Production - Submersible Pod

The submersible pod is of course one of the major props in the storyline. As I may have mentioned earlier, this is one model that was not built in Maya, I actually built it from scratch in another 3D software program called Truespace, which is very easy to use when it comes to modelling. Not too sure about the rigging and animating systems so I just used the program for modelling this. Then when I acquired Maya, I was able to convert the file into an OBJ format that the software would accept.

The "submersible pod" in wire frame mode.

I basically modelled this object using the same techniques that would be used in Maya, except I didn't use the mirror geometry mode for this due to certain complications with the program. Every single piece of the pod was constructed individually; the oxygen tanks, searchlight, pipes, etc. Then when all the pieces were put in place as desired, I managed to combine them all into one object, though before I did, I applied a different material state to each part so even though the entire object was combined I would still be able to manipulate the colours and texture of the parts later on.

The pod in smooth shaded mode, converted into proper OBJ format and ready for texturing.

Since each material asset was assigned to each part of the object, I didn't have to worry too much about UV texture editing. Not really my job for the project anyway, but I decided to have a go at it at some point since the more you learn, the better prepared you are the future. For now, I just assigned new material to each part of the pod using lambets and phongs. Then I attempted to alter the colour and texture for each one through the Hypershade box and the Attributes Editor. As the pod is used for underwater excavations in the story, it has to look worn, well used and affected by water so I went through some different bump maps and colours to make it look kind of rusty and dented in some areas yet not too old and shiny in some places, like creating a texture that imitated waterproof paint and varnish. I achieved this by assigning a phong material certain parts, then altered the diffuse, specular colour and reflectivity modes to make it less clean and reflective. And then I assigned a new colour and bump map to the material by applying a 3D texture and then changing the colours and bump value to make it look just right.

After applying textures to the object, I created some spotlights and point lights to be used for the searchlights on the vehicle. Although instead of copying and pasting the same lights for each searchlight, I suppose I could have duplicated them just in case there was any error that originated from the procedure.

A rendered mental ray image of the submersible pod, complete with texture and indirect lighting; i.e, the sunlight and shadow.

Side view of the pod against a basic background.

A close up of the pod. Notice how the surfaces of the oxygen tanks are uneven due to the bump mapping. Decided to use a crater bump map with this, along with different shades of colour, especially with the main body sa I wanted to give it a rusty kind of look while still remaining slightly shiny in some places.

Below is a Quicktime clip of a turntable movie I produced. Switched to mental ray mode for rendering and rendered each frame of the scene in BMP files before importing them into After Effects and converting them into a movie file through an image sequence.

After a few more modifications and alterations to the texturing, the pod object is now complete and ready to be used for animation.