One of the ideas I’ve jotted down for this project is “Crazy, Star Trek Beyond wide-angle, upside-downy stuff,” which I have a feeling is a well I may visit more than once. Yesterday, I ended up with a bit less time to work than I hoped, since I decided to pull some reference material off of a blu-ray for a possible future modeling project and that took up a chunk of my 3D-time. I went with something quick-and-dirty, but it ended up looking pretty good. Star Trek Beyond had a fun shot of the Enterprise launching from a space station where the camera was locked at the base of the ship’s neck, and we see the lights of dock blur into a Quanstquatti-esque kaleidoscope as the ship accelerates past them.

I took the scene file for “Quiet Night at the Office,” which has become my go-to base for anything involving a Star Trek ship in drydock, and modified it for this image. I replaced the ship model with a powered-up version with all the lights on, changed the moon to the sun (in other words, I brightened it up and changed the color from a little blue to a little yellow), and moved the camera and ship appropriately. I learned my lesson from last night, and paid close attention to my the time-estimates on my test renders and how they’d multiply at larger sizes, so I was able to get a decent-looking image in precisely the amount of time I had before I had to leave for the airport. I didn’t even put on any grain in post-processing, just added bloom and adjusted the curves for a bit more contrast.