Jason Salekin's Portfolio - Imperium Ship

Image of a 3D rendered spaceship.

I wanted to make a 3D model of a spaceship for use in a game such as Artemis Bridge Simulator. The ship is based on a description of a ship that I have from a story that I wrote. This will give me experience in adapting an existing property to a different medium. I will be using a polycount limit for this model as well. I will have a polycount under 5000 but aiming for around 2500. This limit will allow my model to be used in a number of games and on most computers. Having a lower polycount but still having the model look good looks to be the standard in the industry.

Ship: 302 polygons.

Each of the engines: 40 polygons.

40 X 6 engines = 240 polygons

Each of the guns: 58 polygons.

58 X 60 guns = 3480 polygons

Total: 4022 polygons.

Total without guns: 542 polygons.

The description I based my design off of was:

“The ship I see is in the classic rectangular prism shape with an angled command deck near the back of the ship. This ship also has a large nacelle protruding from its side…”

This simple description meant I had a lot of leeway with the design. I started by sketching out the ship and ended with the following designs.

Side sketch of a spaceship. Top sketch of a spaceship. Sketch of a spaceship.

Following the sketches I started to model the ship. I started with a box and manipulated it to get the basic shape of the ship.

Simple 3D rendered spaceship.

After I got the basic shape done I refined it and made the engines at the back.

Simple 3D rendered spaceship. Simple 3D rendered spaceship.

After I got the model of the ship done I then turned to applying a texture to it. I started with a texture just to see how the texture would interact with the modal.

Simple 3D rendered spaceship with a red and white texture.

Just adding the texture would not work as it would stretch along the parts that were extruded. To solve this issue I had to use the UVW unwrap to link the texture to each part of the model.

Image of the shapes to make the 3D model. Simple 3D rendered spaceship.
Image of the texture to make the 3D model. Simple 3D rendered spaceship.

With that figured out I then turned to refining and improving the texture.

3D rendered spaceship. 3D rendered spaceship.

After getting the texture right I then proceeded to work on the lighting. I had various tests with and without ambient lighting as well as with and without shadows on the ambient lighting.

3D rendered spaceship without shadows. 3D rendered spaceship without ambient lighting.
3D rendered spaceship without shadows. 3D rendered spaceship with shadows.

The red and green navigation lights follow how navigation lights are on naval vessels, planes, and spacecraft of today.

3D rendered spaceship without ambient lighting. 3D rendered spaceship without ambient lighting.

In the final animation I have a particle effect for the engines which would not be a part of the model export.

Attributions