fig: 02

When creating ships, I always begin with the basic body form. Later on I create smaller things like
the propulsion or the weapons. By using the Knife tool, I sliced new areas into existing polygon
objects. This is a simple method to create a well detailed model and each of my ships was created in
this way

After I'd finished all the models, I started to create the textures. I used three kinds of textures:
Diffuse, Specular and Bump-maps. The Diffuse channel was a combination of a metal texture and a
procedural cloud (to achieve a dirt-like looking metal). The Specular channel contained a colored
version of the diffuse texture, which was smoother than the original texture and had no detailed
parts, in comparison to the helmet (Fig.03).

Fig: 03

I used several projection modes in combination with the Selection tag. I used UV projection for the
bigger objects and Cube projection for the smaller ones. Lighting parts or other textured surfaces
had a different selection (Fig.04).

Fig: 04

After finishing the textures, I started working on the lighting setup, with and without the textures.
Because of the high poly count I had to render each ship separately and this meant that each ship
was a single C4D file. Only the lighting setup was the same, but I had to take care with the ships'
angles and the position of the sun.

I used a Main light (acting as the Sun) for the lighting setup and three Infinite lights with Sun Mode
applied. Furthermore, there were also light sources in front and to the left and right sides of the ship
(Fig.05).

Fig: 05

The ships were rendered to PNG with the Alpha channel.In the render settings I used Global
Illumination and Ambient Occlusion; GI was in the RAW file and AO in a different layer (Fig.06).

Fig: 06

I used the dongle tool to delete the AO parts I didn't need and to brighten the window areas of the
ship. The glow effect was hand drawn; it was just another layer that I put over the original ship's
images and I drew it with an Alpha brush. The booster engines were done the same way.

After finishing the first ship in the final scene, I started to build up the composition. First of all I took a
high-res globe and cloud picture and then I placed some fog over it, simply by combining the "visible
light" (hand drawn fog) with some noise. Comets were also needed.

The nebula parts were added into the picture later on to highlight the ships from the background
(Fig.07).

Fig: 07