Sunday, June 26, 2016

Starship Hull 14


Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Megastructures 6 Skyhook


A skyhook is a tether attached to a heavy orbiting space station that would help reduce the cost of placing payloads into space. The cable attached to the station would extend towards the surface of the planet. Payloads would be brought to the end of the hook by a suborbital launch vehicle, attached to the cable as it passes, and then are flung into orbit by the rotation of the cable / station around its centre of mass. The station would then be reboosted to its original altitude by propulsion, or by deorbiting another object equal in mass to the payload. A skyhook is different from a space elevator in that the cable would be much shorter, would not come in contact with the surface of the planet, and the cable / station would be rotating like a pinwheel around its center axis.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/EE4mK

6/9/2016
Programs: 3dsmax, vray, Photoshop, Looks 

Friday, June 10, 2016

Soulburn Assets Updated June 10th 2016

A number of changes to the asset files:

1) The materials are now 1 single download, instead of 4 separate packs. This just makes them easier to update, from a user perspective, nothing has changed with installation except you now only need to download a single zip file instead of 4.

2) Added one new Test Material called Test_ToonPaint, which is a simple material that allows you to give 2-3 different levels of solid color paint based on lighting direction. While the vray toon shader will do outlines, this is perfect for the paint inside those outlines.

3) I've removed the need for the ColorCorrect plugin from the materials and environments. Cuneyt's ColorCorrect is a great plugin, and far superior to the Color Correction map that's built into max, but a lot of people don't like being dependent on plugins, even free ones, so I've converted all the color corrections in the materials to using Output maps or the max default ColorCorrection map. At some future point, I hope to persuade autodesk to write a better Color Correction map, and when they do, I will swap all of these materials over to using the new map. But until then, you can use the materials without the ColorCorrect 3rd party plugin.

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_tools/assets/assets_3dsmax.htm

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Megastructures 5 Shkadov Thruster


The Shkadov thruster (named after Dr. Leonid Mikhailovich Shkadov), also known as a Class A Stellar Engine, accelerates a star through space by selectively reflecting or absorbing light on one side of the star's surface. This could be used to move your own sun to a different location in the cosmos, or move a potential dangerous sun (one that's likely to go super nova) away from damaging your system.

5/30/2016
Software: 3dsmax, vray, Photoshop, Looks