Space Station V

I continue my quest to kick old projects dragging and screaming into the 21st Century with Space Station V, the big round whirly thing from 2001 : A Space Odyssey. Readers will, or should, already be familiar with my unhealthy obsession with this movie*, which very nearly rivals that of Star Trek. Anyway, here's the original model I made about 8 years ago, or thereabouts :

*Reassuringly, while I think it's one of the greatest movies ever made, this guy seems to think it's one of the Greatest Human Achievements of All Time.

It isn't too hideous, I suppose, but it's totally unsuitable for modern, hi-def renders, let alone close-ups. So this time I went a little bit nuts with the greebles, and it's now my most detailed model ever with a vertex count of 3.8 million (my previous personal best was the gargantuan, 3-mile long Mayflower II with a mere 1.9 million). Of course, a lot of this was from liberal use of the duplicate tool. But a lot of it wasn't.

Click here for full-size image.

And of course, I couldn't very well rest easy if I didn't animate this. So I did, and here's the result. Not too awful, but I think it will look much better in the larger scene I'm planning which will use all my spaceships (and also RAM, and possibly sanity).

Well, that's it. Stay tuned, because next week I get to destroy a galaxy, Seriously.


UPDATE : Inspired by some very nice renders of the battleship Tirpitz, here are some clay renders to show the mesh geometry in even more detail.

Larger version here.

Larger version here.