Cradle

Posted on October 4, 1999

“Cradle” is new today in the “Planetscapes” gallery and the WIP. You’ll have a hard time spotting the planets in this one though, because there are none. If you’re creative, however, you can imagine that there are planets around each of the stars. They’re just too small to see 🙂 This image, uses the same volumetric rendering techniques I was exploring in “Cumulus“. Only 3 spheres this time though. The big stars were added using a little $25 shareware program I bought just for the occasion. It’s called Universe and it’s free to try.

Cumulus

Posted on October 2, 1999

I’ll admit it. I’m a closet software geek and I get a little bit giddy every time Metacreations decides to release a “Point 1” patch for Bryce. I have no idea what bugs this one fixes (or adds) but I do know that it comes with this cool new “volumetric rendering” mode. An object, like a sphere, is “volumetric” if the texture assigned to it goes all the way through in 3D instead of just being mapped to the exterior. It’s a great effect but it takes forever to render.

Luckily I have a pretty fast computer. “Cumulus” is new today in the Night Scenery Gallery and the WIP. I put this one together just to test out the Bryce patch, but I thought it looked kind of interesting in the end. I could see adding a dragon or two, maybe some lightning… In grand Brycean tradition, the image is composed entirely of spheres (10 of them). Quick tip if you’re want to try it at home: whenever possible, try not to place any one volumetric object in front of the another. Overlapping them in front of the camera has an exponential effect on render time