Making the Buxiu Qixi station
The BuXiu Qixi, meaning (we are assured) “Immortal Breath”
The concept
In the universe where our film takes place, massive corporations have created their own megastructure space stations that travel from solar system to solar system with one purpose in mind: collect data so they can sell it for huge profits! These stations will arrive in a system and go around, planet by planet, sending manned and unmanned vehicles to the surface to scan and collect data. These data will then be sold, as well as used for training neural networks that can then come up with even more uses for the information that’s being collected.
Inspiration
Chris Foss
Most new sci fi films tend towards shiny flashy futuristic-looking tech. Things look somewhat plausible (or at least “cool”!) and one can kind of imagine how it all works.
The thing that’s missing, however, is some of that mystery that we love from old-school retro sci fi designs. So the majority of the concept art was heavily inspired by a lot of painters and concept artists from the 1970’s 80’s and 90’s, like Chris Foss, John Berkey, and John Harris.
John Harris (above)
John Berkey (left)
Design Process
Because the station would be viewed initially while inside the Desiderus shuttle, just a sneak peak out the window, it made sense to try to start with the silhouette of the “profile” of the station, and then work on what would be the “front.” Sometimes it’s easier to start with a 3D blockout rather than a hand-drawn sketch, and work back and forth. That’s how director and designer Joel Benjamin and designer Caleb Nelson started.
Blocking
Here’s the very first, very rough 3D blocking pass done in Maya by Joel. This was then handed off to Caleb for the detailing passes.
Design drawings
Caleb took the 3D blocking and did his own version to be able to tumble around in space. He then started the process of adding detail, and figuring out what the function of all the modular elements was.
Design drawings
While detailing, we always kept the silhouette in mind. Especially with a dark background, much of the station would be obscured by darkness. Often the viewer will only be able to see a rough shape.
3D Modeling
Once we were happy with the design drawings, we went back into Maya to start modeling the structure. Shu Ning Chia worked on the first massive passes at the geometry.
You can see how tiny the Desiderus is in comparison to even just a few parts of the station.
Because of the “budget” with VR, even though the station is some 2k in length, we have to keep the vertex count in mind. As much as possible, the smaller details would be better off done with texturing and decals in Unreal Engine.
Small Details
Even though we need to keep the poly count low, there were places where some details would come in handy. Several of our designers worked on satellite dishes and antennae that could be plopped onto the surface.
Antennae
Designer and modeler Janani Hariharan created several smaller detail objects
Dishes, etc
Even though these, when repeated, would add a lot of geometry, using LOD’s in Unreal mean that that geometry is only costing us when the viewer is much closer to these objects.
Railings, etc
Scaffolding and railing objects add a sense of realism and ground the station a little in reality, but doesn’t take away any of the mystery!
Decals
While some of the windows for the station are sculpted from the geometry, the majority of them were done using “decals” in Unreal. These are simple texture “stickers” that can be plopped and repeated without much render cost.
Even the massive spinning drums are using somewhat lower-resolution images for the windows. Because the viewer never gets very close to these, the size of the files can be really small and costs us VERY little.
