The Art and Graphics of Nick Stevens. Available for hire.I specialise in unbuilt space projects, and the spacecraft of the Soviet Union.
Key software used to make the image
I’ve restarted working on the models I did of the manned Soviet Lunar program, with a view to taking them to the next level.
I’m starting with the rotating gantry, here are the old and new versions of the hub:
Continue reading “N-1 – Restarting work on the Manned Soviet Lunar Program.”
A couple of new items using the Human Outer planet Exploration vehicle, with VASIMR engines.
Graham Gazzard has done some wonderful renders of the mesh!
You can follow him on twitter here:
Continue reading “HOPE VASIMR Guest renders and a short video”
Identifying N-1 variants. I mentioned this briefly in an earlier post, which featured some images I stitched together from video, but here it is in a bit more depth.
You are generally trying to distinguish between 5 different N-1 variants in photographs, the four that flew, and the weight model. This is most easily done via the colours, though there are several other differences.
This post is not about ALL the differences between the variants, just about how to tell which rocket is which.
This is easy to identify, as it is the only one with entirely grey first and second stages. The third stage is half white, with the white part facing upwards on the transporter, which is the side away from the gantry once the rocket has been erected. It was transported to the pad in winter, and there are photos of it with snow on.
Note that there was no green on any of the N-1 variants! This is a widely held misconception, as many museums show it as green, (including the London science museum, and many Russian museums too). Olive green was only used to camouflage missiles, (and green would make lousy camouflage in Baikonur at the best of times). This error has spread to the point where photographs have been tinted to make them look green). And sometimes it was just poor quality film stock.
OK! The modelling is done of HOPE-VASIMR, (at least unless I spot anything that neeeds fixing), so it’s time for some shots of the final version.
As always, click on an image to see a larger version.
The above image is a distant view of the whole thing.
To give you an idea of the scale, it’s very nearly 200 metres from one end to the other.
As you may have noticed, I love the designs from the dawn of the space age, particularly the fifties designs of Wernher von Braun.
This one is the RM-1, which includes the ‘bottle suit’, something halfway between as spacesuit and a spaceship, with a ring of articulated arms, complete with a selection of tools. Seriously Cool!
The ship as a whole though is not as credible as most of the other designs, for a couple of reasons.
The red cone at the nose is meant to be a radiation shield for an unfeasibly tiny atomic reactor in front of it.
Continue reading “Wernher von Braun’s RM-1 spaceship design”
Right, I think the modelling part is pretty much done here on the HOPE VASIMR. I’ve been busy adding nurnies and greebles, and tweaking surfaces, and it’s looking good to me.
As usual, click on the images for a larger version.
For those who missed the earlier instalments, HOPE stands for Human Outer Planet Exploration, and is a serious design for a manned expedition to Callisto, the outermost of the large moons of Jupiter. (Far enough away from Jupiter that the radiation won’t fry the astronauts!)
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.
…you might get it!
This uses Daz Studio assets, though as usual I have exported them to lightwave. For the pile of bones, I used Bullet Physics to drop a skeleton onto the floor, then cleaned up the arrangement.
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:
But from other angles the patterns are a lot clearer
Continue reading “The Lovell Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank, Part 2”
I was absolutely delighted a year or so back when the great David A Hardy suggested a collaboration!
I think the first art of his I came across was probably an album cover for the awesome Space Rock band, Hawkwind. Anyway, you really should check out his web site:
We went with his first suggestion, a combination of the landing craft from the famous “Colliers” articles from the 1950’s, as designed by Wernher von Braun, and modelled by myself, with a landscape that DH would make. Continue reading “A collaboration with David A Hardy”
