Looks good Jay I am looking forward to it. I am a big scifi fan and there has been nothing I have been interested in seeing for quite some time. Also, I know you cannot use any of the assets from the movie but I, and maybe others, would be interested in knowing what kind of poly count restrictions you have on movie models. In my case the hard surface bits like the space ships, the space ship cannons, and any other bits that you could describe from the clip? Maybe give an end to end example of the modeling pipeline. What kind of references you get. Poly budget topology restrictions, whether you have to build a single model or several at different levels of detail. What kind of time budget per model do you get? Stuff like that to help understand the process in the production studio vs just doodling as a hobby. okay so...as requested by Rick (CTBRAM) heres a bit of an overview on the stuff seen in the trailer. Polycounts on assets for film arent like that of a pc game, the nearest you'll get to a game asset will either be a pre-viz model or even the low res proxys for animation. Although some game models are getting up to 10k plus polys. With photorealistic models you have to get alot of details in to make convincing plus extra polys for strength of forms. The movie industry pretty much relies on the polysmooth/sub d style of modelling these days. More for less if you will. So its not tons of polys, its just put where they are needed and optimised that way so there is a nice balance. Some companies do just throw tons of poly at the stuff to get things out the door but for the most part its as Ive mentioned. The space fighters here were one of the first assets I built on the movie and despite having concept art and being signed off by Luc Besson on the concept models it still had several changes over a six month period. it had a Cobra like gun then it didnt then we had missiles and so on.... I even did a whole new version myself based on an F14 Tomcat which everyone loved but unfortunately didnt make the film because of the style the Directors were after (I did get a bottle of Champagne for my efforts from James Mather, one of the films Directors though on trying to improve the intial design) The Cannons you see in the trailer were pretty much finaled the minute the model was finished. I only had about four or five different concept pieces, they were pretty much the same generally but I took all the best bits and made an uber cannon that elevates up and unfolds before unleashing thousands of rounds of bullets. Yes bullets and not lasers for a change. the theory was they would work because the 'Space prison' was hovering in the earths atmosphere and therefore bullets would still work. I dont wanna get into the technical theory on that so please dont ask for any....figure it out yourself. Anyway the cannons themselves were huge with a gattling style rotating barrel. I think the size of them began at around the size of a house, but it became clear that at this scale, one shot from one of these would take out a fighter with one bullet. So it was scaled down to about the height of 12 feet high. Still big but more acceptable. the space prison you see hovering above the earth was without a doubt the largest single asset on the film, though we did build a whole city, but I cant mention that until its seen publicly in the trailer..maybe trailer two may have it in. Anyway the Space prison was 1.5 miles high and 1 mile in width initlally but it got scaled down to around 75% in the end. It was a real mission getting detail on it. because of shear scale probs. We referenced battle ships and stuff and also the Death Star Surface from Star Wars...just get an idea how those guys did it. We built stuff in sections and place them randomly all over. A good buddy of mine who I helped write the modelling pipeline at Windmill wrote me a placement script to place the sections exactly where I needed them automatically. this was only used on the absolute hi res model that had close ups. for medium and long shots we used lower res geo coupled with normal maps. Displacements were considered early on but with the probs they can bring it was decided by my 3d Supervisor and myself to not use them so I did some tests in Zbrush with Normal maps and it seemed to work. So we ended up using the hi res sections I mentioned earlier and baked the details onto poly planes. It worked a treat for the long shots and you would never know. Also there were several other areas of the Space station that had huge amounts of detail like scaffolding as it was constantly being repaired so the need for mixing maps and geo was a real necessity, especially at that scale. Also we did what we call 'dress for shot'. So if a shot called for something specific, we'd make a hi res version of a particular area of the space Prison and do the shot. We'd add other bits of the intial model so it looks like its this one giant model when in fact its like several set pieces. Things like this are worth noting because textures need to hold up so by doing it in parts keeps it all looking good and consistant and it saves time in the long run. We'd also have areas with nuts and bolts, stuff that just wouldnt be usable on the main model itself. If I remember rightly the Space Prison was around 8million polys when I'd finished it. And this was just the 'basic' model. We did do stuff on cards for shots too, but that was mainly long shots. From start to finish on a model in the pipeline really depends on alot of things. Mainly its the amount of reference and also the feedback. In the case of the Space Prison...I had one piece of artwork that was half cloaked in darkness...I had to literally make it up as I went along...hence the referencing of Battle ships and so on. Theres alot of back and forth that goes on...the details of things can get changed right down to the wire and then theres a cut off because changes hold up the whole process of the film being made. If I change a model, that means the poor texture artist has to repaint it so theres a knock on effect. Its not all plain sailing as it seems anyway if theres anything else let me know...back to work now Jay