United3dArtists Archive

My research subject is the style of well known CG artist Mikomdude. Here is a start on a spacecraft picture to hopefully exhibit the characteristics of Mikom's style.

I'll have to formalize my research for presentation in the challenge and improve the picture. It needs a logo. Fire cones need work.

This is the Keryx hazardous environment robotic freighter. This 16 meter long craft is used in conditions too dangerous for living crews. The most common use is to resupply floating gas mines in gas giant planets and to deliver the mined materials to orbit. They are not designed for extra-orbital use or interstellar travel. The engines are dual mode functioning as jets in atmosphere when the composition supports that and rockets in space. Due to the extreme conditions they operate in they do not have traditional aircraft control surfaces instead using the same small rocket thrusters to steer in space and atmosphere.

Credits: Planet textures by Rob Sanders from his fictional star system Kappa Ceti available here.

Thanks Dragneye.

Here are two images which I think are Mikom style, an alternative logo for your consideration, and the results of my research. Research consisted of observing Mikom's spaceships.

This is modeled in Hexagon and rendered with Iray in Daz Studio. UV in TS model side and some texture detail there too. I should have used 3Delight since it can look more like TS's Lightworks renders or used good old TS. Iray is what I'm familiar with right now so that's what I used.

Free starfield by Jamie Takahashi on Deviant Art. He has cool spaceship renders.

Do these look like Mikom's style? What would you change if anything?
Mikom Style

Well known CG artist Mikom has a recognizable style in his images of spacecraft, bionicles, and other subjects.

I have researched his style specifically for spacecraft and attempted to produce examples. Mikom does spaceships in Star Trek style as well. The shapes of his Star Trek style vessels is not included in this project but other aspects are.

My research indicates the key features are:
- well designed logos
- background subjects include planets, stars, nebulae, clouds and sky, occasionally other ships
- background planets often have a significant glow or bloom at the limb
- background planet lighting may be independent of the lighting on the featured ship
- spacecraft have model names and company names
- visual and sculptural design is preeminent but engineering, purpose, and function are considered
- Mikom presents his ships in beauty shots and top, bottom, side view images
- Mikom's beauty shots feature prowess in art composition likely relying on intuitive artistic sensibility more than formal technique
- ships often have interiors
- ships often resemble aircraft having wings or wing-like parts
- ships feature “up” and “down” or “top” and “bottom” in construction and orientation in images
- ships usually have jet and/or rocket engines with fire or glowing exhaust behind them
- Mikom uses bold markings as accents but ships are usually white or subdued in base color
- spaceplanes are sleek or aerodynamic while pure space vehicles sometimes feature more angular shapes
- many ships are armed
- ships with faster-than-light ability seldom have visible equipment related to this

I guess I could give you some direct input from the source. Oh man, this is so meta...

Anyway, here we go. These are a couple of points to keep in mind:

• Not sure where you got the idea that most of my ships are faster than light. While some of my earlier ships certainly had suggestions of superluminal capability, my ships generally feature a warp drive* or simply no method of interstellar transportation whatsoever. (*for current theories see the Alcubierre Drive and White-Juday warp-field interferometer.)
• I generally use the GIMP to make planets and to generate stars for backgrounds. See if your image editing program has a filter to generate HSV noise. Essentially generating a random number of coloured pixels on a black background. Scale the image up and blur the pixels only slightly to give the impression of glow. To make them appear more realistic, maybe add some chromatic aberration.
• Pretty much all of my personal ship designs, that is ships that weren't commissioned or made in the style of an existing sci-fi universe, are not armed. Fixed weapons in space are entirely unnecessary in my opinion.
• The reason I usually post more than one render of a ship, the "up-top-front-rear-side"-views of my models are there because I want anyone (including myself) to be able to replicate the shape from my design even without the 3D model. Be it so people get a more accurate idea of what the ship looks like in their minds or if the 3D model itself was lost somehow.
• The shape of the wings and the ship itself is roughly determined by the estimated weight of the engines versus the length and weight of the rest of the ship.
  For wings, a delta-wing configuration is usually preferable because its aerodynamically and structurally sound.
  Your ship currently has a lot of bulk towards the front with smaller engines at the back. This to me feels like the center of mass may be to far in front of the center of lift. The bulky area of the front section itself may provide some lift though. Maybe take some inspiration from the SR-71 Blackbird in how the sharp edges along the nose are designed to provide sufficient lift to keep its nose up and to make it more maneuverable in flight.
  Looking back at my designs you can tell that my ships usually have delta wings or swept wings, either swept forward or backwards.
• Maybe give some backstory as to what Keryx actually means/is?
• On the subject of exhaust flames. I usually stick to these colours: Hydrogen fueled rocket engines: blue. Ionized plasma (ion or fusion drives): purple. More lets' say "primitive" rocket and jet fuels: orange to red flames.

