SCIFI - Planetary Escape (Maldek)

SCIFI - Planetary Escape (Maldek)

Perhaps I've been watching too much Ancient Aliens (hahaha). There is a theory that our asteroid belt was actually a planet long ago. Some suggest beings from that world escaped and came here. Who Knows?!? But it makes a good premise for some science fiction styled 3D renders. All the visuals I created. The saucer mothership was modeled & rendered in Cheetah. I also created a few "planetary elements" in Cheetah for the exploding world. I composited in Photoshop and added a some effects to finish it off. I'm pretty happy with it
 

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Great :icon_thumbup:

The start of a Graphic Novel?

Well . . . not the start . . . but part of a Graphic Novel narrative. I am actually part of a creative team working on a graphic novel in this genre and Maldek is part of that story. I am helping with visual concepts. Sometimes the traditional artists will provide me with a sketch and I create a 3D model that they can then rotate to any angle for visual reference. Other times I concept in 3D to provide ideas for scene locations and other items. We are seriously thinking of expanding the graphic novel into an animated form - and I am currently exploring creating 3D renders (animations) with an illustrated look. Thanks for the feedback.
 
Great model and render:D

I've always wondered why in movies and TV, despite the ability to travel in three dimensional space, spaceships always travel the same way up relative to the camera and each other. They also tend to fly in past the outer planets and through the asteroid belt before reaching Earth. It seems our perception of the solar system and space is still very two-dimensional. Surely the most direct route for many visitors would be from the north or south (relative to earth), rather than through the solar system and a belt full colliding asteroids. Just thinking aloud.
 
I've always wondered why in movies and TV, despite the ability to travel in three dimensional space, spaceships always travel the same way up relative to the camera and each other. They also tend to fly in past the outer planets and through the asteroid belt before reaching Earth. It seems our perception of the solar system and space is still very two-dimensional. Surely the most direct route for many visitors would be from the north or south (relative to earth), rather than through the solar system and a belt full colliding asteroids. Just thinking aloud.

I agree totally. It starts with using naval terminology for everything. (Why do you need "launch tubes" and "catapults" to launch space fighters? And it's even sillier for "landing". Just push them out of the side by hand to launch, and have them match velocity and toss out a rope to land.)

Bear in mind that in Star Wars and most SF movies/TV shows (a) small spacecraft have "wings" and bank like planes, and (b) big spacecraft have "bridges" that poke up like the equivalent structures on a cargo ship. Personally, I'd have some high resolution cameras and telescopes on the outside of my ship and have the "bridge" in an armored ball deep inside the ship. It's not like you can see anything useful with the naked eye in a space battle.

Have you ever watched ST2: The Wrath of Khan? There's the hilarious line from Spock about how Khan is thinking "two dimensionally" (owing to his lack of Star Fleet training) which leads Kirk to suddenly, for the first time ever, move the Enterprise in the third dimension.

Probably the only SF movie that comes close to getting any of this stuff right is The Martian. (Even so, when they vent the air in the ship for some extra thrust, that is ridiculous. And as the author himself points out, wind gales on Mars would be barely perceptible as a light breeze owing to the near-vacuum that passes for Mars's atmosphere.)

Another common misconception — it's REALLY hard to "drop" something into the sun. It's actually harder to slow down something to the point where it will fall into the sun than it is to travel to another star.

The argument for people sticking to the plane of the ecliptic (where all the planets and most of the other junk is) applies if (a) you want to visit other planets or (b) you want to use gravity slingshots (since there's nothing to slingshot around outside the plane of the ecliptic), so it makes perfect sense in hard SF (like 2001) where you're pretty much talking about very much slower-than-light travel, but if you have warp drives or can do hyperspace jumps or whatever it makes absolutely no sense.
 
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I like the picture. Seems just about right for a graphic novel (not to much detail, not to few).

I've always wondered why in movies and TV, despite the ability to travel in three dimensional space, spaceships always travel the same way up relative to the camera and each other.

You're right, of course. The answer is probably it's more easy for the people to watch and grasp what's going on. The same reason they have sound :)

In this case here, though, it's ok for me. They look as if they just started from the same site, and the picture could be taken from the first or so :smile:
 
Have you ever watched ST2: The Wrath of Khan? There's the hilarious line from Spock about how Khan is thinking "two dimensionally" (owing to his lack of Star Fleet training) which leads Kirk to suddenly, for the first time ever, move the Enterprise in the third dimension.

Yes, it's the memory of that scene that prompted me to comment. From what I recall (It must be decades since I saw it), the Enterprise went up, slowed down or stopped, then dropped down behind the other ship. I think both ships remained upright relative to the camera. I must watch it again some time - my memory is a bit fuzzy.
 
Yes, it's the memory of that scene that prompted me to comment. From what I recall (It must be decades since I saw it), the Enterprise went up, slowed down or stopped, then dropped down behind the other ship. I think both ships remained upright relative to the camera. I must watch it again some time - my memory is a bit fuzzy.

That sounds about right :)
 
Awesome dialogue everyone - thanks for the comments. And Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan is an excellent movie. I decided to expand on the narrative I started, as the "legend" goes, these refugees of Maldek came to earth in many large vessels and established a "new home." Some crashed it is thought. Again, interesting narrative that is inspiring to create some interesting scenes. Here is a crash scene composited onto a photograph in the Antarctic region (remember The Thing ;-)) - just playing around. The photograph is not mine and I grabbed it from a Huffington Post blog post that gave no image credit (I will eventually create my own landscape, but this is good for concept). I rendered 4 ships - composited in Photoshop - dropped in a plume of smoke - added some "haze & shading" - done.
 

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Here is a crash scene composited onto a photograph in the Antarctic region
That looks really great and I would love to see an "all cheetah" version.
Definitely the relief object should be capable to provide the land- or icescape, a rather calm sea surface can be done with a turbulence bump, but the smoke may be difficult.
There are smoke materials in the decorated pig thread, possibly something can be derived from there...
 
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