At the end of XIX century an Italian astronomer Giovanni V. Shiparelli presents a map of Mars - it is very detailed; however, details on Giovanni map are rather effect of his luxuriant imagination than of a reliable scientific work. Giovanni put on his map numerous straight lined "canali" which resulted in idea that Mars is inhabited by intelligent life forms who build such huge structures - this idea gets a strong support form another astronomer Percieval Lowell who presents even more detailed and fancy map with hundreds of channels... Inspired by those ideas, H.G Wells writes in 1898 his famous "The War of the Worlds"- about Martians invading Earth.

It must be noticed that Mars surface seen from Earth, even with the best XX century telescopes, is very blurry shows only a few details. It was 40 years ago (on November 28th 1964)that an American probe Mariner 4 was launched, and in July next year sent us the first detailed pictures of Mars surface. No channels, only craters on this cold desert world.

This is my first big project made with Vue 5.
While preparing this scene I did a lot of work with texturing - especially experimenting with new cool functions - I did a lot of mixed textures - bitmaps mixed with procedurals - ex. you take bitmapped bricks and you add some procedural fractal stains - it yields to fabulous results. I used radiosity lighting model and volumetric atmosphere.
This time I didn't model a lot - I rather used third part objects (that I completely retextured). I modeled only harbor, roads and of course terrains, I also made the wagon model.
I used fabulous Alain Garcia buildings, lighthouse and ship.
Dogs and distant Martian Machine were imported from Poser,
Closest Martian Walker is from Derrin Proctor http://members.ozemail.com.au/~dproc2/martiantripod.htm
motorboat is from Helmut Shaub http://www.3dxtra.net/,
numerous small items are from Vue 5 object library.