Stargate: Universe

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I decided to give myself a little project and recreated a stargate from "Universe." There's still a little geometry to be added, but this phase was to test render settings and compositing in Blender as well as fix existing geometry issues.

Known issues:
- I can't use vertex smoothing in Octane for the majority of the mesh. I only use it on the main ring and the blackbodies.
- My mesh isn't very high resolution. You can see angles on the larger portion of the outer chevron.
- Reflections are noisy and require post-production to smooth them out.
- The materials are bland, I know. I still want to try UV mapping this mesh to give it a "worn-paint" look to the metal parts (despite being naquadah and not needing paint).

Originally rendered at 4096 pixels square at 1000 s/px. Took 49 minutes on my GTX 560.

[tehfailsafe]

That looks like a great canidate for ptex, lots of annoying wierd edges to unwrap in UV editor, so much easier with ptex and mudbox/mari/etc.
Hopefully one day octane supports ptex.

Until then, on trick i just though of would be rending it out with DL, using one white material and adjust the AO distance to get in those nooks and crannies/edges. Then use that as a layer mask in photoshop to put in scratch layers and such in those darkened areas. Or flip it and try to get just the outside edges white to put paint chipping texture under the mask.

Could maybe work sortof similar to vraydirt texturing, and with no uvs.

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Honestly, I never would have thought of that solution, so thanks a ton. I think once I do that, I can then composite it with Blender or Photoshop. Thanks for the tip! And I'll give ptex a shot, too. Just to see how it works.

[tehfailsafe]

Ptex is great, but you won't be able to render in octane...

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Updated WIP: changed some materials, changed the camera angle, and added decorative geometry to the outer edge. Something's still off about the camera angle, but it's closing in on my dream image. Might bring the camera above the model a bit and swing it in to look a little more face-on to the model.

Blender 2.63 x64
Octane 2.57 beta

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Well, it's finally finished! This is the primary image I was going for, but I might update and attach some others after they render. This is my most detailed and thought-out model so far, and I hope I can keep this in my portfolio for a while.

Specs:
Blender 2.63 x64
Octane Render 2.57 beta
Blender composite nodes
344,397 faces as per Blender's info
350,650 vertices
Render time: 1 hour, 50 minutes @ 2000 samples per pixel
A week's worth of time, despite being spread out over about two months or so. Should have been done much quicker.

EDIT: This model is now up on BlendSwap.