Top Gun: Maverick — "Darkstar" Cockpit Cinematic
A concept collaboration with Jayse Hansen (Iron Man, Star Wars, Top Gun: Maverick) recreating the Darkstar cockpit in Unreal Engine 5, rendered in real time to test film-quality visuals.
Context
This was a concept collaboration with Jayse Hansen, whose HUD design work spans Iron Man, Star Wars, and Top Gun: Maverick, exploring the Darkstar cockpit in Unreal Engine 5. There wasn’t dedicated reference material to work from, just what appeared on screen in the film, so I modeled the interior from those limited film shots.
My Work
- Modeled the cockpit interior from limited film shots, since there wasn’t reference material beyond what appeared on screen.
- Built a material layer system for the models in the scene.
- Used photogrammetry to recreate the yoke the pilots used to steer with.
- Brought in Jayse’s UI animations, and handled lighting and sequencer animation.
- Built a custom pixel RGB shader for the cockpit monitors. It samples color from the UI animations through an RGB subpixel texture, so the screens only reveal individually lit pixels once the camera gets close, the way a real monitor looks under a macro lens.
- Rendered the final sequences through Movie Render Queue in Apple ProRes.
Conclusion
A real-time test of film-quality cinematic visuals, accurate down to a photogrammetry-scanned yoke and a custom RGB pixel shader that holds up the cockpit monitors under a close-up camera.