StarDestroyer.Net BBS

In my spare spare time I'm slowly developing a probably terrible hard sci-fi space combat wargame; I actually spend a lot more time working on the book illustrations than on the actual game, probably a bad sign, but I figured that someone might like at least some them, here, so I'm posting some. Most are work in progress.

I like the modeling and lighting in any case. I always have such a hard time getting maya to display little details well, my lighting setups are always super awful and I'm just irredeemably bad at them. I have no idea how to do it properly.

You doing this in max, or perhaps in maya and feel like explaining how to make it look nice?

Covenant wrote:I like the modeling and lighting in any case. I always have such a hard time getting maya to display little details well, my lighting setups are always super awful and I'm just irredeemably bad at them. I have no idea how to do it properly.

You doing this in max, or perhaps in maya and feel like explaining how to make it look nice?

Thanks. I actually use Modo, but similar lighting features should be available in Maya; I generally set up 1-3 cone lights around the model and apply a suitable environmental map (having enabled indirect illumination, ambient occlusion layer, etc.). Realistically lighting space scenes is actually a lot more difficult, because without an atmosphere all light is very harsh and tends to burn out detail, also you must know the relative position of your model to the system's star (and any nearby planet or other relevant object), the first image is a example of this.

I redid some of the last model, should be somewhat less boring: