Mars - rev 2

[Drakkheim]

I decided to keep puttering with my Mars picture that i had posted in the showcase.

 

And Figured i can always use more feedback

 

At this point Im not sure what to do about the tube road in the back...

Im planning on adding a ship on the launchpad and finishing the crane (under construction on the right side) which will probably make the road look more like background rather than the focus of the image.

 

here's a small render of the pic as it stands straight out of the renderer.

 

Any suggestions on how to place a couple hundred various sized rocks in the fore-middle ground?

 

--Simon

 

Ps. and sweeper made making the lattice for the tower a complete breeze!

 

--- To Do Checklist ---

DONE Stair Railings

DONE Crane

DONE Fix O rings on railway

STARTED Rocket Ship

DONE Glass more transparent less white.

DONE Landing Beacons

DONE Antenna on Building

DONE Loose Rocks

Hatch into Building

Fuel Storage tanks and refuling tubes.

Add scratches to shiny surfaces

--- --- --- --- ---

[pixelmech]

Looks great Simon - hey - give me a Rocket on that landing pad! That's what I wanna see. There's a lot going on in the composition but there is no real focal point. A ship there would give you that and balance the pic nicely IMHO.

 

Tom

[Kamikaze]

Looking good...Id like to see a bigger pic if you can post one.....Also ,the sky seems to wanna draw my attension away from the rest of the scene..is the sky a decal on a dome?

 

Keep it going,

Michael

[Rodney]

Any suggestions on how to place a couple hundred various sized rocks in the fore-middle ground?

 

There are a couple attacks most of which would probably be more time consuming to get right than just placing them all manually.

 

What might work well is to create a new model and copy/paste rocks in a row... scaling some up, some down, distorting some... lowering and elevating,etc.

 

Then duplicate that row into several new rows...

Repeat for even newer rows...

 

Then go back in and delete and move to taste.

The trick is to get as many different rocks created as quickly as possible.

You can move and distort later.

 

The method I've been hoping to perfect entails moving one rock in a choreography or action distorting etc along the way as discribed above. Then you export the action to AV2 models. A 100 frame sequence would give you 100 rocks of various size and location to reimport into a new model. A:M currently can import multiple models so this can be pretty quick as long as the geometry is low and there are no bone naming conflicts.

 

I like what you have now though. Looks like a Mars operation to me.

[Drakkheim]

Thanks for the feedback.

 

Rodney I hadnt thought of that way of placing the rocks, My (newly revised)current thought is to create a single object with 100 rocks, tweak em into various shapes and place them in the model and move them into position in the chor with muscle mode.. that should mke it pretty easy and painless.

thanks

 

I've finished the crane and am hammering out some concept art for the ship, since its going to be the focus i wanna get it 'just right'.

 

Here's a WIP render that rendered while i was watching Alien Planet on my tivo, showing the new crane.

 

Its at 1/4 of final resolution, 25 passes for the skylight, total time 1:59:33

 

Oh Just to pass along what I'm learing while doing this. If you havent played with the 'newish' features of reflections Reflectivity Blend , and Reflective Filter they go a Long way in making glass look more glassy

 

I'm also updating the 1st post with my mental checklist of things to add before calling it done.

[Rodney]

You definitely got me thinking about rocks.

 

Here's a 30 frame test w/ rocks reimported in place.

Some deletions and distortions later of course.

 

Since you have Sweeper... that might be a great way to go to.

You can always place your 'Hero' rocks in exactly the position you want.

 

I highly recommend using the distortion tool to quickly place the rocks.

That'll save you a lot of time.

[Drakkheim]

Oooh yeah Sweeper to the rescue again! I can make clusters of rocks with various rotations along a path resulting in clusters of completely differently rotated rocks in different positions!

 

 

Im off to rockLand!

[Drakkheim]

updated the 1st post with the latest full size render,

added rocks and started on the rocket

 

 

Moving the rocks into position by hand wasnt as bad as I thought it was gonna be .. maybe ~45 min

 

Made a nice rock texture I'll seperate it out and upload it this evening

 

not sure if i should keep the ship a rocket or more of a 'airplane' orientation...

 

 

-s

[Zaryin]

I love the angle on this one. I really like the daytime lighting.

[apprentice]

I really like the work! Rocks definitely will add to the pic. More dirt or rust on the tube road will look awesome I think. I like the sky matte painting...is it painting? How about some sky phenomenon like falling star streak for more touch of depth,detail. Would love to see more of the project updates.

[bentothemax]

Looking great!

 

I wonder though, did you model the inside of the building, and the whole scene, or just enough for a still?

 

The image kind of reminds me of Doom 3, how it takes place on a reasearch facility on mars. Maybe if you made the whole scene, you could make a monster excaping or somthin . . . that would be cool

[Drakkheim]

Thanks for the comments guys.

 

Dirt on the tube sounds like a great idea.

and yeah the sky is just some quick photshop cloud cookie cutter image made 70% transparent and 90% ambient. I like the idea of maybe some faint daytime stars peeking through in the faint distance, Ill play with that.

 

I modeled only the parts of the tube and building that you can see through the glass (not much at all) Even the back of the building is completely minimal. The entire scene stops just outside the camera's view. It's already waaay patch heavy and I dont want to do work that wont be seen.

This has been planned to be a still image since the beginning. If it was an animation I'd have done much much much more conecept art /rough sketches in order to figure out exactly what I needed to create.

 

Doing more work than you need to is a good way to drive yourself insane

[Mr. Jaqe]

Dirt on the tube sounds like a great idea.

Of course, there can't be much dirt, as the cleaner nanobots makes the dirt go away every now and then, right?

[Drakkheim]

Of course, there can't be much dirt, as the cleaner nanobots makes the dirt go away every now and then, right?

 

Well I think the nanites would in general have a hard time surviving the sandstorms. Maybe a larger 'Honda Windowwasherbot LS' series machine may be called for

 

Ooh maybe i need to scratch the windows up some as it would be hard to keep any surface clean. ...

 

Im never going to get this finished :-D