Q:  Gotta go find where you used that boom crane!

A:  The boom crane was a model that I built for one of the Renderosity online magazine articles.  I was doing a comparison for different lighting schemes.  It's an old model.

Q:  BTW how DID you get the crane hose and its supports so spot on (Hexagon??)

A:  I have Hexagon but alas, I've never used it (not even once).  I really need to learn it though as I'm quite sure it can do a whole bunch of great stuff that I could use (and I paid for it!).  Bottom line is that I did the whole thing in C.

Q:  Is that a propane heater on the floor next to the rocket?

A:  Actually, I was trying to make a rocket engine for the rocket in the stand.  My original plan for this scene was to be a rocket workshop but after it served my lighting experiments for the article, I just didn't take it a whole lot farther.  I did use that dorky rocket engine model for other stupid stuff since it looks like a cool machine sort of.

Q:  One question tho...headlights? More like skylights :))  "Five-ish? " NAAH it's a SIX!

A:  The whole scene is lit with two bulb lights in the ceiling.  Soft shadows are turned on and indirect lighting is turned up 100%.  I rendered it with a pretty high quality setting.  Interestingly enough, it only took about an hour to render.

I know it's been here for a while, but I only just noticed the topic, and I, too, have a question about this image: Is the crane cable fully modeled, or did you use Carrara physics on it somehow?

This is a great image, I'm very glad I came across it.

I'm also surprised by the render time -- with all the reflections and refractions and the soft shadows. Beautifully done. Once again I see Carrara artwork, which shows me just how powerful the program is and how much I still have to learn abuot it...

The crane cable (I'm assuming you're talking about the power cable) is just a spline object I modeled.  The shape is chosen to look good (no more magic than that).  No physics, no anything special, just setup to look that way.

I rendered it on my new four headed machine so it can smash out renders in a reasonable time.

Wow. Great job! It looks amazing.

Thank you for posting your answers.

Kixum, awesome job!  I love me some Calvin and Hobbes, and this looks perfect  :)

Very cool image, I've worked in many shops with this type of look and equipment like the crane hoist.   But none of them had a UFO :)

I'm posting the image as far as I got (which is essentially nowhere).  I may finish it someday.

Right now I have two projects I'm working on.

1.)  You've probably seen the Enterprise in Construction image in the gallery (that took a little while to build).  I built it out of a lot of parts I already had but it took about five days of fussing with it to get it to where I ended up.  Regardless, I realized that my Enterprise model just needs a whole new overhaul (again).  So I'm in the death throws of another Enterprise overhaul (dang!).

2.)  It's going to be Christmas break.  As many of you know, I have a tradition of a big project for Christmas break!  Last year was the snow speeder AT-AT scene.  The year before that was the Millenium Falcon.  This year will be a new Star Destroyer model.

So with those two projects going on, I just couldn't figure out a way to finish Calvin (plus I got super distracted with that crazy spacedock model which just had to get built last weekend out of nowhere and then I had to make an image of a starship under construction).  I thought that construction image woul be easy since I had a lot of the stuff to start but then I emailed it to Gavotte and he had all these ideas and it got way out of control.

Later,

Wow, both renders look great!