[Irinikus]

The probe's still incomplete, but here's a bit of a preview to give you an idea as to how the final rendering might look: (This is rather messy, but it's just there to give you an idea as to what's to come! )

[Irinikus]

Here's a better image, so I've sorted my final rendering technique out! (Now onto completing the model!)

[Irinikus]

After a whole day and night of nonstop f*cking around this is what I have currently: (Each time I had to re-render to see the result of any change that I made took roughly TWO HOURS on the Tezro!!!)

The scene's definitely not perfect yet, but I'm slowly getting there!

[KayBee]

Beautiful. If I had seen Voyager CG mock-ups like this as a kid I would have lost my mind!

Way to go.

KB

[Irinikus]

Beautiful. If I had seen Voyager CG mock-ups like this as a kid I would have lost my mind!

Way to go.

KB

Thanks Man!

[Irinikus]

This shows you the cost imposed by rendering quality:

This image shows the quality of the planets rendered, when the set was rendered in under 10 minutes using production quality settings in Mental Ray. (notice the artefacts in the shadow on Saturn)



This image shows the quality of the planets rendered, when the set took about an hour and 15 minutes to render using custom settings in Mental Ray! (notice the reduction of artefacts in the shadow on Saturn)



The Sun and all the planets are scaled correctly, using the Sun's diameter as a reference, but because this is a 3D set and the planets are placed on the X-axis of the grid, which is orientated towards the camera, linear perspective has to be taken into account.

All of the planets have their actual "photographed" surface textures applied to them.

[Irinikus]

Today I made a start on the support structure for the Magnetometer Boom:

[Irinikus]

Today I made a start on the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators. (The method that I'm using, is to create components, scale them correctly and then create the relevant attachments for them.)

[Irinikus]

I'll hopefully have this all attached tomorrow and will then start on the final structure, the Magnetometer Boom!

[Irinikus]

There's now only one step left: THE MAGNETOMETER BOOM!