The Art and Graphics of Nick Stevens. Available for hire.I specialise in unbuilt space projects, and the spacecraft of the Soviet Union.
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
Apart from the LK Lander, it was also hugely impressive to see an actual Lunokhod. For those who are not familiar, Lunokhods were the first robot probes to explore another world, the Moon.
They were also intended to provide support for the Soviet manned lunar program. A lunokhod would survey the landing area to ensure it was safe, and also act as a beacon top guide the manned lander to the correct location.
A spare lander would be in the immediate area, and there were plans for a Lunokhod version with a footplate, so it could transport the cosmonaut there in the event of an emergency.
And here’s another render of the Mercury capsule, over a NASA photograph of Earth.
As usual, all done in Lightwave 3d
I’ve been working on surfacing the Ariane 1 rocket, and I think it’s nearly there. I found a few problems where the textures were rotated with reference to the geometry,
Some of the rings on the payload fairing are not quite right, but I am finding it hard to work out how to correct them.
Above is an orthographic set. (Perspective free) Continue reading “Ariane 1, texturing continues.”
My new work in progress.
This is the Ariane 1 rocket. I’m using a bought mesh for the geometry. It was converted from 3D studio, and is VERY heavy on the polygon count. But the good news is that the detail is superb, even the internal structure of the stringers is modeled.
Surfaces did not come in very clean, so I’m working through them to get them a bit more realistic. Still a long way to go with that.
A bit off my usual area of blogging, but I thought some might enjoy this shot of some of my Soviet Space Pins.
I found a nice cheap ring box for jewellery on Amazon, works a treat!
Now working on alternate unused designs for the 2001 Discovery, of which there were many. This one is fairly close to the finished version, but had added tension cables (helpful), and large cooling vanes (essential).
The vanes can tip – this would presumably be so they can stay edge on to the Sun, to avoid overheating.
Credible design for the craft like “Discovery” in “2001, A Space Odyssey” was considered very important, but the cooling vanes looked too much like wings, and were therefore dropped.
Continue reading “Latest WIP, more alternate “2001 A Space Odyssey” designs.”
Pioneer 11 was the first probe to reach Jupiter and Saturn. It is not often remembered, I think because of Voyager 1 and 2 followed on relatively quickly, and these probes delivered much superior imagery.
But Pioneer 11 was important, not least because it established if it would be safe to send the voyagers very close to the giant planets – the amount of radiation and debris near them was not clear before the encounters.
This November I was proud to be featured in an exhibition arranged by the British Interplanetary Society, visions of space:
https://www.bis-space.com/2015/08/25/15130/visions-of-space
Here are some picture from the show:
I keep meaning to find the time to learn Modo properly. It’s clearly a powerful and logically laid out piece of software, but I keep falling back on Lightwave which I know so much better.
Here’s a relatively rare Modo item from me, a displacement mapped Moon, (that’s Earth’s Moon, just to be clear!)
