This is my first ever full on project in blender. I have been learning blender off and on for the last year and haven’t had a ton of time to devote to it. This is the StarShip Enterprise, I haven’t yet done any compositing because I haven’t even touched the compositor yet but that is the next intended step in my blender education. Any help in what could make this scene better or how to get started in compositing would be greatly appreciated. If anyone has any questions please just ask and I would be happy to give details.
Here’s a video about lighting space ships. It’s for Lightwave, but you can transfer the basic principles.
Think about motivating the light direction and color from the obvious light sources in your scene, the planet and the sun. Then you might add fill lights and/or rim lights to bring out the details or improve the separation of the ship from the background.
You should also try creating or adding an image map texture for the planet. Then you can also add a transparent sphere or two for a clouds layer and atmosphere glow.
You can also play around with the settings for the stars. Image search for star photos to use as reference. You might also think about creating your own detailed starfield and apply the image as a texture on a giant curved surface or sphere in the background.
With the compositor you could try certain effects, like adding a glow to the deflector dish.
I actually used a image of Neptune to texture map the planet so it is textured. I think I will shrink down the UV vertices in order to add more details to the planet. That should hopefully make it more interesting to look at. I am also working on the lighting to better illuminate the ship without it looking like there is another light source coming from the opposite direction as the sun…
nice… but i think the giant star (or whatever it is) is too bright and wierd… i dunno… and the planet looks a little fake, maybe add some more detail, a normal map and a spec map for water… otherwise nice modeling!!!
