"Quiet Night at the Office"

[David cgc]

Enterprise: Dennis Bailey
Drydock: Prologic9
Travel Pod: Matthew Parker and Henry Gibbens
Tug and Workbee: Alain Rivard
Backdrop: NASA
HD Version

I got another bite of the render bug the other day. I'm going to need that to start coming a bit more consistently again.

I originally visualized this angle with a Miranda-class ship, but I don't have a modern Miranda that'll hold up to this kind of proximity and detail. While I was assembling the scene, I found I'd already had one from soon after I did the night version of "Comparing Notes," but I hadn't been able to settle on a good angle. So I loaded in the old scene, aligned it to fit the picture in my head, added a bunch more spotlights, and rendered it.

I think this words much better as a night shot than the second version of "Comparing Notes" did. My initial inspiration for both shots, lighting and mood-wise was this photo of a cruise ship docked at night.

The background is from NASA's library of astronaut photos of Earth. It's actually a shot of the terminator. I desaturated it and then recolored it dark blue to represent a barely-visible nightside. Also, since I figured a night shot would require a longer exposure, I cranked up the motion blur well past 100%, so the various shuttlecraft that are buzzing around are barely-defined blurs.

[Kaiser]

Very nice Render art

[Ziz]

Now why can't real movie CG look like THAT! It's like they're afraid of the "Soften" filter to blend everything together.

[David cgc]

Ziz wrote:

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Now why can't real movie CG look like THAT! It's like they're afraid of the "Soften" filter to blend everything together.

Another site I posted it to generally agreed that I was a bit heavy on the grain, but I'm with you that it helps set the image together and take the CG edge off.

[Warped9]

Sweet!

And I agree about the grain.