Bytescapes

a gallery of computer-generated images

Through the Jump Gate

Comments

This is a reworking of a very old scene that I made, which featured a simple Carrara model of a star gate, made mostly from spline objects and other primitives. I decided to give the scene a makeover, using elements from DZFire's Nurnies Greebles Parts and Pieces sets. Using assorted greebles, I turned the original crude model into something much more detailed and complex.

The background image is a nebula painting by GrahamTG on DeviantArt, which he kindly made available for anyone to use for free.

I'm still trying to get a convincing exhaust for starships. The exhaust in this scene consists of stretched spheres textured with a shader with the Glow channel set to bluish white, and the alpha channel driven by a Fire material. The nature of the Fire material is that it fades vertically, whereas for my exhaust I wanted something horizontal. I resolved this using a cylindrical parametric mapping to map the Fire along the long axis of the sphere.

The glowing interior of the 'gate' is a point light, with a visible light sphere and glow effect.

I also did a second version of the scene, with a bluish nebula background.

Applications

Carrara 8.5 Pro
DAZ 3D

Models