As we approach Mars…
Many things are actually approaching Mars. First of all, we have the real-life landing of Curiosity on 6 August.
Secondly, I’ve sold my Pandas on Mars story Geospermia to Analog. This is in addition to the other story I sold them but that has not yet come out.
Also, if you want to see my images of the day and many other digital artworks, the best place to go is my DeviantArt profile.
The image above is very much a WIP. I fully realise that DAZ Studio is not the ideal software for making planets, but I can’t use Terragen because it keeps crashing, and I don’t (yet) grok Bryce at that level. So I used the ball that is a simple sphere with a NASA-snarfed map of Mars wrapped around it (I’ve ised this image before on this blog), and created a second, slightly bigger, transparent sphere. If you play with the settings, but notably the velvet and fresnel settings, you can create a passable illusion of atmosphere.
I like the image, but from a scientific point of view, I can’t help but point out that Mars’s atmosphere is too thin to be seen (and certainly much thinner than that). I also like the ship.
By: Tsana Dolichva (@Tsana_D) on July 8, 2012
at 8:39 am
Yeah, I know, but I guess it was more an exercise in how to cheat at making a sphere look like an atmosphere. In terms of available planets I had handy, I had a choice of Mars and Jupiter for my UV maps. I should make up another map, but that would require a lot of work that I’m not as yet quite sure how to do.
By: pattyjansen on July 8, 2012
at 8:44 am