[dutch_designer]

I was thinking, using 'trick's' to make things look big, isn't that just how people usually observe big things? Haze, reference objects, camera focus and all that.. What I'm trying to say is, I hardly can think of any situation where you would see a huge object like this in its entirety without any of those tricks in effect, well, except for the situation that you're trying to replicate. I'm wondering if you would be in this situation in real life, would you recognise the real world object to be big without knowing how far away it is or seeing any of those trick effects?
Interesting study

[aitraaz]

Great stuff Mike, interesting situation!

Tangential reference: you might want to take a look at the architect Le Corbusier and photography, I think this stuff could be related, even if in a tangential way.

He was undoubtedly one of the first architects heavily influenced by photography, and a pioneer in purism painting methods in which visual interpretation of space was a central factor, and photgraphy certainly had a central role in all this.



Most of his works (almost all of the early ones) where photographed by him in a very particular way, as for graphic design works/publications etc, the photography of the buildings was tied very closely to the spatial concept behind them.

For the postwar years, for buildings such as the unité (i think this one is firminy), a new series of photographic concepts were employed adapted to the new large scale of the buildings:



This article talks about some of the photographic techniques:

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/pub ... egele.html

"As a spatiotemporal construct, the ambiguous image becomes a new architecture, one which interrogates its own constitution. In this sense Le Corbusier discovered illusory space in the space of representation. But how to introduce such space to the seemingly nonfictive realm of architecture?"

Sorry for the wank nature of this post! Interesting stuff!

[daros]

Cool rendering Mverta....
Just downloaded this incredible model...

[daros]

yep. my 10 minutes test.
Setup on Remote Matador ( 5 minutes) and rendering with Maxwell on 34 dual Xeon 3Ghz.

[mverta]

Hey, that looks familiar Familiar problems, too

_Mike

[daros]

wow!!!! i can't stop to examine this model!!!!
This guy, Ansel Hsaio, is a guru...
How much modeling time time???

other test with alpha 1.33. Unfortunatly i can't use emitters so they all go to sleep.

[daros]

Ok.. by sure i was the only one not knowing this resource...

http://scifi3d.theforce.net/default.asp

Anyway i must say it's incredible the quality and quantity of models shared in this site.

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[daros]

[noseman]

There are a few reasons why this "huge" spaceship looks small whatever you do to it.

a. the shape (triangular with the tip in the front) doesn't help perspective show for it's self. It just looks less triangular.

b. We are used to seeing large objects in real world with fog at the furthest parts. In outter space without any atmosphere, that effect is non existant, so our brain gets confused and feels that "it ain't right".

c. As stated before: comparison to known sizes.

You can trick your eye by adding very little haze to the back. It's not physically accurate, but it may add to the effect you want.

[lllab]

daros,
is this a model of new york?

cheers
sztefan

[daros]

no llab, it's a photo. Should be some rare black out.

[b-kandor]

One thing I keep noticing on the model is the depth of the detail in-between the top and bottom halves of the ship. Somehow it juts out too much, all the pipes and different elements make the ship look little to me because they have too much depth. And if the ships is supposed to be 17 km long then some of the pipes are 100's of meters wide. Just doesn't make sense.

Kandor

[mverta]

Well the modeler was actually faithful to the original, as you can clearly see from the reference shot of the real deal, but of course practically speaking, you're right. On film though, it "looks" right, and that's all that matters. Explosions in space - or noise for that matter - doesn't make any sense, either, but it would suck without them.

_Mike

[Siegfried Kircheis]

I'll leave the details to bump mapping if I'm lazy enough.
Great works !