The Art and Graphics of Nick Stevens. Available for hire.I specialise in unbuilt space projects, and the spacecraft of the Soviet Union.
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”
Thought I’d gather together a few of my more recent images, none of which really justifies it’s own blog post…
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.”
I’m continuing to spend most of my graphics time in Vue recently, and I think I am starting to feel comfortable with it. I’m still getting occasional frustrations, but I’m feeling a lot more in control.
One lightbulb moment was when I realised I did NOT have to use the included billboard planet options for planets! But could use full 3d objects which then pick up the light from the Sun, and are properly affected by the haze and fog. A good example is the ringed planet in the banner image for this post, at the top. (Note the tiny astronaut at the top of the cliffs!)
And here’s another:
Continue reading “More explorations in Vue – Using Haze and Fog, 3d planets”
I am extremely proud that this year, one of my renders made the cover of the Sky and Telescope Solar System Calendar! That’s the one for 2017
http://www.shopatsky.com/sky-and-telescope-solar-system-calendar-2017
Continue reading “Saturn – And the Sky and Telescope Calendar 2017!”
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.
A couple of new renders of my old Saturn mesh.
I think I may want to revisit the planet map, and see if I can come up with something of my own – this is by Bjorn Jonsson. The ring maps are based on occultation data from Voyager.
