Abandoned Space Station

This is my submission for the Abandoned Space Station Challenge 2021 hosted by cgboost.comin October of 2021. The idea was quite simple, create a single image of an abandoned space station and a flatshaded image along side it showcasing the models in the scene.

My idea with this project was to create a scene of a space station in the aftermath of an attack of some sort, but I wanted to show it from a vantage point inside the space station itself. My idea was that I was going to show it from the water containment station within the station, a valuable room in the space station. I had intended to have water particles floating throughout the scene because I really liked the idea of thinking about the bringing attention to the other components of space station we don't typically think about when we see a space station. I actually didn't learn about this contest until it was about halfway finished and between work and other events popping up in my life I didn't have enough time to implement the water particles in a way that would have looked very good, so I ended nixing that part of the project and I've got what is here now.

I wanted to see how long it would take to create a scene like this because I wasn't sure of how long it would actually take, so I actually recorded the amount of man hours put into this project. At the time of final rendering, I have 45 man hours in total clocked on this project.

To begin my process of creating this scene, I first had to come up with a concept for the project. I would have normally created some concept art for this part, but I felt I was a little low on time so I just jumped right into blender blocking out the scene with simple shapes using an idea I had in my head. Once I had the general layout of the scene I started giving more details to the objects in the scene piece by piece and giving them a UV layout once I had finished them.

Once I had created the models of the scene I went through created trajectory markers for fire from the space battle outside of the space station. These trajectory markers would designate where damage was sustained in the firefight, once I had these markers in the scene I used them as a roadmap of what to damage in the scene and how to show that damage through modeling.

Once I had my scene modeled, UVed, and semi-destroyed color coded each part and exported them all as FBX files to be brought into Substance Painter. In Substance Painter I created a grouping of materials and applied them based on their assigned colors from the color coding process in blender throughout the scene. After that I re-imported it all into blender and assigned each part their respective diffuse/roughness/metal/normal maps.

Once I had all of this completed I lit the scene, I didn't have a solid idea of how I wanted to light my scene going into this step, again no concept art to work from, so I played around it with what I had trying to make a story from the way I was lighting it all. I tried not to make a lot of lights on the walkway because I wanted the space station to appear like it was in a state of emergency and the emergency lighting had kicked in as the main source of lighting. I also threw some of that emergency lighting through the debris field because I wanted to use it to give the wreckage more depth, but also to use the light as a means of drawing the viewers eye around the scene, highlighting specific parts.

Once I was finished lighting my scene, I rendered it off and sent it off the Photoshop where I did a little bit of post production before sending in my submission to you guys.

All in all, I really enjoyed the experience, this was a fun project to take part in, it allowed me to flex my creative muscles while letting me test my skills as a 3D artist so I can better understand my own shortcomings and the level of my skills.

I hope you like it.