Hello Kirupians,
I thought I would share this project I am working on with you. I am building a landscape scene of a futuristic base. It is for a fan film of the series BattleStar Galactica. The name of the Fanfilm is called “The 14th Colony”.
But before I post any of the artwork for the film, here is a link to the website . . . . . FanFilm
If any of you are familiar with the"Rift" that exists within the BSG ( battlestar galactica ) community, this movie is a * Continuation* off-shoot, from the original 1979 series, and not related to the New Series BSG at all. The premise behind “The 14th Colony” is that it is set 30 or so years after the “Hand of God” episode which aired in the 70’s. Well . . .
maybe lots of you have seen it in re runs . . . . 
I was asked to join the Fx team because some of the folks over at the fanfilm project saw some of the images of the Nu Battlestar Galactica I was building. I guess they figured I hand a bit of talent . . . . (boy were they wrong). Anyway I agreed to join the team and registered at the forum.
They asked everyone to pick a project from a list, and I picked The Cylon Base. . . .
Boy did I blunder . . . . seems this part of the project turned out to be really huge.
Anyway here is the technical’s, the layout and background on the base:
First of all the base is located on a remote planet . . . (details covered by copyright)
My job was to build the landscape, surrounding terrain, and and scene for the base . . . I found that the easiest way to generate large scale terrain is by the use of Terragen. So I opened the program and with the help of the pallet tools, created a land mass to work in.
This image is the actual scape were the base is located:
The size of the terrain is 441.00 square kilometers. In the original designs and script, the base was said to be located on a mesa positioned atop a mountain. I chose the mountain in the center of the above image to fit this need.
Once I had the terrain I wanted, I imported the mesh into Lightwave so I could work on it. Those of you who have Terragen know it will export a lot of different formats, so this was an easy task. Theoretically I could have built the terrain in Lightwave but doing it in Terragen made it possible to have the concept of the scape, textures and lighting done in one program, so now all I have to do is reproduce this in Lightwave which for the most part is easy.
Beside when the render department want to do a running shot of the Mesa, it would be better to do it in Terragen as this program will do a pretty good job of atmospherics and landscape rendering.
At this point I removed the mountain so that building and positioning the cylon base would be easier. Just so you know, all of this was done out of order. The cylon base was built before I started to scout the landscape. I needed a mountain with specific dimensions in order to fit the base. it just seemed logical at the time that the base be built first. I am just writing it this way to give some order to this piece.
In this next image, if you look in the center of the mountain . . . the black bits are the “foot prints” of the buildings that comprise the cylon base. With that being done you will see everything fits on top here very nicely.
Now the base . . .
An original sketch was done by rjandron for an idea of the cylon base. If you know any lore about the Cylons the hexagon is a prominent logo in their culture. So naturally the base was built in this manner:
I tried to keep faithful to the original design of the base, but added a few changes that made the base user friendly and believable. I added doors to the turrets and a few more entrances scattered about. I also added the ramp area in the center of the facitlity, which opened a new underground dimension to the base concept. With the introduction of the ramp I aided in the realization of a subterranean plot twist, seems this Cylon base was built on top of an existing fascility. (which is under construction at the moment )
In the beginning I misunderstood the concept size of the base and designed extra buildings which allowed for a larger support facility.
The original idea was for 2 hanger bays, so I figured a flight tower would be needed and also A Command Operations Center to coordinate and support unit movements. This would bring the base occupancy up considerably. However I was informed that the base compliment was comprised of a dozen or so Raiders and a platoon or 2 of Toasters. So the un-textured items in the next set of images are out of the plans and will be shelved unless they are needed later.
Ok here is the last bit . . .
As I said the Cylon base was built on top of an Existing facility. The “Grey” Facility was in place before the Cylons took over the compound and built there own structures. The Grey society had it’s own style and architecture, so I had to develop something that would be visually different from the cylon architecture and have it built into the landscape. . . .
This is where I am at the moment, Knee deep in building a prototype for the grey architecture. I plan on building a basic structure that can be changes slightly from one building to the next and each building serving a separate task. Once all the buildings are made, I will de-construct them to give an appearance of dilapidation and wear.
Anyway I hope I didn’t bore you all too much . . . just wanted to share one of my projects with ya’
hope you like it . . .
gp
If you are just getting into LW, there are plenty of resources out there to learn from . . start 
