Imperial Ornithopter Concept

 So I also played around with an Imperial 'thopter to appear briefly during the exterior shots of the Emperor's palace on Kaitain, based on concept art by Ville Ericsson?
With the still work-in-progress adaptable folding wing design from the Atreides 'thopter.
The other issue of course is the Atreides 'thopter is also Gold.

DUNE Ornithopter Rework

 Updated Atreides Ornithopter with reconfigurable wing mechanism which allows for a number of dynamic poses.
While the new 2021 film uses a dragonfly as an inspiration, I am going more with ocean-going seabird (Like an albatross) that only flaps its wings when it needs to, before fucking them in when diving down low. This is also because in the novel, the wings are described as changing their shape depending on what the pilot is doing (Eg for take off).

Sardaukar prepare to defend their Emperor.

Here is a work-in-progress of a new version of the shot where the Sardaukar rush forth from the Emperor's steel tent and prepare to engage the approaching Fremen.

The original shot seems almost as if it was a last minute rush job - It doesn't look like one of the many clever Emilio Ruiz del Rio shots (Whereby a miniature was filmed on a high platform to carefully match live action filmed at the same time.). This looks like a miniature was was filmed and then the Sardaukar were composited onto it later - but that the live action portion didn't have enough lighting on it, leading to the Sardaukar becoming a dark blob in the center of the frame. This is exacerbated by the greenish tint to the live action which doesn't match the surrounding miniature.

The searchlights have been added in post as well and don't seem to really be coming from where the Emperor's ship would be positioned at the top of the tent.

Referring to the book it seems that there are a large number of Harkonnen vehicles present as well...
"He swung the telescope to the far side of the Arrakeen landing field now, to the Harkonnen frigates lined up there with a CHOAM company banner waving gently from its staff on the ground beneath them..."

Right now, the Sardaukar are temporary models and they are not yet moving quite right. I will probably have more of them coming forth as well as the Steel Tent contains 5 Legions of them (Per the book).

From WIKIPEDIA: "A typical legion of this period had 5,120 legionaries as well as a large number of camp followers, servants and slaves. Legions could contain as many as 6,000 fighting men when including the auxiliaries, although much later in Roman history the number was reduced to 1,040 to allow for greater mobility."

So the Emperor could have as many as 30,000 men or as few as 5,200. Going with the typical number of 5120 per legion that would mean 25,600 Sardaukar are in this structure.

However in the film the Emperor states. "I want 50 legion of Sardaukar on Arrakis at once!". He obviously doesn't bring them all down with him!

Harkonnen Oil Burner

Harkonnen oil burner - Work in progress. The 3D model still needs a load of work still
I feel the shots in the original film really don't come close to the production art (And the compositing is ropy at best).
Still working out the colour scheme for the environment - though Harko City will still remain the same blue & green colour.

Some minor updates to some of the VFX shots I am working on...

All shots are still very much work in progress, but several were done for an upcoming fan-edit by another editor.

Spice Silos

Was taking a look through the DUNE blu-ray extra materials recently and noticed a cool pencil sketch that features a spice storage yard, so have whipped up a quick model and some very temporary textures. I had originally used the spice silo design from the DUNE 2000 video game, but would rather use original designs developed for the film where possible.
Still have to work on the layout of the silos as well.

Spice Silo from DUNE 2000 video game.

Original Spice Storage yard based on video game.

Spice factory and storage area as viewed from the palace at Arrakeen.

Concept sketch from film.

Spice storage area W.I.P.

DUNE Weapons

Here are all the untextured weapons I have made so far (From left to right: Sardaukar Rifle and pistol, Harkonnen Rifle and Pistol and Atreides Rifle and Pistol) - completed the modeling on the Harkonnen pistol yesterday. I also went back in and made a few minor geometry tweaks on the other weapons and scaled them all to suitable size.
Still have to UV map them and do the texture/shader work - that probably won't happen for a while.
Also have the Fremen weaponry to work on - Crysknife, Needle Gun and Weirding Module.

HARKONNEN RIFLE

Finally got around to modeling the Harkonnen rifle today.
I only have one good reference images of the prop and some stills from the movie to work from.
Still need to tweak some of the details/proportions.

Examining the movie stills, it looks like the prop was hard to hold as the actors resort to holding onto the thick "wires" above the stock and the handle at the side (not visible in this render). There seems to be some confusion among the actors about which way up to hold the rifle - When Piter arrives and walks down the stairs all the guards are holding the guns with the wires facing down, while the two guards in the Baron's room that bring in the boy are holding the rifles wire size up.

Also IMHO, the magazine is waaaaay to small for a weapon with five barrels!

Need to do the Harkonnen pistol next.

Harkonnen Modular Environment

I'm still quietly working away on this project. A few bits here, a few bits there. Currently have been trying to build a modular Harkonnen environment based almost entirely on Piter's arrival and the introduction of the Baron and his nephews. There's not much else to work from - just the one redressed set later on when Thufir has been imprisoned.

That said, so far I have a couple of different walls, wall corners and ends, floor panels and grating and then some props - notably the TWO types of Harkonnen chair (Though I only have the one side  angle of the chair Rabban sits in) and the two tables (The one with the flowers on it and the small one next to Rabban with the squood on it), and the small wall lights.

Also noticed for the first time while reviewing some still from the movie, that one of the Harkonnen tropps carries a sort of odd looking "battle standard" - its the black pole on the right of the image with the "C" shapes at the top.

