A grab bag of pieces today ... what I've been fiddling with in the last couple of days -- and it's an eclectic mix. A bit of everything. I've uploaded these at large size, so folks who are curious can see details -- but you might need to be patient with the downloads. They're a little large, and could take a few moments.
There's a portrait of the barbarian you saw the other day -- I'm quite pleased with this face, and in the render I uploaded before, you don't really see it. Then ... an experiment in reflections, transparencies and surface textures. Exotic science fiction, complete with the next-to-naked female and the robot, which are two prerequisites -- but the real gist of it is about the surfaces! A lot is going on in the picture; it's definitely one frame out of a large story, but search me what the story is. Anyone...?
Then, Bryce landscapes ... misty mountains, trees and all ... and the second one is a re-visitation of the one I was playing with a few days ago. I went back into it, and put in cliff walls, with weathered rock formations. A... ha. I think. I do believe a couple of pennies have just dropped. Bryce is starting to make a tiny little bit of sense -- in other words, when good things happen, they're not 100% accidental. Maybe only 80%! Theres so much to learn.
Then -- simple shots, but so effective. A couple of models I knew I'd bought about five months ago, and couldn't find for love or money; they showed up while I was looking for something else. The space sphere is the key model in these last two images. It's the spherical environment in which the spaceship and space observatory are positioned. The ships are inside your actual, genuine sphere, so you can point the camera virtually anywhere. What you see here are pre-set textures -- those backgrounds. My next challenge is to paint my own textures for the sphere, and go fly around in it. The last picture of all is shot from inside the cockpit of the Vanguard spacecaft model, on approach to the space observatory...
Loads of fun, and all down to the processor power I have now. Thanks go, once again, to my husband, for sliding the new PC under the Christmas tree while I wasn't looking!
Jade, 11 January
