Opus I-III: Until now, I'd only rendered Greg deSantis’s Improbable Victorian submarine as an object in the distance. With this image, created late last year, I wanted to feature it and include an exotic crew. I quickly decided that some of Xurge's creations would work for the crew uniforms. His Nanosuit for Miki 2, utilitarian and dark but not massive, was just right. I thought to put several crew on deck, but the final render confines them to the wheelhouses, barely visible through the glass. The crew character is Miki 2, with DAZ’s Rievel hair, just as in Xurge’s product preview. I wanted an especially exotic captain, narrowing my choices to AerySoul’s characters and finally picking Yaara, with the Luna texture. As captain, her uniform needed to set her apart from and above the crew. Xurge’s Paladin for V4 worked best, fitted using PhilC’s Wardrobe Wizard, and recolored silver and black. I tried several hairstyles, but SWAM’s Dimionia hair colored silver extended the exotic look best. I like to include a cat in my renders and photos of Devon Rex cats convinced me this exotic breed fit the concept. I emphasized the DAZ Millennium cat Devon Rex morph for a more triangular face to resemble Yaara’s and used a texture to match the captain’s silver uniform. I doubled the size of the cat to divide attention more or less evenly between them. The figures were posed in Poser 7, imported to Carrara 5 Pro with Transposer, positioned on and in the submarine, and rendered. This is a nighttime, moonlit scene with the focus on the two silver figures. Opus II: The scene was rendered in Carrara 5 Pro and composited and post processed in Picture Publisher and CorelPaint. This image uses a slightly reduced PhotoShop lens flare setting from Opus I. It was completed with AdamWright’s Color Pen Sketch PhotoShop art action. The result is much darker and more dramatic than Opus I.