From the B5 episode “Lines Of Communication”:

After a fleet of White Stars led by Delenn is ambushed by the Drakh, they narrowly escape with their lives. Not five seconds after reaching the safety of Hyperspace, Delenn, thirsting for vengeance, turns right around and attacks, vowing to make the Drakh pay the price.

I made this picture primarily because I wanted to blow stuff up, and use the White Star pulse cannon setup I had worked out. I think I was fairly successful on both counts.

And mercy is exactly what you’re getting.

The Mercy-class hospital ship, to be precise. First (and, as far I as I know, only) seen on this webpage, the design struck a cord with me, and I modified Matthew Tarling’s Omega-class destroyer into something rather similar to it (I took a few liberties with the design, mostly getting rid of the double-sized rotating section, because I think it looks silly. I mean, what the hell, it’s non-canon anyway). Also, to go with it, I retextured Mark Kane’s atmospheric shuttle into a medevac version. I might do the same thing to the standard shuttle, as well.

Anyway, on to the pic itself.

After a surprise attack on the Zagros VII ranger base by the Drakh, the Mercy-class hospital ship E.A.S. Nightingale is called in to help the wounded. On the off chance that any Drakh might be hanging around that might think an unarmed hospital ship is easy pickings, a trio of White Stars hooked up with the Nightingale as an escort.

EDIT: I updated the model of the Nightingale, and replaced the rendering with one containing the new version. Also, I made a sequel picture of the the E.A.S. Nightingale leaving Zagros.

Enjoy!

That’s right, folks. I’m now tapping the stream of pictures going directly from layout to my fancy-shmancy cycling desktop (randomly changing to a different rendering by yours truly every thirty minutes) and diverting them to the internet, for all to see. And this time, I’m putting credits on the image rather than making a big list at the end of the post, just because. So there.

First off is a picture of the Alexander being ambushed by the Clarkstown at the beginning of “Severed Dreams”. Notice the Orion nebula in the background. Since the Alexander was supposed to have just left Orion 7, well, why the hell not?

This picure, consisting of a bunch of Centauri ships flying over the royal palace in that Season 5 episode, is named for a blooper shot. Londo looks up at the ships and says that he “Doesn’t like the look of this at all.” G’Kar dismisses it as being because of “That damned ‘El Ni–o'”.

Two Omegas Firing. Mainly done to see if the lensflare pulse blast I set up would look good in a still.

Here we have a scene from “No Surrender, No Retreat.” With all necessary apologies to Kier Darby, naturally.

White Stars in Hyperspace. I think it was a lighting test, at first.

A picture of Susan and Marcus’s search for First Ones in Season 4. Mostly because I really, really like that First Ones ship with the spinning unattached bits.

A shot of an Omega launching a shuttle. Textbook example of serendipity. I loaded the Omega in to my B5 space setup scene, and when I punched out my first test render, I had forgotten to alter the lighting, and found that having most of the light come from the planet and having the sun off somewhere else actually looked pretty good. It may be dark on some monitors, though.

Why did I do this? Because it was there. What was there, you ask? 561 Vorlon cruisers, about three dozen Vorlon fighters, and one Vorlon Planet-killer. While the swarm effect is very good, the rendering time of 31 hours, 9 minutes, and 1 second is enough to sate my huge-ass fleet appetite. For now, at least.

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.”

The year— 2267
Pilots Jake and Elwood Blues, flying a patrol with Captain Ivanova near New Chicago in the Illinois system have detected an anomaly on they route. They go in to investigate and discover a group of Black Omega Star Furies. All three pilots have an unhappy previous relationship with Psi-Cops, with Jake and Elwood referring to them as Nazis.

After their scanners confirm the sight before them, a quick muttered conversation takes place in Jake and Elwood’s Thunderbolt, and both their ship and Ivanova’s fire their engines and accelerate toward the Black Omegas….

Recently I found a copy of LightWave 6.5 on eBay for cheap. Thanks to a small vacation, I first installed LightWave late friday night. I played around with it for a bit, punching out the occasional test render, until I believed I had reached the “Mediocrely competant” stage of still rendering experiance.

I’ve decided that, until I get the hang of Lightwave, I’m going to try to recreate some of my older renders, made with Ray Dream Studio 5.5. I can’t seem to find my original description of this first picture, but it had something to do with a pair of White Stars being ambushed by the Shadows, at which point one opened a Jump Point while the other attacked the shadows to buy time so they can both escape.

Anyway, here’s the original Ray Dream render.

Credits: White Star, Jumppoint, and nebula: Kier Darby, Shadow ship: Nadab Göksu.

And here is the Lightwave version.

I’m not quite happy with the LightWave picture, so in case someone else shares my feelings, I’ll let it be known that the first picture was done with at least eight months experience in Ray Dream, while the new one is the benefit of two days of experience with LightWave. And thanks to the magic of LightWave scenes (beautiful, tiny LightWave scenes, that don’t store all of the data internally), I can revisit it after I get a bit more proficient.

Addendum- August 28, 2002

Here’s another one that, while based on the same theme, with the same objects and all that, turned out a lot differently. Here’s the original description.
On it’s trial run, Blue Star 1, escorted by two White Stars, tests it’s new micro jump engine. The small point opens and remains stable during the transports passage, allowing the Blue Star and the Micro Vortex Generator to come into mass production.

White Star, Nebula, and Jumppoint by Kier Darby.
Blue Star by James Reading.

Here are the two pictures.

January 21, 2001, rendered w/Ray Dream Studio

August 27, 2002, rendered w/Lightwave