[Howard E. Day II]

Here's a picture I'm working on for the IRTC (www.irtc.org). The contest ends on april 30th, so I'm pretty close to being finished.
This was created on a P133 w/32MB RAM. It's taken me about 2 months, so far.

Comments welcome, and enjoy!

[ April 27, 2001: Message edited by: Howard E. Day II ]

[balistic]

The birds are a nice touch. Have you considered trying some shadowing skylight? The fill light you're using now doesn't cause any shading in crevices, resulting in kind of a flat look. Secondary shadows within your primary ones could go a long way towards selling the realism of this piece . . . here is an example of the kind of sky shadowing I'm talking about. You can achieve it with four or five really wide area lights, distributed dome-wise above your scene.

This is a nice image . . . if you work on the fill lighting a little more, I'd say you're a shoe-in to take the contest.

You may want to lose the sharpen filter also, or use a better JPeG compressor.

[ April 27, 2001: Message edited by: balistic ]

[Dthind]

I Really Like the Concept, I Mean REALLY LIKE !!!

[Staff Sarge]

32MB of RAM you say? P133? Two months? Jesus christ!

Well, I must say you have done a quite amazing picture alright. A couple of pointers though;

If you look at the horizon, it should be just a bit curved if looked at this height and FOV.

Next thing is that the clouds are floating here and there rather randomly. I'd create a plane above the surface and use that as a guideline for placing the clouds. Achieving a perfect result could be quite tricky with an image so wide as this though.

I'm just pointing out things here, it's all up to you (I doubt there's no time to big changes anymore). I still emphasize that the clouds and the water looks very, very good how you have done them now.

About the other stuff, I must admit that especially the fort looks quite awesome.

But anyway, good luck on the contest!

[ April 27, 2001: Message edited by: Staff Sarge ]

[stneil777]

holy cow i think you deserve to win. Man teh detial on this. This is one of my favorite peaces i seen on here. How big is the origonal?
my favorite part is the birds man.

[Guy]

wow.. i really love the concept. the pic is very nice. personaly i think the sunlight could be a bit brighter, but that just might be me. i do like the birds as well. it really ads to the scene. cant really think of any other crits. post the final version when your done

[Dan Webb]

This is pretty spectacular...though, unfortunatly the Jpeg compression is REALLY hurting the detail. Needless to say, i can't wait to see the final...

[Dr.Squirley]

WOW

[Howard E. Day II]

Thanks guys! I'm re-rendering it now, with the sun-light around 150% brighter and the clouds with a better sense of depth. The station also had some nice shadowed areas now, and the lighting on the steam clouds has been tuned down. I don't know about the "curved" horizon, but it would certainly look neat. As to *how* I'd do it...no clue.
Again, thanks for the comments, and the new render will be done shortly!

[Dr.Squirley]

I dont think you need a curved horizon becuse depending on how big the planet is you may not be able to see the curve, i mean imagine standing on jupiter if i wasnt a gass planet....

[Staff Sarge]

Ok, one thing, if you were near a huge planet's surface (like Jupiter) without any gravity manipulating device or similar equipment protecting you, you'd be in trouble dealing with the basic functions like breathing, moving or doing anything else besides being a flat X on the ground.

And the other thing, the horizon is a straight line if, and only if the viewing point is located on the surface level (height level= 0). But if the [height level/sphere radius] ratio is very small, indeed, you can't see the curvature just by looking at it.

Anyway don't get me wrong, the picture looks amazing even without this small detail.

[ April 28, 2001: Message edited by: Staff Sarge ]

[Guy]

i dont see any curve on the horizon, but it could be the 'camera lens' youre using. thats if you can change that in your program