FROM THE COMMUNITY COLLECTION
Alien-Hive
Again, the Tarranian Star Cruiser is from Miklos - thank you. The material on the artificial planet is David's "Infinite City", available here in the materials exchange - also: thank you. The star field was generated in Universe, the bright stars painted in Universe. This is a 2D-Face at some distance from the camera. From the picture, a Gaussian blurred version was made in PS and used as alpha map. The 2D-face is essentially fully transparent, except for the stars. The scene is lit by the OilyRainbow HDRI I made for David from a render of his. The black sky is in fact the HDRI in the background. The stars and all the rest is lit by that part of the HDRI that is invisible in this picture; the stars get their colour from the HDRI. The red sun in the upper right corner as well as the nebulae or aurora-like glows at the lower edge are a visible part of the HDRI, shining through the star field.
Comments 14
A conversation around the artworkSign in to join the conversation.
about Taranian: http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Taranian more starships: http://mauricegraham.tripod.com/id10.html
Lighting, although little unlikely for space, illuminates the sphere, the planetoid and the spaceship very well. As commented upon the colouration of the starts is a very nice effect and overall the scene works well. My only quibble would be one of percieved scale, but since I've never been in space, maybe this is more an issue with my perception of the environment than it is about your scene.
Miklos Yes, I imported the picture as Leo but I made an alpha mask from it, too. It's the first time I really used Universe for a star background and I think it holds promising possibilities. I ought to experiment with this using conventional light sources.
Very cool! This is a beautiful piece Horo! I love the colors you used. It looks pretty real to me. I also like what you did on the bottom 2 corners. Nice effect. The ship is awesome. 5/5 Great work!
if the background was made in Universe, you have imprted the file in Bryce like a BMP file, or how ? I have the Universe, but I used before but never with Bryce. Nice effect. See my site, I have a lof of FREE starships for download :-)
Hmm, pity the hdri image was so difficult to align once you moved the scene itself around. I have no added suggestions on how to fix such an issue. oh well, thanks for giving it a try!
. can't you use another hdri, with one direction of light? just no shadows from the ship on the planet :)
Nope. Haze is no option to give a size clue. It was not easy to align the hdri after I tilted the scene grouped with the camera.
Rashad, I think I give that haze-thingy a whorl. The hdri used has all colours that's why we get so much light from all around. This particular hdri is very difficult to be rendered as background and it actually was never meant to. Have a look at http://help.horo.ch - click on HDRI B and go down. It's on the second last line at far right.
No fall-off, cool. We agree that it would not help in this situation. On the subject of haze there is a work-around for haze in space. It all comes down to the point of view. When haze is employed and we observe the horizon there is a band across the screen where the haze builds up. This horizon band would look all wrong in space, but haze itself can be very useful as mentioned for distance indication. If you employ haze but instead of facing the camera "outward" viewing the horizon, try facing the camera "upward" only as it looking up directly into the sky. It takes a bit of brain teasing to get the idea but basically it's like turning the entire world on it's butt so that you can see haze with distance but there is no horizon line visible. I tried something similar with White Nebula. The nebula itself failed to convince but the haze setting doeas alot to help us feel the scale of the small nebula used for the scene. But as I look again at this submission Horo I realize that maybe the hdri is playing a trick on me. I feel like the spherical objects seem to receive strong light from more than just one angle as is customary when there is a single powerful star. does the hdri have a clear singular bright spot or does it have more than one?
I see what you mean about the missing distance clue. There is no HDRI falloff and neither should there be: the objects are in close proximity of a few 100'000 km far too short for strong light to get noticeably attenuated. I think DOF would make everything appear miniature. Space scenes are indeed very difficult because we cannot employ haze as a distance clue.
The colored windows on the Hive make it look like it's studded with gem stones. I think that looks pretty cool. :-) The surface material has a good bump map and is quite plausible. I like the ship model too, and the rainbow starts on the left. ;-)
. I think the same about the light, but the scene is awesome. If you don't want to change the lighting then you can blur the objects away from the focal point to add that depth/distance feel. Then again, when looking at objects from far away there is little to no DoF in between them, even if they are very far apart.
Wow. I really like the way this particular hdri is affecting the background stars, very cool. Over-all I would say that the lighting is not helping us feel the large scale of space. I think you are using a fall-off for the hdri light and that makes it feel almost of indoors. For outdoor or outer space scenes I think a more uniform light setting with no fall-off may be necessary for us to feel that the sunlight source is extremely far away with a far reaching light.