INTRO & BACKGROUND
Greetings people of the TTV message boards! It has been 2.75 years since I was last on here. I have returned to show off a use I have found for some of my BIONICLE MOCs.
I have been working on a personal project of mine since late June/early July of 2019. This is about the time I found the MakeHuman software while poking around the internet. Upon finding this software, I decided to make a 3D model of my Starbound player avatar. My reason for doing so is that I was never overly satisfied with the digital drawings I had previously made of her, so I saw an opportunity to make something I would be much happier showing off when I found MakeHuman.
I will spare the reader with the details of how this project morphed into what it is now, but assuming I don’t burn out, the current end goal for the project is to make a short video of the events of the game Starbound as the Ashley Aerostar character experienced them. I have embellished and/or altered some details of the base game’s plot, and have even given the character a full personality and background and added to her story after the events of the game’s end. While the end goal is a short video, during this time where I am still in the process of making assets for this project, my focus is just to make a render every so often as I make new assets.
CHARACTER DESCRIPTIONS
I’m going to list the characters along with a very brief description here so that I don’t have to do so with the first image they appear in.
- Ashley Jade Aerostar: The main player character. Since she is the main player character, her personality is heavily based on my own personality, but has enough differences to make her distinct from myself. Description: Athletic build; 179.25cm tall; Brown hair in a ponytail
- Corran Lewis Duravantin Aerostar: Someone who Ashley rescued early in the game’s events who she eventually marries after the end of the main story. Description: Athletic build; 177.45cm tall; Average length brown hair
- Daniel Christopher Aerostar: The original player character. I made this player character first, but never finished the game with him for some reason, so he has now been re-purposed into Ashley’s brother character. Description: Athletic build; 174.94cm tall; Average length dark brown hair
- Nova Lux Aerostar: First daughter of Ashley and Corran. Born after the events of the game have finished. Description: Average build; 169.17cm tall; Ginger hair in a braid
- Kimberly Spero Aerostar: Second daughter of Ashley and Corran. Born about three years after Nova. Description: Athletic build; 175cm tall; Red hair in a braid
- Nokia Aerostar: Brain child of Nova and Kimberly. A sapient android prototype made a member of the Aerostar family. Description: Average build; 166.13cm tall; Silver hair in a braid
HOW MY MOCS ARE BEING INTEGRATED INTO THE PROJECT
I have decided to use the SelfMOCs I made of myself and my closest friends as guard/attack androids for the Aerostar house on the planet Ashley started Starbound on after the prologue was over. I am also using one of my Rahi MOCs as an older sentry/guard android that serves the same purpose. These MOCs will likely not be seen in the final video I put together, but I’ll use them in the occasional render that is set after the events of the main quest of Starbound have been completed. I will be closing off the technic pin and axle holes on the models as I do further work on polishing the models up, but I currently haven’t started work on that process. I will also be using some of my custom Star Wars System MOCs as background ships for some sequences in the final video, but they are not the focus of this topic, so I won’t focus on them any further.
I have repurposed the Toa team name I came up with for the SelfMOCs of my friends and I as the name for the model line of androids that the SelfMOCs have become. The androids inherited the Toa names of their respective SelfMOCs. The Rahi MOC’s species name was repurposed as the name of the model line of its type of android, with the name of the android itself being inherited from the name of the individual Rahi seen in the Rahi MOC’s topic.
I have made a couple scenes with two of the SelfMOCs and couple scenes with the Rahi MOC. First, the SelfMOC scenes:
JEGATU ANDROID
First up is my SelfMOC, Jegatu. In the SelfMOC scenes, Ashley is introducing Nokia to one of the Aerostar family’s humanoid guard/attack androids that Ashley, Corran, and Daniel created about ten years prior to Nokia’s completion.
Simply because Jegatu is the SelfMOC of myself, I am going to say that this android has a level of sapience noticeably below Nokia’s, but also noticeably above the other guard androids (which have no sapience). I am also going to say that Jegatu is the first one of the humanoid Ignalu androids Ashley, Corran, and Daniel built, which is why it has a more advanced AI than the others, since after Jegatu was completed it was determined that these androids didn’t need sapience to do their jobs.
The sapience this android has means that it has a more developed personality than the rest. The main personality traits all of the androids were given were protective, patient, and resourceful personality traits. This one’s personality, among other traits, also has some parental related traits programmed into it.
Jegatu’s multipurpose ice weapons have been turned into plasma-based medium-range energy rifles with blades mounted on their ends to allow for close quarters combat. Not that these guard androids need blades to be devastating at close range, as they are designed to be able to take punishment and dish it back out. The blades can be removed, allowing the Jegatu to manipulate the lower half of its energy rifles like claws, effectively giving this android claw-like hands.
The Jegatu android is 174.94cm tall including the fins on the sides of its head, the same height as the Daniel character.
PUTAKHA ANDROID
Next up is the SelfMOC of one of my best friends, Putakha. Like I mentioned above, all of the Ignalu androids aside from Jegatu are non-sapient. This does not mean that they are mindless machines, though. They are sentient, just not sapient.
