Tropical Moon of Ianeira

Posted on January 9, 2023

Continuing a theme I started with “Tropical Moon of Thetis” and have revisited over the years.    Even going as far back as “Space Vista“, I’ve long had a fascination with creating planets and viewing them over an ocean (preferably from a beach).    I had always used Lightwave3D to create the planets but this time I am learning to use a new software package, Cinema4D.

I am very aware that the lighting on the planet is a bit off for a scene like this.   For the sun to be lighting the planet on the horizon, technically the foreground scene should be awash in daylight.  Imagine then that another moon of Ianeira is eclipsing the sunlight to provide you with an even rarer vista 🙂

I hope you enjoy it. Will probably post a render of the planet itself later this week…

Trypophilia

Posted on January 2, 2023

This year I plan on adding Cinema4D to my 3D toolkit and this piece is step towards me learning how to use it. Here I’m concentrating mostly on modeling and shader editing.   I used the standard renderer rather than Redshift to explore C4D’s procedural shader system.   

The title refers to the opposite of “trypophobia” (“an aversion or repulsion to objects like honeycombs and sponges that have repetitive patterns or clusters of small holes“). Hope it doesn’t trigger too many people. I have tried to make it look as inorganic as possible if that helps 🙂

Expect more abstract artwork in 2023!

Arboreal (Day)

Posted on December 26, 2022

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas holiday (if you celebrated). We’ve been enjoying having Ian home from college for his winter break and it’s very nice to have the whole family together again.

I wasn’t planning on doing any work over the Holidays but it did occur to me that a day version of “Arboreal” might look interesting.

Over the years I’ve created a few different versions of this scene but I’ve never attempted a sunny day version. Now that I have I feel like it has a totally different vibe. I hope you enjoy it!

Arboreal

Posted on December 19, 2022

After creating my new version of “Class M” last week I knew I wanted to create a new version of “Arboreal“.   My first version of “Arboreal” was created nearly 20 years ago and I tried an update 10 years ago which was OK but, looking back, did not exceed the original.   I feel like this new version, with my traveler taking in the scene, is a much better update and I hope you agree.   

Class M

Posted on December 12, 2022

I created this scene as an exercise to learn shading, lighting and rendering using Cinema4D/Redshift.  It’s my first scene using this new software package.   I initially created the Earth but decided it would be more interesting to create an Earth-like alien world. For the planet texture I used a command-line version of this tool and quite a bit of photoshop to create the other needed maps for the Redshift renderer.

All-in-all it was fun exercise and I learned quite a bit. Looking forward to exploring more with Cinema4D and Redshift.

I hope you enjoy it!