I guess after I made a few films [Like Moria’s Race] I’m trying to challenge myself. I have this book project about future called Are You Sure That You Remember which I am in the middle of writing. This is a book about future. And one of the concepts of the future that I describe in the book are the Mega Structures. Which I’m trying to visualize for the cover and having a hard trouble actually doing so.
This is the latest attempt. And I hate it already. I did a very complex thing to distribute those cubes. Which involved adding two Ico Spheres, one with a diameter of earth ( 6378140 blender units wide ) and the other with the diameter of the Kármán line which is about 100 kilometers higher.
I’ve ended up cutting the earth mesh, since it was was too high poly and was chugging my computer like crazy. So now the model looks something like this:
I know I probably need to use geometry nodes in such a way that only where the camera points, those cubes are spawned. This one was done in a more old school method, using a particle system.
In the book I describe it as a sponge like city structure where new buildings are built on-top of the old buildings. And so there is now a whole new axis to deal with when going somewhere. Like at one chapter they are going on the trip upwards.
To visualize it properly I need to have buildings connected to other buildings, connected to roads, which are suspended between those buildings. But with enough space in between everything that you can actually see through to the sun, or the moon.
The first time I tried, I avoided showing the concept and focused on one road. Which was bad already. But then I drew it with such hurry that it ended up looking even worse.
Then I tried drawing it more carefully, again in 2D. Which looks one million times better. And is wide enough to be used for both sides of the cover.
But I’m not satisfied. I want a good old aww to be emitted from the image. And for that I need a very detailed look at the concept. So detailed that people would actually stare at the picture for hours and still not see everything.
You know like photographs or drawing of cities or towns where it’s just a bombardment of detail? This is what I want this to look like. And I am very struggling.
I thought that I will just generate those cubes and then draw a bunch of details on top of it in 2D, but it doesn’t seem to work. I think it will be in the end a full 3D scene.
At the moment I’m planning to do this:
- Get a geometry nodes simulation for the far background.
- Simple buildings
- Connections between buildings
- Simple low poly Roads ( with lights that simulate traffic )
- Model by hand the foreground.
- Buldings
- People ( low poly )
- Cars ( canonical to the descriptions in the book )
- Plants
- Perhaps even peaks into insides of some of the buildings.
- Make the character a 3D model as well.
Also there is a problem with color. Because the main character drinks from a green can. And it’s not very easy to make it pretty for some reason. I tried both Green-Cyan and Green-Magena-Yellow color schemes and they do not look for some reason. Maybe I can use the standard Orange-Blue one and add only the can as a kind of thing that sticks out from the rest.
