Arethusa

Posted on May 24, 2024

Happy Friday! Creating dark and colorful planetscapes is like comfort food for me and this scene is like a bowl of chicken noodle soup.    “Arethusa” was a celestial nymph from ancient Greek mythology and I’ve taken to naming my planetscapes after them.   

I created the foreground using Gaea (very fun using it to create alien forms), the planets using a mix of Cinema 4D and Lightwave, and the rendered the whole thing using VUE.   

I hope you enjoy it! 

Dark Sky and Moonlight

Posted on May 20, 2024

I thought it would be fun to make a moonlit version of my “Red Sky at Night” remaster.     Usually when I create a night version I like to move things around to show the passage of time but here I left things the same.   Hope you don’t mind but getting just the right wave and cloud configuration took days 😄

Red Sky at Night (2024)

Posted on May 18, 2024

I often get requests to “remaster” certain works from my “classic” collection.     This year I’ve been trying to address some of those requests (while still learning a new 3D software package).   Recently in my Discord a member asked that I revisit “Red Sky at Night” from 1998 and I recalled that many folks have requested the same over the years.    I thought it would be interesting to recreate it using VUE using their built in displaced ocean feature but, sadly, couldn’t get the effect I wanted.   

I then tried a terrain (like I did in the original) and it was nice but still not where I wanted to be.   Lastly I used Blender to create an ocean mesh and that gave me the look you see here.    I’ve also reddened the sky quite a bit more than the original to better fit the title. 

I hope you enjoy it.   Might share those other versions in the Pickle Jar later.   Keep the requests coming!!

Flagella

Posted on May 13, 2024

More learning with Cinema4D’s particle system.   Attempting to use a particle emitter, turbulence modifier and the tracer system to create interesting organic structures.   This piece follows along with some of the principles I learned creating “Empiresis“.      I did end up spending a few extra days rendering different color variations after I found the configuration I liked. I’ll add a few of those to the Pickle Jar in the days ahead.

Saguaro Pass (Moonlight)

Posted on May 5, 2024

As promised here’s a night version of  “Saguaro Pass“.      I’ve also added a night version of the “bird’s eye” view, which I created first.      With the day version I used the same sun angle and lighting for both versions, but here I discovered I had to change things up for the ground version to create something interesting.   I hope you enjoy it!