Spaceship Design In 3DS Max

Our project was to design a spaceship. We were told that we could interpret this in any way we liked, so I chose to create one of the most prominent imaginations of spacecraft recognized in culture in the past 30 years. The UFO is both retro and modern, with filmmakers and creative minds still incorporating its popular design into their fiction, with its design most notably appearing in pop fiction such as Mars Attacks! And The X Files. This classic rendition is also known as a flying saucer and has been a mostly unexplained phenomenon for over a hundred years.

I wanted to recreate this particular design because it feels like something that could simultaneously be simple and a challenge. I want to put a twist to it.

The spaceship that im designing is most inspired by War of the Worlds by sci-fi author HG Wells and illustrations based around it, and also by the nostalgia factor of Mars Attacks! I’m going for smooth but odd looking, which, admittedly, isn’t the easiest kind of thing to make in 3DS Max.

Its difficult to convey the feeling of a story behind something without words, but appearance can tell you a lot about a character. I wanted to give my spaceship a story inspired by the movies Solaris and Moon, and also Sunshine and District 9, which are my favorite sci-fi movies.

Im particularly inspired by the posters for the 1972 version of Solaris. Its minimal design coveys the feeling of loneliness and darkness that the book was about. I want to incorporate this aesthetic into my ship and possibly into future stories and work revolving around it.

I really enjoy the vintage and aged aesthetic of the posters and of the movie.

One of my very favorite sci-fi movies, and possibly out of all movies, is Alien. Since I wanted to make something more retro and vintage this time around, I didnt really get to incorporate anything from the Geigerverse into my spaceship design, but would definitely like to make a derelict or abandoned ship design based in or around the Alien universe sometime.

[Bibliography:

War Of The Worlds, HG Wells, 1897. Book.

Mars Attacks!, Tim Burton and Jonothan Gems, 1996. Film.

Solaris, Stanislaw Lem, 1961. Book.

Alien, Ridley Scott, 1979. Film.]