I'm in the middle of this one. I've still got to add one or two cloudplanes (or volumetric clouds on spheres) and small ships over the city. There's just one thing I'm not really happy with: if you look at the piers, the shadows on the sea are far too pronounced. I've already reduced the shadows to 20% in the skylab. Any suggestions on that? Josselin

Texture those ships! Also, it looks like those shadows are coming from a different light source than the sun..check any lights in the scene....Awsome pic BTW! Did you make the city by ctreating a terrrain out of a texture?

Excellent looking city down there!

This is what it will look like when it's finished. The terrain was drawn in grayscale in Photoshop. I drew three different tiles and duplicated them about 20 times, so as to get a decent sized city ;-). As for the ships, I had problems applying a decent texture on metaballs. The result wasn't what I wanted, so I went for a clean look (I'll add some weathering in postwork, I think). Josselin

As for the shadows on the water, Instead of lightening the shadows like you said down to 20%. Try and use a combination of soft shadows and shadow intensity. Also you can blur them slightly in the post work. One more thing you could try is increasing the bump on the water texture, that may break up the shadows just enough to make the difference you need. Nice work all together, looking forward to seeing it compleated.

This one a did a while back. I think they key to using metaballs is gradual blending. Amost all of the ship's textures are based on the same one.

This is really great work, but what spoils it for me is the repetative nature of the city. Reminds me of that planet in Star Wars Phantom Menace. The Bryster

I'm almost there. The final render is for tonight and I'll post in the gallery when I finish postwork on it. I've finally decided to create new ships based on lattices, so that I could use textures like I wanted. I'll go back to the others later. The repetitive aspect of the city is what I wanted to achieve, but I've left blank areas on the terrain to add parks in post. Josselin

very cool! looking forward to the final!

I like the repetitive nature of the city, reminds me of how a city looks to me from a plane. The new ships look great, but I'm glad you will do something with the others, they were also teriffic. Looking forward to the finished version. Lin

Thanks for the support. I was wondering: would anyone like to texture the ships in the original picture? I've tried again and I'm not happy at all with the result. Josselin

Not sure if it can be done. Post work is the only way i can think. I'll try some experiments with my racers (they were heavily metaball).

Attached Link: http://http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=298591&Start=1&Artist=Jausse&ByArtist=Yes

Never mind. I'll do what I always do with metaball ships; go for organic texturing. I've posted the final image in the gallery. Thanks for all. Josselin