Need to UV and texture everything still... possibly going to take everything into UNREAL 4 game engine and see what I can achieve - we have had promising results at work and My directorial debut (Izzie's Way Home a full length 3d animated movie) was all rendered in UNREAL 4.

Also came across three more production paintings from DUNE that I had not seen before.

And there was an auction of the book of storyboards from the movie as well (I believe it was from a series of reductions of the storyboards made for the VFX team), so I was able to get a few still from that... though I would love to see the whole thing and put all the images online.

Other progress includes an overhaul of a lot of the old models - in particular The Emperor's flagship and Steel Tent - have been experimenting with with PBR (Physically Based Rendering), but while most of the results are good, I haven't been able to get the gold of the EMperor's ship to look right while in space as it tends to just reflect all the blackness!

DUNE - Behind The Scenes Video

Here is the behind the scenes program that was made to promote the movie at conventions and presumably on TV.

Emperor's Palace on Kaitain

Have been working a little on this scene, replacing the flat cards that previously made up the background city with some stock 3D sci-fi building models, added the searchlights on the towers and some other lights (still in progress) and finally got around to putting Kaitain's ring in the sky to draw attention down to the Palace, along with a much better sky image.

Next to do is get a decent guild ship model - right now its basically just a big rectangle as I only have the plans for the underside and the upper portion of it is a bit vague and hard to make out in the movie, and then work on the lighting, which needs considerable work - right now the palace foreground is a little too subdued and the city too "close".

 Here's the original "miniature"!!! (Below)

The Emperor's "Selamlik" - Work In Progress

Frank Herbert uses the term "Selamlik" to describe the metal "tent" that the Emperor's uses as his base while dealing with the Arrakis affair.

"The selamlik (Turkish: selamlık) was the portion of a Ottoman palace or house reserved for men; as contrasted with the seraglio, which is reserved for women and forbidden to men.
Selamlik was also a portion of the household reserved for the guests (from the root word selam, "greeting"), similar to the andronites (courtyard of men) in Ancient Greece, where guests would be welcomed by the males of the household. The harem is the portion for the family."

The description from the novel:

"It wasn't the lighter that excited Stilgar's awe, Paul knew, but the construction for which the lighter was only the centerpost. A single metal hutment, many stories tall, reached out in a thousand-meter circle from the base of the lighter - a tent composed of interlocking metal leaves - the temporary lodging place for five legions of Sardaukar and His Imperial Majesty, the Padishah Empror Shaddam IV."

Other details include Gurney Halleck's observation that it has 9 levels (Instead of only 6 in the movie version).

Below you can see the original model being prepped for filming, how it appears in the movie - as seen by Paul through the oil lenses of his binoculars, then two of My work in progress renders, the first matching the same angle as the movie version but with the camera pulled further back to permit visibility of the entire structure and the second render revealing more of the environment, including two Spice Harvesters and the Baron Harkonnen's ship.

I am looking at rebuilding all the DUNE 3D models I have made to take advantage of the improvements in 3D since I first made them - in particular to take advantage of new more realistic rendering engines that should help to take the CG curse off of the images.

As a side note, the image with the sand-crawlers took 37 minutes 53 seconds to render out on My machine at home, while a render at work during My lunch break, took only 7 minutes 19 seconds!

Piter's Arrival - The Harkonnen Tram sequence

One of the more poorly edited sequences in the movie revolves around Piter De Vries arrival at the Harkonnen capital by tram. As depicted in the movie it is a really confusing set of shots which also includes some terrible compositing and blue screen work.
Only the final shot with the matte painting of the interior of the massive industrial complex is well done.
To this end I have been working away on building the two major features from that sequence - the massive industrial building and the creepy "oil burners" with the strange baby faces which are barely seen in the movie.
This is an update on what I had previously done in an attempt to make it more "movie" accurate given what references I have of it.
Still a lot of work to be don on it to match the model better and the face is nowhere near correct yet, but the elements are starting to come together.

Just for fun I decided to make some card back mock ups for "Dune SE" action figures, using a modified version of the original Kenner star wars card back - since I always felt those were some of the best looking action figure card backs.
Also found some pictures of the original LJN action figures and some custom made ones.
There are different colour backgrounds depending on which faction they belong to.

PREVIZ: Folding Space: Interior

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0oJ6LgutsQ

Here is some early "Previz" animation I have been working on to try and work out a better way to handle the scenes of Guild Navigator folding space.
I would like to try and stay close to what was originally envisioned for the sequence, while keeping what is going on clear to the audience.

Sardaukar Lasgun

As a follow up to the Sardaukar pistol I made recently, here is the Lagun / Rifle. It's a fairly low rez model with only basic texturing, not meant to be viewed up close, but should hold up fine for distant shots on the CG Sardaukar.

I only had the one reference image to work from (The prop looks pretty beat up as well), so it is probably missing details. If anyone has better images of the prop, I'd be interested in seeing them. A search of the net revealed nothing new.

SARDAUKAR PISTOL/LASER GUN

Just finished up a low resolution version of the Sardaukar pistol - for use by eventual CG Sardaukar - so I didn't include some of the smaller details, though I may add them later.
To My knowledge this prop doesn't appear in the film, nor have I found any examples of it as concept art. However, it WAS a toy made by LJN (Called the Sardaukar Laser Gun) along with the Fremen Tarpel Gun (Which seems to have been based on the concept art for the Fremen needle gun) - Next will be the Sardaukar Lasgun/Rifle you can see in one of the examples below (along with the pistol).