You already get points for a cool logo (bottom one is my favorite) and the use of Vandiana Platin as your font!

This is cracking me up! Love it.

Thanks Mikom! Research on people often includes interviews or input from the guy himself. I probably don't have more time for this one but maybe I can improve some things.

Careful Draise. You could be next. Let's see ... makes money doing this. I'd be very happy to do that feature of your work!

"Oh man, this is so meta"
Analyzing an analysis of your own work? What's meta about that? It can be interesting to discover how others see your work. For commissions or other "targeted" work I'd guess seeing through your customer's eyes is valuable. For art is it your vision and that might interfere. There is too much me in these images since the goal is to see your style and implement it.

I don't think most are FTL but I have mistaken some sub light ones as FTL and so thought they had invisible FTL equipment. My research needed more detail to confirm the nature of the ships. Star Trek ships of course have warp pods but I noted that I didn't consider their shapes for this. One of your recent non-Star Trek ones had a "warp ring". Invisible things: Small fuel requirements for rockets. No giant tanks or ships mostly full of fuel.

"GIMP to make planets"
I considered making a pan planet - a photo of a skillet Paint Shopped into a planet. My main problem was adding the bloom or glow to the atmosphere. Real photos of Jupiter/Saturn have a crisp sharp edge unless back lit. I like the atmo-glows for art. In Paint Shop I put a ring over the edge of the planet (planet, ships, stars, text are different layers) and applied a gradient fading toward the inner and outer edges. That didn't work well nor did attempts to blur a ring. I considered using subsurface scattering/backscattering on a slightly larger sphere but your atmo-glows don't look like that.

Yep. Aircraft dogfights in space are most action packed and fun of course but movies like "The Martian", near future, realistic, no supertech, are good too. Weapons like the Phalanx cannon might be useful as defense against missiles. But that isn't Mikom style and the expense of weapons/defenses would mean few ships would have 'em. Better research would have revealed that, while your nonpersonal designs include elements of your style (they didn't commission you as a technician, they want your look/style), the ship armaments aren't pure Mikom.

"up-top-front-rear-side"-views"
Interesting to know. It is a thing you do so it is part of your style. Presentation style in this case.

"... currently has a lot of bulk towards the front ..."
One of my friends worked on SR-71's as a mechanic. Your right it looks front heavy. I took inspiration from the space shuttle (it doesn't go super fast in lower denser air so hyper-sonic "spear" shape not needed) plus that several lifting body designs aren't so sleek. It is to be inspired by your style not that stuff. Aesthetically I like the look of this but Mikomization is needed. I could sharpen the front some by squishing it vertically while leaving it kind of wide, sweep the wings forward some, and maybe add small canard wings up front. I think that's too pretty for a freighter but my design is too subdued compared to yours so it could help.

Keryx, Cur-ix, doesn't mean anything. I just made up some sci fi sounding words and picked that one. Turns out it is the name of a drug company. Is it Mikom style for the names to mean something?

Vandiana Platin rocks. I'd like to see a version with lower case too. Sounds like a sci fi name. Vandiana Platin aimed her blastotronic blastolizer at the scorb beast but it continued to charge.

Oh I was just thinking about how reading about myself being referred to in third person felt kind of funny. It's interesting though, don't get me wrong.

The way I usually do planets is: Photoshop together a series of shapes from pictures (fractals, handpainted or photographs) and blend them together into a sort of cohesive mess. Colour it. Lens warp it to get the rounded perspective and post process it from there with glow and your what-nots.

If anything, ships that fly through uncharted space would have some kind of laser defense turret. This could be used for clearing debris or space rocks out of the way if one needed to do that for some reason.

Wow it seems everyone has a friend that worked on the SR 71's at some point. This isn't the first time I've had someone say that That's awesome though.
If you're going for a space shuttle type structure and not a pointed nose then make sure you reinforce the tip like the reinforced carbon carbon tip on the nose of the orbiter.

