Topic - Lunar Exploration

I have been doing astronomical art with traditional media (acrylic paintings) for some time, but moved fully to digital a few years back. One of the motivations for the move to digital was to be able to do the odd 'hardware' piece if I felt like it, and pieces like this are just what I was wanting to be able to have the capability for. I'm beginning to feel more proficient in Modo finally and am loving it more and more the more I learn.

Dan
Luv the rocks!

Sean
Beautifully done environment, nice job.
Excellent. Really well done, Dan.

MODO, and the modo community ROCKS!
Visit www.mikejamesmedia.com

just a distant shot of earth in the black sky background would pop even more.

Good job.

Message edited by Paul B. on 9/28/2012 - 7:24 PM

I don't see an image here.
This is fantastic Dan!

Love how you have worked on getting the Lunar Grey perfect rather than just grey!

Well Done!
Fantastic! Makes you wonder how they faked the original moon landing without Modo. lol
great color on the landscape and great shadows.

-G
I beg to you Dan...please,tell me how did you make so fantastic lunar stones??!!
:-D!!!
I agree, the environment is very good, very detailed. It has that grainy real life look.
Well done.

Paddy
I'm only saying this because its probably the best lunar 3D surfacing I've seen: this background is a photo right?

If not much, much congrats to you and a big please for a tutorial or explanation would be very much appreciated. Even screen grabs of your setting and wires would do.

Again, job extremely well done.
Okay, so now I feel bad - I went away for a couple days and now there are all these great comments about the background lunar landscape. That's the Photoshop part! Yes, CG_Addict - that's an image from an Apollo mission but with some significant Photoshopping to clean it up and patch in some additional detail. I matched the lighting environment from that background image in my Modo scenes that set up the astronauts and rover and lander (with associated shadow catchers). For the astronaut in the shadow of the rock I had to create a (hidden) mesh object to shadow the lower half of his body that the image shows should be in shadow. It was all about 'reading' the image and trying to fit the astronauts etc. into the scene in a semi-believable way and have all the lighting match as best I could.

So, sorry to say, I'm not that skilled yet in driving Modo to make a good lunar landscape! But I hope the doesn't tarnish the rest of the image :-)

Dan
Don't feel bad Dan, that fooled me... that's what you want, you intergrated your CG elements into the background perfectly with your composition and lighting (I couldn't tell what was what).
The indirect lighting on the legs of the astronaut in shadow behind the rock for example!

That's the kind of skills everyone is aiming for... Keep it up!
:)

Message edited by PlastiCine on 10/3/2012 - 7:28 AM

nice rendering,
clothes need a bit more crumpling
Quote from ZeroPointPolygon :
nice rendering,
clothes need a bit more crumpling


Yes, and I could probably spend some time to 'dirty up' the lower legs a bit - that lunar dust gets everywhere! Also, these suit models could stand another level of detail to hold up better in even closer-in views - they're pretty rough at the moment...

Dan
Awesome! It looks so alive when one guy (or girl) is extracting stone with a hammer and so on.

Great work!
Agree with crumpling and dirt comments but very well done. Also like the lighting.
Nice, but when you look closely I would say there`s a difference between the shadow deirections of the astronaut and the stones.
Quote from Dan Durda :

So, sorry to say, I'm not that skilled yet in driving Modo to make a good lunar landscape! But I hope the doesn't tarnish the rest of the image :-)

Dan



Not at all, Dan. Great work! :)

So, maybe next is trying to do an entire lunar landscape from scratch?? There's a challenge!


Chuck
Quote from rouven :
Nice, but when you look closely I would say there`s a difference between the shadow deirections of the astronaut and the stones.


Perhaps. I tried to be pretty careful in matching the angles, but may have missed something. The one most apparent 'mismatch' is the shadow from the rock just in front of the right-hand astronaut (the one with the red stripes) - you have to be careful of that one, though, because that rock is on the slope a shallow crater wall so the shadow slopes away to a bit different angle than on the surrounding flat ground.

Dan
Quote from Chuck Clayton :


Not at all, Dan. Great work! :)

So, maybe next is trying to do an entire lunar landscape from scratch?? There's a challenge!


Chuck


Thanks! Indeed - the key there is in getting a good bump and/or displacement map for a suitably convincing lunar regolith. I'm going to be trying an experiment in a few days with capturing just such a bump map from stereoscopic imaging of some regolith simulant and some scattered rocks. I'll post a note here if it works out well...

Dan
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