We Are Stardust by theSea
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Description
Hi, thanks for looking.
It's always interesting when a piece takes on a life of it's own and morphs away from what was originally intended. This did not begin as a meditation on life and the interconnectedness of all things, but we go where the muse takes us.
Production Credits:
DAZ Studio render. Much pre and postwork in Photoshop.
DAZ Victoria 3 figure with DM's "Alina" textures and morph. Dress is "Abyssal Queen" from DAZ and the hair is Wynter from DAZ with some of Surreality's textures. Set is coflek-gnorg's "Throne Room."
All interior surfaces are pwSurface; some version 1, some version 2. Things that rock about pwS2: two specular channels, anisotropic highlights for hair, separate colors for diffuse and shadow rim and fill colors. I do miss the old quality controls.
Background nebula was painted in photoshop for this image. It started out as some povRay starfields and nebulae and got a lot of painting, with the dust clouds added and details painted into the wisps of gas and dust using regular photoshop brushes and Ron's Smoke, and Fog brushes. Work on the background continued right up until final render.
The planet is two spheres, one with planet textures that I've had around for a while and one with a cloud transmap that I got from http://www.shadedrelief.com/. The planet and cloud spheres both use pwSurface2 with the diffuse and shadow rim colors providing the atmospheric effects. I gave my planet textures a face-lift (not that you can see it) and painted the citylight map in photoshop. This was plugged into the shadow fill channel of the shader to provide the night lights.
The moon was a late addition to the scene, with bump and diffuse maps created procedurally in povRay. It's basically there to provide some compositional balance and lead your eye back to the woman's reflection. I added a little ambient to stand in for the reflected light from the planet.. probably a bit too much.
A lot of test renders went into positioning the figure to get the reflection to line up where and how I wanted.
Lighting:
The Sun is a distant light, pale yellow with ray-traced shadows.
There are two light blue spotlights on the ceiling, shining down and two darker blue bounce lights under the floor shining up - all with shadows on. The bounce lights are diffuse only and have very soft shadows. I had to split the Throne Room prop in Modo to separate the floor so I could turn off 'cast shadows.'
There are also blue two bounce lights in the back of the room, behind the camera, shining forward. They have no shadows and are also diffuse only.
I used uberSpots for all of the lights, with falloff on, so the light would not bleed out and illuminate the back of the planet.
For finals I rendered in four passes, the back bounce lights, then the overhead lights and their bounces, then the sun, and finally the nebula. These were composited in photoshop and some final level and color adjustment applied.
Thanks as always for looking and commenting. I appreciate your constructive feedback and comments.
Comments (33)
doarte
A handsome, imaginative piece of work. Bravo! +5 from doarte's MADHOUSE!
lyron
Awesome image!!
Seaview123
Very interesting scene. You have to look close to catch the nuances. Nice work.
Cimaira
stunning work, and again, thank you for sharing your work flow with us, I love knowing how something is done, even if I cant do it, lol. Someday maybe.
ThomasMacCallum
Nice one Michael, it can be tricky to pull off such a dark image.
Homus_Artistic
Very nice and detailed image. Really appreciate the info on the making.
NetWorthy
Wow, this is great stuff, your muse led you in the right direction for sure. Love the little touches such as the city lights on the planet. Great job!
furuta
Fantastic image. excellent work!!
mhossack
Excellent image! Lovely lighting and composition.
ESarge
Excellent scene!! A lot of detail for so dark an image. I like the way you explain how you create an image even though I don't understand some of it.
callad
Only the full size view reveals the true beauty of this image. Excellent detailed planet, Dimm light, but nowhere too dark, and the stunning reflections make this another one of your Masterpieces! As for the lady, wonderful headpiece, dress and beautiful face.
dreamlord08
Interisting image...like it - its alittle dark for me...
Antonio57
Callad a raison ,il faut agrandir le dessin pour l' apprécier !!!!!Belle réalisation!!!!BRAVO
sylki
Oh my goodness!!! This is incredible work!!! It is a masterpiece, that's for sure!!! All the work that went into making it is fascinating indeed. I love it!!!A favourite!! It should have more comments than it has!!!
moonbunnie
Wow, amazing work! I love the whole composition and lighting is fantastic!
dshield
Nice!! D
Fidelity2
Happy Thanks Giving. This image is truly extra ordianry. 5+.
DarkStormCrow
Excellent, well done...
PhilW
This is extraordinary work! A must to see in Full View. Brilliantly done - and thanks for sharing the procedure too.
Timesurfer
looks great!! i'd love to stand there and look out that window :)
geirla
Excellent image. I especially like the reflection on the window and the construction of the interior. The lighting is fantastic as well, it give the look of someone in dark space.
arcas
Nice n' moody. It really puts you there. The planets came out great!
dragonmuse
Excellent work. Everything comes together perfectly.
Akhbour
Awesome Michael! I am as speechless as possible!
LemyD
Fantastic picture! Great SF scene! Greetings Lemy
Amethst25
Oh this must be seen full size to see all the textures. The woman it striking and the planet and moon are expertly done. The overall feeling for solitude and how small we really are shows here. Your space images always fascinate me and I spend quite a bit of time looking at them Ever thought of changing your name to theSpace? wink
amirapsp
Beautiful work...Hugs
swjkie100
Agreed about pwShader v.1 and v.2, I still feel a bit awkward in v.2, I get slightly different results but it seems more realistic. More learning for this brain ^^ A wonderfully muted scene, with just the right amount of light on the planet ^^
kobaltkween
it's interesting. resized by Rendo, this image doesn't have much impact. viewed at the size intended, it's incredibly dramatic. lots of image notes say you need to zoom, but don't really change much scaled up. if you don't see this one at full size, you're missing tons. the lighting is excellent, but subtle, and the balance of elements really needs a larger scale to work. it's a very soft, introspective image, and its strength comes from the fine details within the vastness.
Revelation-23
Yeah, this is certainly one that does need to be seen full size; so much detail in there to see. With a new video card in my computer, I can finally see it as something more than a dark image with some other stuff in there.