A selection of recent work

Twelve New Works

I’ve not made a proper post here in a long time, and decided to fix that with a selection of my relatively recent work.

However, if you want something more frequently updated, I post most days on Blue Sky and Mastodon. (Gave up on Twitter a long time ago). Also I publish fairly regularly on my Soviet Space Substack, covering Soviet Space History as well as my visualisations, and restored archive material.

The Red Star

Red Star CGI Starship, Illustration style

This design was based on a small illustration from the Soviet era. There was plenty of room for ad lib-ing the details, and I incorporated ideas from a Tsiolkovsky station, Daedalus Nuclear Pulse , and other elements. I’m really pleased with how this came out.

FREA pulse class ship at Proxima Centauri.

FREA Pulse class ship in front of a Red Dwarf.

As you may have noticed if you see me on other Social media, I’ve been doing a LOT of work for the Enzmann Archive AKA FREA, and this is one of my favourites. Continue reading “A selection of recent work”

The Cosmic Exploration Card Decks

My latest commercial project is the Cosmic Exploration Card Decks, which is running as a Kickstarter.

Each card in the deck features a spacecraft, modelled for accuracy and detail. We have had test prints done, and the whole thing is ready to go to print as soon as, (if?), the kickstarter completes successfully.

Continue reading “The Cosmic Exploration Card Decks”

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”

The Saturn 1B model, Follow along with the build.

I gather from Twitter that some people find it interesting to follow my approach and progress when building a new model. So here’s a blog post where I will show how a project comes together, with lots of illustrations.

My starting point is to gather references, particularly high resolution photos, and plans with dimensions. Fortunately this one is covered in the excellent “Rockets of the World” by Peter Alway. It’s not highly detailed, but I find if you can get the overall dimensions of major features correct, then it’s not too tricky to fill in the rest from good photographs.

Continue reading “The Saturn 1B model, Follow along with the build.”

The Frank Tinsley “Lunar Unicycle”

I recently came across the Frank Tinsley illustration of what he called a “Lunar Unicycle”, which might be better described as a monowheel.

Despite the lack of many illustrations, the design seems clear, and I decided to do a 3d version of it in Lightwave. Though I did later find a couple more pictures… Continue reading “The Frank Tinsley “Lunar Unicycle””

Soviet Manned Lunar Craft Designs

Galina Balashova

Before I get started I must give credit. The illustrations here are largely by Galina Balashova. Little known in the west, she was responsible for the interior design of pretty much every Soviet spacecraft. Combining Art and Architectural skills, it was her job to make the spacecraft a productive, pleasant environment.

If you have any interest in this area, the book “Galina Balashova, Architect of the Soviet Space Program” is absolutely essential, and is packed with elegant and informative paintings and drawings.

Continue reading “Soviet Manned Lunar Craft Designs”

The role of Lunokhod in Soviet Union manned lunar program.

It was not realised at the time, but the Soviet “Lunokhod” robotic moon rover was also a key component of the plans to put a cosmonaut onto the Moon.

Here’s how the mission sequence would work:

Identify landing sites.

Lunokhod would provide close up examination of prospective landing sites for a manned mission. This required a “Proton” (UR-500) class launcher.

Continue reading “The role of Lunokhod in Soviet Union manned lunar program.”

Some new Soviet Lunar program renders – N1 L3

After chatting to Matt, co-author of “N1 for the Moon and Mars“, I decided to dig out the meshes I did for that, and come up with some new renders. It was a mad dash to get it all out in time for publication, and I didn’t have time to explore all the options.

N1-3L at the launch tower, against a threatening sky.

I decided I have a bad habit of using good weather for most of my environments, this one is different! Continue reading “Some new Soviet Lunar program renders – N1 L3”

New reference information on the UR700

Quick introduction. I have recently been working on Chelomei’s UR-700, his Universal Rocket System, based on a design unit that eventually became the Proton. It was intended to replace the N-1 as the vehicle to take the Soviet Union to the moon.

Thanks to a comment left on these forums, I was refered to a website which had photos of something I never knew was built – a large scale model of the UR700, for vibration testing! It was made at 1/10th scale.

Before we get started, here’s a render I did, which shows you the overall configuration. I think this will help you understand the layout.

The rubber hoses were used to fill it with water, for when it was suspended, and given the vibration tests. It was also suggested that alcohol would be the correct liquid to use, instead of water. Continue reading “New reference information on the UR700”

UR-700 Launch version finished

So here are some images of the finished launch version.

Let’s start with the exploded view, showing how all the parts fit together:

Continue reading “UR-700 Launch version finished”