Putakha’s gravity staff weapon has been turned into a durasteel staff weapon. The loss of Putakha’s gravity powers also prevents the android from using gravity manipulation to fly around, turning Putakha into one of the two androids that uses melee attacks to finish off the targets the two ranged Ignalu androids have weakened.
The Putakha android is 179.6525cm (5’ 10.73") tall, making it slightly taller than Ashley, who is 179.25cm tall.
KAMU ANDROID
Here is the sentient sentry android Kamu that Ashley, Corran, and Daniel built about nine years after the end of the events of the main quest of Starbound. That means that Nova was about seven years old when this thing was built, and Nokia wouldn’t be completed for another 16 years after this sentry was built. In this scene, a 13 year old Nova is saying hello to Kamu. Nova is also here to give a sense of scale to the android. Speaking of which, at full height Nova is 153.89cm (5’ 0.59") tall at the age of 13.
Kamu is the only android of the Maroe line of guard androids that the Aerostar family built. The other more humanoid Ignalu androids were built after multiple attempts were made on the lives of Ashley and later the entire Aerostar family and it was determined that more guard androids were needed.
Kamu’s AI is very basic in comparison to the Ignalu androids. Most of its AI is devoted to watching its surroundings for possible threats, then determining the threat level of and how it should deal with whatever it finds. It does have the certain amount of friendliness towards those it guards and those that are deemed to be not a threat programmed into it. As a result, it acts a lot like Minecraft Iron Golems do, acting friendly and docile most of the time, then becoming aggressive when danger is near.
Kamu’s AI is held back from being upgraded to the level of the Ignalu androids largely by its older computer hardware that is prohibitively difficult to replace without resetting its personality and/or memories.
Despite how cumbersome Kamu might look at first glance given its limb setup, Kamu is rather nimble and agile, as well as also being rather strong and well armed for its size. Its main weapons are its clawed hands, which have two medium range plasma based energy rifles built into them, and its scythe-like tail.
Kamu’s “eyes” aren’t actually what it uses to see. This android uses a variety of sensor equipment to give it a near-perfect view of its surroundings at all times. Its “eyes” do serve a purpose, however. They act as a visual indicator of whether Kamu is currently docile or not, light blue signalling its docile and red signalling its aggressive, and they allow Kamu to let a person or creature know that it has acknowledged their existence. The latter purpose is also meant to be a trick for enemies, as the acknowledgement of the target is meant to trick the target into thinking the android’s eyes are actually how it sees.
Kamu’s sensor suite is actually more powerful than the sensor suites the Ignalu use, so once the Ignalu androids were finished, Kamu was shifted from its roaming guard role to a surveillance sentry role, tasked with watching over a large area of the landscape around the Aerostar house and alerting the Ignalu androids if Kamu deemed it couldn’t handle a target or set of targets within Kamu’s area on its own.
Here are a couple more images of Kamu by itself in its docile state. First is Kamu in daytime lighting conditions, followed by Kamu in nighttime lighting conditions.
FINAL THOUGHTS, OTHER IMAGES FROM THE PROJECT, & CREDITS
That is all I have to show off that pertains to the main focus of this topic. Because I didn’t make topics for three of the Toa Ignalu, here is an image of all five of the Toa Ignalu together just so I can show them off, rendered in Stud.io:
From left to right the Toa Ignalu are: Katpu, Putakha, Jegatu, Kar, Matsido
Here are a couple more images from my Ashley Aerostar Starbound project. If you like what you see and want to learn more about the project or see more art from it, please see this post I made on my Deviant Art page that goes through a lot of the info on the project itself.
Character/android names and Toa team/android model line name are derived from the Matoran to English dictionary that can be found here.
Unless stated elsewhere, all renders were made with Blender, which can be found here.
Human and near-human android character models were made with the MakeHuman software, which can be found here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CC Attributions for the MakeHuman community assets visible in the images posted here that need attribution:
- Asymmetric Tunic and Sash: DredNicolson (Texture edited by myself to change the color of the sash)
- AVA Ex Machina Bodysuit: punkduck (Texture edited by myself to make her less of the limbs transparent)
- F Dress 02: Mindfront
- F Dress 03: Mindfront (Texture file was edited by myself to change the color of some parts of the dress)
- french lingerie (bra): punkduck
- french lingerie (stockings): punkduck
- Jeans Skirt: punkduck
- Male Classic Jeans (and associated belt): punkduck
- Shoes Biker Boots female: Mindfront (Texture edited by myself to make the boots white and to make the boots look like they have dirt on them)
- Sleeveless â– â– â– â– â– : punkduck
All other assets in these images either use CC0 licenses or were made by myself.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All aspects of this project, excluding the wood panel texture in the house, the tree models and their textures, the bush and tree models and their associated textures, the violet flower model and its associated textures, the clothing models and their default textures made by the community users of the MakeHuman software, the designs of the LEGO parts used, and the Starbound IP and its related imagery and ideas, are owned by MasterJedi2014.
© MasterJedi2014 2019-2020.