Bytescapes

a gallery of computer-generated images

The Uranians

Comments

Why is it called 'The Uranians'? I have no idea. Maybe I was thinking of The Ukrainians, who used to do covers of Smiths' songs in Ukrainian (improving them no end, by the way). Maybe I just can't tell one gas giant (that's a big stripey planet like a chilled hydrogen and methane milkshake) from another, and forgot that Uranus is supposed to be greenish-blue rather than pink and orange. Whatever. It sounds good.

The scene began, as most scenes do, as something totally other, based around a Space Shuttle model I stole from somewhere else. In order to be able to call the scene my own I decided to provide a substitute space ship and produced these bizarre objects using Extreme 3D. The reason they look so weird is because I am still completely unable to use Extreme 3D properly, and my attempts at cross-sectioning produced something very different from what I intended. Still, with a nice alien texture (made by merging the principal textures from 'Tyrell Building' and 'Urban Dwelling Map' and adding a bit of specularity) they didn't come out too badly.

No special techniques here, beyond the use of some lights to bring out the ships in the foreground, and a little noodling with the Sky & Fog settings so that the Additive texture on the gas giant in the background works properly.

Applications

Extreme 3D 2.0
Macromedia
KPT Bryce 2.1
Metatools