Well, I was working on a default scene setup for Babylon 5 and the surrounding area, and using a previous scene a setup, I got it all up, when I noticed the camera was animating from an old keyframe. I thought it looked pretty cool, and next thing I know, I’m wondering how I’ll render this 800 frame flyaround of the station.

Well, the same way I render any long animation: In lotsa tiny chunks. In between, I let the camera run around and rendered any interesting looking frames at full size for desktop use. And so, here we are!

This is the first frame of the animation, with Babylon 5, Epsilon 3, and the nebula, all in good lighting. When I set it up, I was thinking of a picture in the B5 Security Manual, just above all the statistics for the station.

This is the last frame of the animation, with Babylon 5 silhouetted against the local nebula.

This frame is pretty close to the first one, and the main difference is that it’s more tightly focused on the rotating section of the station.

This is a picture that isn’t from the animation, but I made it while I was using a camera to position the Epsilon Jumpgate in relation to B5. I thought the view of the distant station through the struts of the Jumpgate was pretty neat, so I punched out a render.

Last is my personal favorite. It’s a shot of B5 from the rear. With no planet in the background, and the light picking up the shine from B5’s hull, this one just seems to scream at me “…all alone in the night.”