I'm usually a traditionalist in naming ships something from Greek mythology. Helios, Athena, Sirius-Class Aloadae II and Neptunae, Eos Erigeneia, Iphigenia. On top of that I like to add a manufacturers name or logo, like Mars Five Shipyards, Konay Industries, Wyvern Shipyards or Vortex Velocity Aerospace.

Vandiana Platin would be an awesome name for some kind of space goddess.

To do proper research, one needs to also learn the history of ones subject. Here are some of my earliest models that I could find:

Viper mk IV

M20 Explorer

M40 Asteroid Class Explorer

M40 X pro ACE

M50 X P.C.E.

Bialian Ships

Aurora Class Racer

Racer 2

Shokaku

That's a good process to make planets. I wouldn't have thought of it.

My Air Force vet buddy (the dad of a friend my age) was a jet mechanic since before Vietnam. He was near here then too. Military folks stationed around here like it and often retire here. The SR 71's would sometimes land out on the huge missile test range west of here. That's far from curious eyes unlike the nearby air base.

I'll keep Keryx but since this freighter is used where it is too dangerous for bio critters to go I could call it Hades or whatever Hel's dog is called.

Here's an adjusted one. Have to put it on that same background.

I was gonna type out a couple of things about the render but then I thought why not just show you instead. So here is my extremely cheap photoedit of your render: Changes: Reaction control thrusters, aviation lights, some lighting changes and less rounded wing tips.

May or may not have time for changes. Yard work is shutting down for the season but things get chaotic now too. Looks like I'll win the challenge by default. Id like to see other people's imagination at work for entries and challenge themes and how about some non-challenge projects?

How do you do your planet atmo-glow?

Rounded wing tips! That's what didn't look right generally and not Mikomish. Might flatten the big wingtips a little too. I should remove the sds from the nozzles because yours have have sharp edged details. The nozzles and fire cones are missing here since it was a quicky.

Yes, reaction/attitude thrusters needed. Especially since they are part of its description. I didn't notice these on your ships but I'm sure I overlooked many things. It uses small rocket thrusters rather than the usual control surfaces in atmosphere and of course in space. That's part of super ruggedization to operate in extreme environments. Wherever possible expose only the armored hull. In hindsight super ruggedization would favor sort of environment independent rockets over jets. These ships must be modular where buyers select the components needed and customization can be done to adapt to the working environment. No air? No jets. No wings. Cheaper to use rockets than armor a jet's guts versus Venus? Atmosphere doesn't support combustion? Good air and low gravity? Jets. Etc.

Your fire cones have lens flares? Looks nice but I didn't notice that either. In fact I saw that they looked very "cone-ish".

It would sure be nice to see some more activity on the forums with people making their original creations.

The atmospheric glow is something I make by just creating a circular selection the size of the planet with feathered-edges enabled. Then I just fill that selection on a new layer underneath the planets layer. Then I add another one or two layers on top of the planet with varying levels of feathering and fill those with a brighter coloured glow to get a gradient like effect and more intense glow at the exact edges of the planet itself.

I exaggerated the RCS thrusters a lot. I usually make them a lot smaller and try to make them blend into the rest of the ship more. Here are the RCS thrusters on the Helios for example.
If you want to make it more rugged, consider more powerful internal gyros over additional rocket thrusters in space. Keep in mind though that an armored hull will considerably increase the weight of the ship.

My exhaust flames don't always have lens-flares, I just added some when painting the blue glow on yours, for no good reason.

This ship actually reminds me a little of this ship that I made a while back but never really finished. Just the front though I guess.

Here is an update with flattened canard wing tips, navigation lights, and holes for attitude control thrusters. Not much challenge time left and the real world calls so this is the challenge entry.

Challenge thread vi ... =66&t=4924

Awesome. Shame you didn't have more time to finish it. I might do my own take on a Keryx style ship some time, if you don't mind off course

Rained most of the day so not much yard work done.

You doing a ship designed for this purpose would complete the research if it is an experiment and not a study. My analysis and example create a hypothesis. Your hazardous environment freighter would be the observational data. Then see if my model fits the data.

Finis wrote:"...You doing a ship designed for this purpose would complete the research if it is an experiment and not a study. My analysis and example create a hypothesis. Your hazardous environment freighter would be the observational data. Then see if my model fits the data."

A simple "I don't mind" would have sufficed.