Out of place astronauts

I have seen some rather good work which centres around astronauts being shown in situations they really don’t belong. It occurred to me that I had some rather good spacesuits, and a selection of settings, so perhaps I could have a go at images in the same style.

Then came a request for me to do something similar as an album cover.

This post shows the results so far…

In every case, a LOT of effort went into getting the lighting right. This led to high render times, but nothing too bad for stills. And it has to be done well to make the combination credible. Continue reading “Out of place astronauts”

Soyuz Capsule Mesh

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.soyuz-ascendingx

Continue reading “Soyuz Capsule Mesh”

Cosmonauts exhibition at the London Science Museum

Various photos…

Here’s a selection of photos from the “Cosmonauts” exhibition at the London Science Museum.

Laika

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This shows the arrangement used for for the ‘space dog’ Laika. Laika (meaning “little woofer”), was a stray found on the streets of Moscow. The scientists later said that what they learned was not worth the life of a dog.

Spacesuits

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On the left is the suit proposed for exploring Mars, and on the right the “Orlan” EVA space suit. Continue reading “Cosmonauts exhibition at the London Science Museum”

Soviet LK Moon lander

The London Science Museum “Cosmonauts” exhibition had some truly amazing original space hardware from the dawn of the space age. For me the clear highlight was the LK Lander, their equivalent of the Apollo LEM.

The lighting was coloured which made getting the colour right a bit tricky!

This was a one man craft, and the cosmonaut (probably Alexei Leonov), would have had to stay in his pace suit the whole time.

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This view is from directly in front, and you can see the window the cosmonaut would use to see where his craft was headed as it came in to land. On the right is the round antenna, (with a star on), used to communicate.

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Here you see the right side of the lander. Note the blue hatch, and the ladder underneath it. Continue reading “Soviet LK Moon lander”

Some photos from when Alexei Leonov visited Moldova

When I visited Chisinau ion Moldova in September, I visited a small cosmonautics museum. They have an impressive collection of photos of cosmanauts visiting Moldova from the early days of the manned space program.

Here are a couple of photos of the first man to walk in space on his trip!

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