Earthshine by theSea
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Description
Earthshine
On certain nights
When the angles are right
And the moon is a slender crescent
It's circle shows
In a ghostly glow
Of earthly luminescence
-- Rush
Greetings!
I did this one for MistyLara's "Rush Render Challenge" over in the DAZ Platinum Club members forum. Being a huge Rush fan, I simply had to respond when she threw down the gauntlet.
Production Credits:
First I had to create a convincing Earth image to reflect in the visor.
I created two spheres, one for the planet and one for the cloud layer.
I used texture, bump and specular maps from http://planetpixelemporium.com/planets.html mapped for the Earth's surface with pwSurface2 doing the atmospheric glow effect as in 'Discovery's Fate.'
The second sphere was a very light gray with cloud maps from http://www.shadedrelief.com/ in the transparency channel.
A distant light with raytraced shadows stood in for the sun and I rendered this at 2048x2048, which was probably overkill. Looked nice though.
I setup my lunar scene with the image of the Earth mapped to a plane which was parented to the camera. I moved the plane just behind the camera and scaled it up. Then I did some test renders of the scene with the helmet visor set up to a mirror finish and tweaked the pose and the size of the plane until I got the desired effect. The Earth is probably way too large, but I'm going for artistic effect - not 100% accuracy.
The spacesuit is a DAZ PC club item with Mike 3 reduced resolution in there, completely invisible. I used no textures, just set up the surfaces appropriately on the suit.
The backgound lunar surface texture was created in Filter Forge. I added the railing and walkway are from "Olympus Mons" (also a DAZ PC Club item) so I wouldn't have to mess around with lunar footprints...
Lighting:
1 Blue Area light shader applied to the plane with the earth map on it and 1 dark blue distant light with very soft mapped shadows.
Rendering:
Image rendered in a couple of hours with the quality settings cranked way up.
Postwork:
Once I had the finished render I was not happy with the lunar background texture or the appearance of the decking. The decking, especially, was very soft because the Olympus Mons textures are not very large. I could have gone in and retextured the prop at a higher resolution, but I as facing a contest deadline, so I decided to take a different (for me) path and fix everything in post.
First I rendered masks for the surface, the OM structure and the spacesuit.
In Photoshop I created a busy difference clouds layer and used the perspective tool to lay it out flat. I applied the mask of the lunar surface and had a nice additional texture layer which I set over the surface in multiply mode.
I created a noise layer and applied this over the structure in the same way.
Next I grabbed some grunge brushes and proceeded to dirty up the spacesuit... it's very dusty on the moon and I wanted a lot of texture on the spacesuit. This layer was again masked off to ensure that there was clear separation between the suit dirt and the scene.
Finally I used a soft brush in 'darken' mode to add some more texture to the decking and a brush in 'lighten' mode to paint back the dark mess on the backside of the groove in the deck. I'm not 100% satisfied with the result but it looks a lot better than the original render.
I added some color correction and a levels layer to finish the postwork on the image. For the border of the piece I chose to put a darkened and slightly blurred image copy of the 'earth' render in the background.
There was a lot of painting on this one but it only took me about two hours to finish.
I must have done something right as it won the contest. My thanks to those who voted for the piece.
As always your comments and construtive critique are appreciated.
Comments (30)
necrophage
cool sci-fi scene - great render!
Savage_dragon
Fabulous! ")
Tholian
Another stunning piece of art. I'm glad it won the contest for you.
sontaeseok
adorable sci fi~~~~^^nice texture work,too^^****
wliebtposer
awesome work
JCD
Beautifully done on all fronts... 5 extra stars for the Rush tie in ;)
thecytron
Most Xcellent modeling work! Great ambiance lighting!
anitalee Online Now!
Excellent
Mondwin
Fantastic render...bravissimo!V:DDD.Hugsxx Whylma
ThomasMacCallum
I love the concept, the lighting quality is superb. Rush? I haven't spoken their name since I was a teenager. :)
3-d-c
WOW! Really coool!
Cimaira
Wow! Excellent pov and fantastic image.
ragouc
Very good idea.
Danny_G
Excellent image
virginiese Online Now!
very nice ! Love the reflection of the Earth
Shiroyama
that is excellent!
Biffowitz
Nice work, especially on the lighting and reflection! Looks great!
lorddarkwolf
cool!
RG19
Outstanding work! The lighting and posing are most realistic!!!
PhilW
Great idea and very beautifully done!
Tugpsx
Very nice, thanks for the mini tutorial.
SIGMAWORLD
Excellent!
geirla
Very nice, especially the reflected Earth. Thanks for the tutorial, too.
callad
Congrats on the win! Great POV and lighting!
dshield
Nice one Michael. D
WPL2
Great composition.
Seaview123
Always an excellent scene. Thanks for the lesson on graphic arts!
swjkie100
Very nice! Neat concept -_^ Off and on, I have been fighting with those Olympus Mons textures as well. Its a very nice set though, and I have used it in a lot of my renders!
ontar1
Fantastic idea and presentation, love the detailing and lighting, outstanding work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sentinelle
This image evokes strong emotions. Earth looks beautiful from outer space.