Satellite

[tampaBlendie]

This is one of my first projects, I want to make this as realistic as possible. Any ideas are gratefully welcomed.

[Dudebot13]

Looks good! Maybe redo the textures on the body to make them more realistic. And make the thruster a color that we can see a little better. Good luck!

[tampaBlendie]

I turned on ambient occlusion so to make it more visible, any ideas on the dish???

[Dudebot13]

On the main part, the cylinder part, is that an artifact or are those shadows? They look a little unnatural. And maybe try and change the thruster material as I can't even see what it looks like.

[Gwenouille]

Add some nice reflections !
It looks way too dry.

[sypher7]

I think that you've got a great model to build upon. One idea would be to take the solar panels and make them darker but more reflective/glossy. Keep the grid lines fairly white, though.

[tampaBlendie]

thanks for the in put guys I've altered the dish because I was really unsatisfied with it.I'm working on the materials right now. The thrusters are hard to highlight because of the stars in the back ground. Any ideas on how to fix that are welcome. Here's the newest render

[DichotomyMatt]

For the thruster try making them Grey. Here is a Large NASA photo of the Space shuttles thrusters maybe it will help:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/1...92_ys_full.jpg

[tampaBlendie]

Thanks for the advice and the pic Matt. Here's the latest render, the solar panels still don't have enough realism for me, the textures on the main body need som help, and the dish needs more detail. I would love any ideas on how I can achieve a more realistic look.

thanks to everyone leaving feedback

[N00bhaxor]

Ray Mirror! Make almost everything on there have a tiny bit of Ray mirror. If they do already, I can't really see it. Maybe try to randomize the background-all I see are stars. Make a few unique halos of different colors. Space is not all stars. There are nebulas, planets, galaxies, supernovas, asteriods, moons, etc. Just don't overdo it. Here's an example of what I mean.

[DichotomyMatt]

To add to what N00bhaxor said, you should add a plane (out of view) with an image of earth on it. This way, once you have mirror on the satellite parts some will relflect earth. I am assuming this is an earth orbiting satellite. BTW: the NASA web site is a great place to get high resolution images for space and planet textures and they are not copyrighted so they are free to use (see the site for details).

[tampaBlendie]

O.K. excellent suggestions Matt and Noob. I added the moon and am working on the earth. I want those to be realistic too, which is why I haven't added them yet. One piece at a time. I need some help with some of the textures. I want the gold foil to have a more crinkled effect on it. I tried adding multires, and then displace modifier but that made it look very rounded. I don't want to add a bump map and just make it look crinkled. I want it to actually BE crinkled. Same for the moon, and eventually the earth(I am going to leave the earth out for now as the Earth will be a big project in itself, clouds, atmosphere good looking texture.)

The eventual goal for the satellite is to have it in an animation of an asteroid colliding with the satellite and exploding.

[Dudebot13]

The moon looks pretty good for a still but not sure it will hold against an animation. Also, the solar panels look WAY too dark. Increase the reflection on them and add some RayMirror to them. You might even have to add some separate lights over them just to get them to be brighter. Solar panels are so reflective that they will reflect almost anything and barely have any of the original texture showing through. They need to be bright (but not too bright) because a lot of the light that they reflect are that of the suns. If you need anymore help feel free to PM me or just post it here as I am not and expert on this subject.