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.

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!

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!

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).

An reanalysis of David Lynch's DUNE

It's an older review by John Kenneth Muir of the Blu-ray from 2010, but it is always interesting to see other people's opinions and experiences with the film.

http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com/2010/06/cult-movie-review-dune-1984.html

On a tragic note, My friend Paul Michelena was killed this weekend in a supermarket parking lot, hit and run over by a car while protecting his daughter Chani (Yes, Paul was a DUNE fan as well).
Water for the dead will be given at the appropriate time.

http://www.sanclementetimes.com/blog/2013/10/11/man-killed-by-car-in-grocery-store-parking-lot/

Thirdly, I finally spent the weekend back working on DUNE Special Edition again... mostly sorting out all My 3D assets - since the organization has been haphazard at best and working in the VFX industry for the past couple of years has taught Me a thing or two!

Guild Heighliner - HD Redux

So I have decided to sort of start over - after a fashion - in as much as I am starting at the beginning again and retooling everything for the greater detail demands of HD. Means more work of course!

Have never been happy with the level of detail on the Guild Heighliner, so I have been working out how to use the new "instancing" features in Lightwave 11.5 to create a good look. Had to remodel the ship to accommodate the way instancing works. I also have not added in the node flow that allows the instances to rotate in 90 degree increments for more variety.

Here's a couple of in progress comparison shots... Same model with instancing turned off and instancing turned on. (It's not lit properly yet though and I will eventually play with the surface textures when I have finished modeling - still have to do the three large vertical doors)

Atreides Landing Field

   As you all might have noticed, I've been pretty quiet in this forum for a while, but My new job - while fun - has plenty of long hours and tight deadlines to meet, so I have barely had a chance (or I must admit - the motivation) to sit down and work on the DUNE: Special Edition...

That said, I AM still working on it!

Found better versions of the original concept art from 1984 a while ago and with a better understanding of what is going on in the art, I reworked My model of the Atreides Landing Field to better reflect the design... (It's still in progress so proportions and sizes are all in flux)

More Original DUNE Production Art

Was also excited recently to find some more (or better versions) of some of the original production art (By Tony Masters and Ron Miller), including a couple of pieces I had not seen before.
I present them here in rough chronological order

Who Could Pose As A Freman?

(Click on images for larger version. Top: Enhanced frame. Bottom: Original Theatrical Frame)

The sadistic Piter De Vries as played wonderfully by character Actor Brad Dourif (Alien Resurrection, Lord Of The Rings) acts not only as the Baron Harkonnen's mentat but as a "twisted" mentat, he also acts as an assassin. Consuming spice in large quantities - a privilage of being the Baron's right hand man - his eyes have taken on the blue within blue coloring of a spice addict.
The Atreides worry that with those eyes, Piter would be the perfect assassin - able to pass for one of the native fremen.
However, in the movie - presumably in order to save money on the rotoscoping effect and not confuse the audience as to who the bad guys are - Piter does not have the blue within blue eyes.
I had a quick go in photoshop today at recoloring his eyes to see how he'd look. (Yes, I did muck around with the green wall as well!)