The Tug was the very first of the digital models to be built for Supernova. Originally a physical Tug model had been built (at about twelve inches / thirty centimetres prow to stern) but as things turned out none of the Tug shots were ever filmed and we replaced them with all digital shots. I did use that model as photo reference (and the model shop people had done a great job painting it) for the main body textures on the digital version. Having said that, there's almost certainly a lot more painted textures on this ship than you're probably thinking now. Just taking photographs and trying to use them as maps almost never works very well because you need a lot of the detail to correspond on the color, diffuse, specular and bump maps, and that means putting it there by hand.

When I started building the digital versions of the 'Nova spaceships the word from on high was "These digital versions won't be seen close, they'll be used as stand-ins when the ships are really far away from the camera." That soon changed. By the time it was all over and done the Tug had been seen entirely filling the 2K frame for a docking shot, something that I'd never even considered possible when I built it.

What I actually did: I built the model, I painted the maps and I made the surfaces. Most (if not all) of the surfaces have a colour map, a bump map, a diffuse map and a specular map. The glass also has a transparency map. I didn't build the bumpers (the things with the yellow and black stripes on them) Dennis Price built and textured those. I should probably make clear that this was hand modeled, there was no 3D scanning or any other tricks, just me and the modeling package. I think it took five weeks from starting out to having the final object in renders.

All of the Tug shots in Supernova are in the vicinity of the blue star so they're all lit with colour temperatures similar to this render. Watching the movie would probably leave you thinking that all of the ships are shades of blue/grey but they aren't, they're simply lit with strong blue light. By the way... All of these renders on this page are straight out of the box, there's been no correcting or messing about and what you see is pretty much exactly what you get.

Click on the image to see a 1024 pixel wide version.

This is essentially the same render as above but lit with neutral white lighting, which (I think) gives a much better representation of the texture maps and surfacing. This is the Tug in it's default state, if you will... No coloured lighting, no compositing, just the model, the maps and a clean render.

Click on the image to see a 1024 pixel wide version.

Aaaannd... it's the same render again, but this time I've stripped out all of the maps and surfaces so you can see exactly where the model ends and the texturing and surfacing begin. It's plain from this shot just how much work the bump maps are doing.

Click on the image to see a 1024 pixel wide version.

This shot is in here mostly just in case you were wondering whether the underside wasn't textured or something and I was hiding it... It doesn't really stand up to this sort of static scrutiny but I think it's okay for something that was originally meant to be "Just a dot in the distance..."

Click on the image to see a 1024 pixel wide version.

And finally... This is the underside again, this time sans textures so we can get a good look at the model.

Click on the image to see a 1024 pixel wide version.