Hey, I made it a whole month! How about that.
After the Babylon 4 picture yesterday, I felt like continuing the theme. This one is actually based on a specific shot from Babylon 5’s season 3 finale, “Z’ha’dum.”
Category Archives: 5K Images
100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 30
As I was working on my Star Trek 50th Anniversary picture last night, I wanted a quicker set-up for today’s render. Luckily, The Audio Guide to Babylon 5 dropped their episode on War Without End last night, giving me a fine bit of inspiration.
I’ve been avoiding images of Babylon 4 (and 5) since those models are older, and it’s easier to make more flattering images with more up-to-date models. Only one of the models in this image even has a self-lighting rig. Still, it gives me a foundation I might revisit later in the future.
I also tried my hand at the Shadow’s “phasing” effect, similar to the classic Star Trek cloaking device. I’m fairly sure the original show did the effect in 3D, but I haven’t had a lot of success with it when I’ve tried. More experimentation will be required.
100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 28
Another basic test shot. This one has the benefit of not being a conversion, though I did adjust some of the lights and textures. The Enterprise-D is a hard ship to make look good. In my opinion, it’s at its best in shots that emphasize its size (same with the Excelsior). That giant saucer is really hard to work around.
100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 27
This was another glorified test-shot. Converting models built in other programs into the one I use is something I haven’t had to do much since I started using Lightwave, so it was interesting to flex that muscle again. I’m note sure what to do about all the rendering errors on the saucer. I think they might be because Lightwave’s FBX importer, so I may try to redo it in another format as a base. The modeler, Alexander “Nightfever” Klemm, is very conscientious about making his models available in universal formats, which I appreciate. Still, its current condition is serviceable for my 50th anniversary idea, so I’ll move on to working on the other ships I need to have ready to go.
Aside from the glitches, “Generic Enterprise-E Render” turned out fairly well. It does appear that I need a wider library of high-resolution fictional planets, though. Something to keep in mind if I’m bored in the future. I also applied the out-of-focus lens-dirt technique I developed a few days ago, partially hoping I could use it to cover up some of the rendering problems, though when that didn’t work out, I dialed it down it was much more subtle. I also tried out the idea I suggested in that prior post, having several layers of dirt responding to different amounts of blur, though wouldn’t really be visible in a still.
100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 26
It occurred to me yesterday that we’re now about a week away from Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, so I should probably do something Star Trekky and special for my September 8th picture. I’ve got an idea, but I’ll need a fairly large amount Star Trek ship models that I haven’t used before (or, in a while). I think they’re all available in the hobbyist 3D community, though I might need to put some elbow-grease into getting them to work with Lightwave. So, expect a bit of a Star Trek focus of the next few days, as I convert, test, and generally get to know some of these models.
100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 25
I was reminded by a recent XKCD strip that I hadn’t done any 2001: A Space Odyssey images, yet.1My logic? It occurred to me that HAL 9000 doesn’t count because, technically, Jupiter was hurled into him. My first instinct was to do an image of the derelict Discovery above Io, but my old Jupiter-and-moons setup scene was giving me some peculiar rendering errors.
| ↑1 | My logic? It occurred to me that HAL 9000 doesn’t count because, technically, Jupiter was hurled into him. |
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100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 24
“If something living in hyperspace bothers you…good, it should.”
One of the things I want to do with my Babylon 5 project is hide the Shadow ships for as long as possible. I’m not sure when your first good look at one should be, but I think the shape and size of them should be less clear than it was in the first part of the show. They were referred to as “shadows” for a reason, after all.
This was an experiment in this philosophy. I nestled the Shadow ship up against one of the dark gaps in the hyperspace environment, and used a depth map to submerge it within the clouds. It makes it harder to tell where the ship ends and hyperspace begins, which was my goal.
And little Warren Keffer’s Starfury cruises by, unaware of what’s lurking out of sight…
100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 23
There is an art, or rather a knack, to lighting ships in the style of the original Star Trek. I don’t think I’ve developed it yet. I’ve had some success with extraordinary lighting situations, but for a straight-up space shot, I can’t seem to keep things from looking flat. In this, I tried to compensate by going more high-contrast, but that tends to draw attention to the seams between the intersections of the hull and saucer.
100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 22
I generally like to tell a little story with my images. One of the things I’ve found myself doing (and will probably have to lean in to) during this project is doing more quotidian images. That’s probably not the worst thing; on the TV shows and movies that first made me want to get into this field, many of the shots were just establishing shots. Nothing but the camera, one subject, and some lights, communicating nothing beyond the fact that there’s a thing here, and in a moment, we’ll be seeing the people inside it.
100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 21
The models from Battlestar Galactica Online render surprisingly well. Aside from the foreground Basestar, you can hardly tell the ships are video-game quality. Maybe I’ll go on another expedition to pull more models out from the game’s files. That’s pretty much all there is to this image. I was applying the texture maps to the model, saw how nicely the light played along it and how well the little window-things stood out, and decided to instance out a bunch more Basestars and add some fill light. It definitely helps that, in the show, the Cylons never seemed to care much for the orientation of their ships. There are a few places were they overlap in the frame, but I checked, there weren’t any intersections. The random seed just doesn’t have a good eye for composition.