Escape of the Zadar

9/2/00

Escape of the Zadar illustrates my novel Source, and is a test image using my newly crafted model of the Zadar, Clu Sherril's spacecraft; in this image, the Zadar has just departed the military test launch area, and Clu is about to apply full military thrust.

The Zadar is modeled, textured and rendered in Carrara. Here are some other views...

The hull, wings and engine outlets are modeled entirely but separately in the spline modeler. The surface texture is a complex shader of my own design, but which uses the Digital Carver's Guild "Tile". The wings use the Hawkin-Z GraF-X bone texture.

The complex surface at the rear of the Zadar, between the engine outlets, is made from a terrain created in Photostyler:

The result can be seen in this closeup of the engines...

The terrain uses a technique of creating subassemblies, copying, shrinking, and stamping those, and then taking the combined assemblies and repeating the process, using rotation and copying some portions but not others. This simplifies the effort and speeds the creation of complex technical patterns.

The background is modeled in and rendered in Bryce. Here are some other views...

The landscape is based on a satellite-derived DEM of an area of California, and uses a custom material I developed. The material grades color from forest green to white with altitude, and has increasing texture at lower altitudes. The sky is based on the standard daytime atmosphere. The low altitude cloud is a Bryce stone with a volumetric cloud texture.