Astronomy – Nick Stevens Graphics

Lunar Renderings

As it came up in a couple of different circumstances, I thought I’d write a post featuring some of my Lunar renderings. The Moon was one of the first things I successfully rendered in 3d – The simple shape made the modelling easy, and just adding a colour channel texture and a bump map meant I could produce nice views of the Moon from any angle.

The current model.

The current version of my Lunar Model has 46 million polygons, and the craters and mountains are modelled using displacement mapping. In other words, the features are done with proper geometry, so the crater walls cast shadows.The colour texture map is about 1 gigapixel, so really large high resolution views are possible. Continue reading “Lunar Renderings”

My Art is now for sale on Fine Art America

I’ve set up a shop on Fine Art America, where you can buy my work in various formats, from prints to shower curtains and duvet covers!

Here’s the link:

https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/2-nick-stevens.html

My shop on Fine Art America Continue reading “My Art is now for sale on Fine Art America”

Orbiting the planet Saturn, in ultra high definition

This one was really quick to conceptualise, and took months to complete.

Mainly because I kept trying to cut corners with render settings that were not high enough, or assuming that I could fake a join between runs with different render settings, and it would not show…

Saturn, still image from the video…

Continue reading “Orbiting the planet Saturn, in ultra high definition”

Exoplanet with rings and Juno based textures.

Like many, I have been stunned by the images coming back from the Juno mission to Jupiter. Take a look here if you’d like to see some of the best.

I particularly liked the polar views, not least because these are the first views. And I decided they would make a great basis for exoplanet textures for a gas giant orbiting another star.

And because ring systems always look cool, I added a complex ring system too, and a couple of knobbly little moons. Everything done in Lightwave 3d this time around.

Here are the results of this brief project.

Continue reading “Exoplanet with rings and Juno based textures.”

Earths of Distant Suns by Michael Carroll

There’s a new book out by Michael Carroll, covering possible earthlike worlds around other stars, and how we might reach them.

And several of my images are in there, in the advanced propulsion sections! I’ve not got very far into it yet, but so far it’s impressive, and the artwork is very nicely printed.

It’s here on amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Earths-Distant-Suns-Communicate-Travel/dp/3319439634

And here on Amazon USA: https://www.amazon.com/Earths-Distant-Suns-Communicate-Travel/dp/3319439634

Continue reading “Earths of Distant Suns by Michael Carroll”

CGI Planet Mercury, done in Lightwave 3D

Here’s an old CGI model of the planet Mercury I did, based on some maps NASA released using information from the MESSENGER probe to the planet.

The model is in Lightwave 3d format, and available fr free to members of the Foundation 3D forums, in the file area.

Continue reading “CGI Planet Mercury, done in Lightwave 3D”

The Lovell Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank, Part 2

The first part covered the background and references.

This part will cover the actual CGI model building.

As is clear from even a casual glance, the main challenge was going to be making sense of all those struts. Doing them indiviually would not be practical so I had to understand the various repeating patterns and symmetrys in them. If you look through the structure at an angle, it can seem very complex:

Lovell radio telescope — Complicated stuff!

But from other angles the patterns are a lot clearer

Continue reading “The Lovell Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank, Part 2”

Lovell Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank, Part 1.

Despite the difficulties of my N-1 models, I consider the most challenging mesh I ever built in terms of level of detail to be the model of the Lovell Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank.

One major advantage compared to most of my projects is that I was able to visit the real thing, and get a large number of reference photos. Plus I had some useful help from the staff, who were kind enough to provide accurate overall dimensions of the major elements.

Continue reading “Lovell Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank, Part 1.”

Space art by Andrei Sokolov

I recently managed to get some small (card sized) prints of Astronomical Art by the great Russian artist Andrei Sokolov. He often worked with Alexi Leonov, and his work is very hard to find in this country.

Continue reading “Space art by Andrei Sokolov”

Rogue planet

One thing I often feel I have difficulty is depicting things out in interstellar space, or other scenarios were it is seriously dark. Not least because with a realistic view, it would be too dark to see anything.

Here’s my latest attempt, showing a rogue planet, cast loose from it’s parent star.

Astronomers seem to be growing towards this having happened early in the hostory of our own solar system, with a 5th gas giant being ejected early in it’s history.

Also note I am using the whole sky environments of our night sky, as mentioned a couple of posts ago.