Naboo Starfighter

About the project

Childhood reference, adult toolchain.

The N-1 Naboo Starfighter is one of the most distinctive ship designs in cinema — the polished chrome nose, the splayed engine nacelles, the astromech socket behind the pilot. It's also a brilliant modelling brief: continuous compound curves, big visible joinery, no straight lines anywhere.

This project is a personal homage — not a brand project, not a commission, just an exercise in building one of the most beautiful sci-fi vehicles ever drawn using the same pipeline IDMR uses for hypercars and eVTOLs.

Fully 3D modelled in Rhinoceros, with the main render produced in Light Tracer Render and the cinematic animation built in Unreal Engine.

Process · Rhinoceros

Every panel, from the ground up.

The entire fighter — fuselage, nacelles, droid dome, cockpit cavity — was built inside Rhinoceros. The screenshot below is the working viewport, clay-shaded against a black background to read the silhouette and panel breaks clearly.

Rhinoceros viewport capture of the Naboo N-1 Starfighter — **Rhino viewport · Clay shading** A native screenshot from the Rhinoceros session showing the assembled fighter on a black backdrop. The astromech dome is the only painted asset visible at this stage — everything else is unmaterialed geometry, which is the cleanest way to evaluate form.

Visualisation · Light Tracer Render

The hero still.

Light Tracer Render carries the main visualisation — the orbiting cinematic shot in the hero of this page, with the planet rim-light catching the fuselage and the green tracer fire reading clean against the star field.

In flight · Unreal Engine

Out of the hangar, into the canyon.

The same model flown through a set of real-time environments — low passes over canyon water, a hard bank between red-rock buttes, and a squadron breaking orbit. Lighting, lens flares and atmospherics are all live in the engine.

Naboo N-1 starfighter banking over canyon water — **Canyon · Low pass** A three-quarter chase over the water — the chrome nacelles and yellow flanks catching the canyon light.

Naboo N-1 starfighter top-down over reflective water — **Water · Top-down** Looking down as the fighter skims the surface, engine glow and lens flare reading against the reflections.

Naboo N-1 starfighter between red rock buttes with laser fire — **Buttes · Hard bank** Threading between the rock towers under open sky, a green tracer round streaking past.

Naboo N-1 starfighters breaking orbit over a red planet — **Orbit · Squadron** A flight of N-1s curving away from a red planet, the astromech dome and twin nacelles silhouetted against the atmosphere.

Animation · Unreal Engine

Cinematic, in real time.

For the fight sequence, the model was brought into Unreal Engine. Real-time lighting, volumetrics, lens flares, weapon trails — all dialled in live in the engine rather than rendered out frame-by-frame. The result is a 50-second dogfight shot at full cinematic quality.

UNREAL · ANIMATION

Dogfight · Naboo vs TIE A real-time cinematic captured inside Unreal Engine — the N-1 going up against a TIE fighter flight in orbit. Same Rhino geometry as the still above, brought into Unreal and shot through a virtual camera.

Pipeline · Summary

Three tools, one model.

Rhinoceros — the entire fighter was modelled here. Every nacelle, every panel break, the astromech dome, the cockpit cavity. NURBS and SubD in combination, working off public reference photography of the original ILM model.

Light Tracer Render — used for the main hero still. Plugs straight into the Rhino viewport, so the model never has to be exported for visualisation. Path-traced output with the planet, star field, and tracer fire all composited in scene.

Unreal Engine — used for the dogfight animation. The same Rhino mesh is brought across and re-lit inside the engine. Camera moves, weapon trails, lens behaviour and atmospherics are all real-time.

Note: A personal fan study, not affiliated with Lucasfilm. The Naboo N-1 Starfighter design is the intellectual property of Lucasfilm Ltd.

Need a cinematic for your concept?

If you're developing a vehicle, aircraft or product programme and want hero stills plus real-time animation from the same model — let's talk. Send a brief and we'll come back within two working days.

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