Fans and Friends do the coolest things...

[seawasp]

Keith Morrison, a reader, geologist, and hobbyist with modeling software, asked permission (as if it was needed! But it was very polite) to use the Nike as a practice model for him to get used to some new software. I naturally gave permission.

I didn't expect either the speed or quality of the results, I must confess; when I think of "practice" work I, well, think of something like what I produced from Visio; a serviceable drawing, but nothing to write home about.

Keith's work is... well, gorgeous, as you can see in my Boundary images subfolder in my gallery. Multiple angles of Nike, plus two showing the huge ship in orbit (and departing from orbit, firing main engines) around Earth and one for arrival at Mars.

He's now working on the Odin and the Nebula Storm, two vessels that play a critical role in the sequel to Boundary, Threshold.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Nice pics!

Would you happen to know what software he's using?

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Modeled in Rhino, rendered in Vue 6. Despite my pathological need for people telling me how wonderful I am, I have to admit it really is a basic model just to get my hands back used to modeling (it's been over a year, nearly two, since I really did it), and I'm still getting used to Vue's render engine so the settings there are pretty basic as well.

I'm continuing to tweak the model. One day if I'm inspired I might do some interiors. I have Poser so it will probably be occupied by mostly-naked warrior-women with swords...no, wait, women *pirates* with swords! Fighting ninjas! And at least one monkey. Coolest space image *ever*.

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

I just finished Boundary, and I just wanted to say I enjoyed it a great deal.

The Baen Free Library and Webscriptions make my subway commute much more bearable. I presently have 55 books in my trust Palm TX, so I'm never without something to read. =)

Wait, don't you mean...

[seawasp]

... Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls? (SPANC)

And Daleks. You'll need Daleks.

Why, thank you!

[seawasp]

I enjoyed writing it, and I think Threshold's going to be at least as much fun.

Re: Why, thank you!

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

Any idea on about when it will be available?

Re: Wait, don't you mean...

[kengr]

Y'know, once we get decent semi-autonomous robots, I fully expect top see some of them designed (on purpose) to look like Star Wars droids, Daleks, etc.

Re: Why, thank you!

[kengr]

Oh, speaking of the free library and the like, I was trying to point somebody at a Schmitz story the other day. Only to discover that "Trigger & Friends" isn't in the Free Library or on Webscriptions (or if it is, it doesn't come up when you do an author search on Schmitz).

Then somebody else on the mailing list pointed out that it's on one of the free CDs.

Since you are working with Eric some, you might mention this anomaly to him. Sort of silly.

[argonel.livejournal.com]

The textured rendering still look pretty good. I'm not as excited by the untextured models, but you definately know your way around a modeling package.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Actually, they're all textured exactly the same. All the images were rendered in a few minutes of each other--well, except the Mars one, which I did the next day--without touching the texture or even the model. I rotated the camera, sun and other props around it. What you're seeing is the result of glare off the surface material, different angles of incidence, and tweaking the sunlight, darkening it from pure white to gray. There's also a subtle (and quite fake, for space) ambient light.

For some real life examples showing the same thing (bright light washing out detail), see
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-100/lores/s100e5239.jpg
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-104/lores/iss002-422-025.jpg

Notice how where the Canadarm is in direct sunlight everything is washed out compared to when it's illuminated by reflected light off the station or the Earth, allowing much more detail to be visible.

People have been trained in seeing 3D and model spacecraft not to see the light bloom for natural overexposure because most models aren't white or pure metallic and the lights are tweaked for the beauty shots. When they see a (mostly) realistic version of the light effects, it looks "fake".

This just all goes to show, of course, that when doing 3D the modeling is often the easy part.