For the Glory of the Empire, Part 2 (3D Art Week 04)

 Last week I wrote about the fantastic TIE Interceptor. Modeling it didn't take too long and was very entertaining, so I decided to continue making these micro fighters with more and more pieces added to my virtual collection. The brilliant part about working with modular pieces like Legos is that once you have one, you can easily make the rest!

My next build was the humble TIE/LN, the workhorse of the Empire. It has all the disadvantages of the TIE Interceptor and none of the benefits, so to compensate for being such an individually weak fighter, it attacks in massive droves to overwhelm enemies. As a final build, I chose the iconic Y-Wing bomber, this time a Rebel Alliance ship. The challenge was to build a new thing with the pieces from the first week's set, but I couldn't help myself and made a cheese wedge brick to serve as the nose and cockpit of the craft. Fun fact, these bombers were actually used extensively in the Clone War, and the reason why the Rebellion's version is so damaged is simple wear and tear over the years- and the fact that most of their ships are salvaged from Imperial junkyards. 

With modeling out of the way, I decided to use Unreal 4 to frame my shots and deal with postprocessing. The first step was to make a blueprint for each ship, that way updating the topology or adding detail down the line would not only be easy, it would do so automatically. 

Once every ship was built, I put them in the scene and posed them for post-processing. Materials were generated and instanced, that way every single one would have the same values and parameters to simulate plastic Legos. 

I experimented a lot here, and even hooked up a custom texture to make the TIE cockpits thanks to my efforts UVing these bricks earlier. Specularity was added to the Y-Wing's thrusters to simulate the superhot plasma discharge, and then it was time for lighting! My setup was very basic. A spotlight to grant shadows and focus. A directional light to provide fill. And finally, an assortment of point lights to handle any residual or peripheral lighting (thrusters, TIE laser beams). 

It was a lot of fun to mess around with these settings, especially post processing. Dirt masks were added to give the piece that extra oomph, and after messing around with more materials and a low fog to get rid of any discernible or distracting background, I was ready. 

Camerawork using Unreal's sequencer was a challenge to understand for sure, so I decided to leave my camera static and focus on the ship movement to attract visual interest. A blueprint was generated for each ship, and a rotating value was given to each, thusly making them spin around as if in a cake shot. 

After some minor tinkering in Photoshop, the piece was ready! Take a look at the finals renders below to see diorama I created using these pieces and each individual ship type for a closer look, or check out the embedded video under that to see my Star Wars tribute in action. I hope you enjoyed looking at my project as much as I enjoyed making it!