Syria Planum Landing An Orion’s Arm future history image. Image is part of a sequence of images which depict events around the Year Zero mark on my future history timeline. Future History Timeline Context Link: Orion’s Arm Future History Timeline. Aerial perspective of the Mars settlement under construction – area is a relatively flat plane set among the chaos terrains and looming eroded lava domes present in the Tharsis region of Mars – time range is within a year and six months of landing – imaged area represents less than a quarter of the initial settlement site. Cargo Carriers and Settler Transports stand where their landing gears first touched Martian soil. Freight containers have been dismounted from the Cargo Carrier spacecraft and staged at locations where their contents will be required as settlement construction proceeds – some have been converted to temporary habitats which can be seen arranged in clusters around the stripped cores the Cargo Carriers which bore them from Earth. Space suited figures can be seen at construction sites and along the broad avenues between the temporary habitats – workers returning from, or gathering to board, personnel transports which travel between habitats and work sites. In the distance (Far Right in Frame) greenhouses and live-stock sheds are visible – these, along with the (Image Foreground) nuclear power plant and drill-rig equipped wells (drilled down to subsurface strata of frozen water) and desalinization/distillation and hydrogen/oxygen cracking plant, would be the first priorities in settlement construction – first priorities of construction meet the requirements of drinking water, breathing gasses to replenish environmental systems, and controlled environments for raising crops and housing live-stock. Five types of specialized surface vehicles are visible in the scene: Heavy trucks (with built-in lift systems to elevate or lower the entire load-baring chassis); Mobile Derrick Cranes; Fork Trucks (two sizes); and Personnel Transports. The level of detail is achieved by rendering 42 individual Bryce model files – 1 image render + two mask renders per file (1 positive object mask + a ground-plane negative mask) resulting in 126 total renders – all from a single camera position, image compositing in Photoshop. The image concept required the creation of numerous unique models of specialized surface transports, construction sites populated with heavy equipment, freight, trucks, lifts, and cranes. The scene includes 85 space suited figures and the models of Settler Transport and Cargo Carrier spacecraft. Image Composition Note: Sky is custom, designed to match against true color images from the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity. Terrains are Tectonics Evolved Desolace, Searing Mesa, and Arathi Peaks distressed in Terrain Editor. Terrain textures are a combination of David Brinnen’s “Desert” texture and the stock Desolace texture. Mars ground texture created in Photoshop and applied to the Bryce ground-plane with additional layers added in post-work. Texture sources are cropped and blended from Spirit and Opportunity rover images courtesy NASA/JPL. Ground tracks left by heavy vehicles hand painted in Photoshop. Texture image source credit: NASA/JPL. Space suit is a Google SketchUp 3DS model of the NASA Mk III suit design created by Max Grueter. Greebles: BadFaerie’s Simple Scaffold, Jedilaw’s Deathstar Greeble’s. All other models are my own Bryce creations, constructed in Bryce 6.3and rendered in Bryce 7 Pro. As always thank you for your interest, thoughtful comments, and encouragement.