CSCI 140 Group Gallery

3-D Computer Modeling 
CSCI 140 Spring 2003

Space Disaster

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Chris Rogers
Jeremy Anderson
Andrew Davis


Space Disaster
by
Team Orbit		Group Scene
 
Inspiration:

We initially wanted to model a fantasy scene, so we had to choose from a futuristic, or medieval.  We decided to do a futuristic disaster scene.  We wanted a space station with trash floating around.  We initially planned on a scene that had a broken window and a warning light.  We wanted some McDonald's trash to be floating, and a high tech McDonald's billboard outside of the window.  We decided against this because the scene looked too cool to benefit from these tacky objects.  The way it turned out, we all just started making stuff.  We figured since we were doing a space scene, we could get away with everyone making random weird objects.  We got together and put all the objects together, and that is the scene we ended up with.  The only thing we really planned was the shape and size of the room.

Story:

Originally it was supposed to be a space disaster with broken glass everywhere and more destruction, but over time it developed differently.  It is still a space disaster scene, just in the early stages of development.  Artificial gravity is offline and objects are floating around.  It is more about technical difficulties with the gravitational generators than a space disaster.
 
 
Objects:Data PadAndrew
 VentAndrew
 Computer TerminalsAndrew
 DoorAndrew
 PipesAndrew
 Trash CanAndrew
 Table 1Andrew
 Walls/Window/FloorChris
 Table 2Chris
 LCD DisplayChris
 Heads-Up-DisplayChris
 ChairChris
Door Access PanelJeremy
 MoonJeremy
 EarthJeremy
 Light CageJeremy
 Light BulbJeremy and Chris
   
Textures:Star Chart (HUD)http://eclipse-tour.eclipsetours.com/Lindemannia%20Chart.jpg (Andrew found it)
 Earth/Moonhttp://gw.marketingden.com/planets/planets.html (Jeremy found it)
 Thumb PrintJeremy
 Hand PrintJeremy
 Door Panel ButtonsJeremy
 Warning ScreenJeremy
 GreekJeremy
 Door Panel ConsoleJeremy
 StarsChris
   
Tutorials:Earthhttp://personal.southern.edu/~dascott/tutorial01/nasa-earth.htm
 
Technical:

For the floor the array tool was used.  One slit in the grate was made then the array tool was used to create the grate.  As one grate was finished, the array tool was used again in creating the entire floor.  

About half of the objects used in the scene were textured with some picture or another.  Each object also sometimes used these textures in the luminosity, transparency, diffuse, and bump channels.  The real challenge with getting these textures to work was with the transparency channel.  It was difficult getting the picture just right so the object that was displaying a star chart or warning message to be just transparent enough and not to opaque.  

A big part of our scene was getting the earth and the moon textured correctly.  We had to get that in our scene because this station had to be orbiting something.  We ended up using an online tutorial that was of big help (mentioned below).  It turned out to be rendered really well and added a great amount of detail to our scene.

Another main issue we had was that of lighting.  Getting the lighting just right was a big issue to deal with.  We had a problem with the color for a long time not being red enough for a warning light.  Another issue was the placement in the scene so all the objects we needed to be lit, would be lighted correctly.  A big issue was that the earth and moon, since they are not 100 miles away, were getting some of the light from inside the room.  Finding the options to turn of affected by lights was difficult while still keeping all the elements of the moon and earth intact.

If we had this project to do over again, there are a few things that we would have done differently.  A big problem we had was lightwave screwing up our scene and textures having to be reloaded.  If a backup was kept of this scene, this problem would have been avoided.  We started to do this towards the end, but if we had done it in the beginning we could have saved some time not having to retexture all the objects in our scene.  Recording our sources once we got them would be another thing we would have done differently.  We couldn't find the sources after we found the pictures and were scrambling to find them towards the end of the project.  A great sigh of relief was experienced when we found all of the texture resource sites again.