The Art and Graphics of Nick Stevens. Available for hire.I specialise in unbuilt space projects, and the spacecraft of the Soviet Union.
Lightwave 3d graphics software
I always enjoy this stage of a project, when it developes really fast, and every render looks better than the last!
This is the Soviet / Russian ZENIT rocket. It’s part of the energia family, and developed from the boosters used to lift that monster into the sky.
I was very interested when fellow IAAA member Ali Ries offered me the chance to use some of her glorious nebula backgrounds. I’m not very good at using strong colour, and this seemed like an excellent chance to get some practice in.
(You can see her work at Deviant Art).
I found a nice starship in the file libraries at Foundation 3D, and set about it.
I used a yellow distant light for the key light, matching the colour of the bright star. In exactly the same position I had a red dome light – dome lights are extended sources, (often a whole hemisphere), my idea was that the red light would produce a subtle warm edge to the shadow borders.
I experimented with a blue fill light, for added colour, but without a blue light source onscreen, it did not look right.
After experimenting with a warmer tone for the side light, I decided to go for some very small limited range point lights, acting like running lights on the ship. I struggled to choose between blue and red, but in the end I decided to do both!
Here are the results:
In case you are wondering, I got the title from a misremembered Hawkwind lyric – I liked the idea of a starship once again receiving the light of a Sun after an incredibly long journey.
As usual, all my bits were done in Lightwave 3d.
The Energia rocket was part of a family, apart from Buran and Polyus, no other versions flew. Energia-M was a cut down version, which got as far as a weight model – the colours and shape of my mesh are based on this.
But the original plan was to include a MUCH heavier rocket, the VULKAN.
This would have had eight of the boosters, and a second core stage that was basically an Energia-M.
I am working on this at the moment, though information is limited. The parachute packs on the boosters came after the Vulkan was cut down to become Energia, but I have done a version which includes these packs on the boosters. Seems VERY likely to me as the engines were designed to be reusable.
The boosters later underwent separate development, and evolved into the highly successful “Zenit”.
My good friend Graham Gazzard has done some renders of my Daedalus mesh, and the results are really impressive, as I think you can see!
Some day I hope to get the hang of the ‘firework smoke in space’ look.
Nick
Two new images showing the BIS Daedalus interstellar design. These will be used in a book by Michael Carroll, to be published later this year.
One image shows the immense size of the unmanned craft, with the two stages separated, and a Saturn V rocket beside it for comparison. This is in the header.
The second shows the whole thing assembled, below, against a backdrop of stars. Click for a larger view.
This was inspired by the announcement from Prof Mike Brown that he was on the trail of a new ice giant planet, way, way beyond Pluto.
This was revealled by some unusual allignments on the orbits of several Kuiper Belt objects.
For the art, the challenge was to show something clearly, while giving an impression of almost total darkness. Here’s what I came up with:
The rich star background is there to imply a very long exposure.
I gave the planet a ring. While the material that far out is sparse, the planets gravity would be completely dominant, while the influence of the Sun would be tiny. For the same reason, I would expect it to have many small moon’s, (not shown).
Nick
A finished piece, with fairly heavy use of photoshop, to combine the different elements. Shadow for the figure was scribbled in manually.
Landscape and sky were rendered separately, everything in Lightwave 3d as usual. I’m not used to working sith such a restricted colour pallette, but I am very pleased with the results!
The planet object is available for full users of Foundation 3d, in Lightwave format.
Here’s a design for a seriously large fusion rocket.
I started with information for on the always excellent Project Rho site, by Winchell Chung. This refers to an earlier NASA paper.
No updates for a while, but there are some new one to go in!
I recently bought a Russian Soyuz capsule mesh on TurboSquid. The textures didn’t really come in at all, (not unusual in my experience), but it was fairly straightforward to apply new ones, as surfaces were sensibly named. I was also really pleased to see that the orange seams were done with geometry!
Here are a couple of new renders, where I composited the mesh over Earth, using NASA photos taken from the ISS.
As usual, all of this is done in Lightwave 3D.
After some work on the base, (thanks to better references), cutting details into the lower hull, and adding a reflection gradient on the paint, I think this one may be done… The Mercury Redstone definitely fills a gap in my historic rockets line up.
It feels like I am on a bit of a roll with the rockets recently!
Now I just need to make some final renders to wrap things up.
Redstone Rocket
