Vince Backeberg's 3D Vehicles

Vince Backeberg's

3D Computer Vehicles

Here is a sample of some of the vehicles I have worked on. Many of are my own design, while some were for the 3DO game, Captain Quazar. On Quazar most of the designs for the ships were by Bob Terrell. The Quazar drawings were mostly from one view and in a cartoon style. What was fun was turning a 2D drawing into a working 3D model, and filling in the details.

All images/animation's for Private non-commercial viewing purposes only.
© Copyright 1996- 2001 Vince Backeberg All rights reserved.

Animated GIF of Dropship spin. Design by Bob Terrell of COMPUTOONS® . This was a fun model to build. Bob intentionally designed it to resemble Capt. Quazar's profile. The window resembles the Captain's goofy grin, and the nose looks like his jutting jawline. Since the game has a somewhat cartoony edge to it, we never worried to much about the fact that the ship is bigger on the inside than on the outside. And besides, it worked for Dr. Who for over 25 years.
© Copyright 1995 The 3DO Company.

This is one of the first 3D models I ever built on the computer. (Using an early version of Martin Hash's Animation Master) It was my concept of a hovercraft/helicopter of the near future. The devastated forest background is a photo I took up at the Mt. St. Helen's national park.
© Copyright 1993 Vince Backeberg

A large truck-like vehicle made with Animation Master. I'm not sure what inspired me to build a truck. Maybe the fact that my brother was an engineer for Freightliner had something to do with it. Anyhow, this was an interesting model to build, since I decided to build it in a high level of detail from the chassis up. One tip for 3D computer model builders is to get yourself a real model to look at. I went to my local hobbyshop and found a great Tamiya kit of a Ford Ranger 4x4. It was an invaluable resource for seeing how all of the parts fit together. Particularly the frame and suspension.
© Copyright 1995 Vince Backeberg

Modeled for the 3DO game, Capt. Quazar. Design by Bob Terrell. This was from one of the winning cinematic sequences. What is unusual about this image is the fact that I built the original Pirateship to be seen from the right side only. So to create this version of the P-ship, I had to rescale the entire character 100% negative on the X-axis. Fortunately none of the decals on the model included any text that would appear strange reversed.
© Copyright 1995 The 3DO Company.

The Pirateship. This is a frame from the opening cinematic sequence of the Captain Quazar 3DO game. Since the ship was seen mostly from this angle, there is almost nothing on the other side. This is a frame from the opening cinematic sequence. (Frame number 652)

Whenever I am going to build a 3D computer model I like to get as much reference material or photographs as possible. Now since this was an obviously science fiction model there wasn't going to be much in the way of 'real' reference. Bob had drawn only one large sketch, a profile, and a series of smaller thumbnail sketches. Luckily for us, at the time I was building this thing, the annual Portland Rose Festival was in full swing. Every year several large naval ships come into town via the Willamette river and dock at the waterfront. I went down there and took dozens of pictures. What I was particularly interested in was how the sides of these large vessels reflect light, and the separate sections fit together. These were very helpful in creating the image and bump maps we applied to the model. © Copyright 1995 The 3DO Company.

Unused design of mine for the enemy attack ships for the 3DO game, "Captain Quazar". The producer of the game wanted a ship that had a similar profile to a Star Wars TIE Fighter.

NASA"s Voyager space probe.A fairly simple 3D model but it was sort of difficult to model at the time. And at that point in time, Animation Master was entirely a spline based modeler with no primitive shapes to start with. So it was a bit like sculpting with wire.