Star Trek - Procedural Ships

Client: Paramount

"What if we just made 10,000 Generative Ships?"

These are the words that I'll never forget hearing from our leader. We were reviewing the artwork that we were planning on using for Star Trek's first official NFT project, and while I was so excited at the opportunity, I didn't know if it was even possible. So I quickly put together a proof of concept that I could even generate that many ships. This gif is that proof of concept.

This then lead into a quick trial of kitbashing ship parts together to show what the final ships could look like, working closely with Casey Hupke over the weekend to kitbash together options for 5 different ships, we were officially given the green light.

Houdini to the Rescue

Without the power of Houdini, we could not have hoped to accomplish finishing one Starship class, let alone 6! In only 7 weeks, we were able to create systems to generate millions of starships. In the beginning, we were told to generate 100,000, with overage, to cover ourselves, we generated over 176,000! All the ships were unique 1-of-1s, each having distinct lights on the saucer, neck, and hull, along with custom serial numbers.

We worked closely with a production studio to model each of the main components of the ships and then leveraged Houdini to connect all of the parts and pieces, along with building the uniqueness.

All the Details

As in all projects, the details are always important. On a compressed timeline, knowing when to push and when to hold back is the key.

For this project, we were creating screen-accurate ships, which created a lot of potential roadblocks for finishing the project, and without the support of our amazing partners at Paramount, this wouldn't have happened.