Posted on July 25, 2011

“Heliocentric (Night)” is now up on the new images page for Members to download.

I started it rendering on Friday with no idea it would take all weekend. Wow! Fluffly clouds really put the hurt on the render times. I can take solace in the fact that it would have taken a full week to render on my old machine.

I sometimes hear that my night scenes are too dark, so I tried to make this one a little brighter than usual. I played with removing the clouds but this really darkened the scene too much. In the end I tweaked the clouds a bit to make them look a bit more “misty” and also added some beacon fires on the rocks.

One of my Members (David M) said the scene reminded him of the Lord of the Rings so I thought it would make a nice addition to the night version. Happy to say that I resisted putting some huge planet in the sky.

Anyway, I hope you like it. The scene is not without issues and I would love to tweak it in the future. A lot of folks have asked if I could post a “level” version (without the camera tilt) and I have done so in the Pickle Jar.

Feeling the call to move onto new projects now. Going back and forth between abstract and space…