Passing the Giant

This image was a "collage" made of various render tests I had lying around on my hard drive in summer of 2009.

The spaceships are the same model shown in the piece "Ark W.I.P. 01" [link] so I won't reiterate the background on the ship and its design here.

The planet is a 3D model, as are the small moons. For the gas giant I modified the 4K Jupiter texture I located on the Celestia Motherlode website [link] The moon textures are a mix of procedural noise and some grunge maps I've had since the last Ice Age or so

The shadow cast on the planet by one of the moons is "real" (well, at least it's ray-traced). I'm quite happy about that - it was really a pain to position the moon to cast its shadow AND be in the shot at the same time!

All 3D elements modeled and rendered in Lightwave 3D, image slapped together in Photoshop