Minnow vs Red Giant

October 15th, 2000, 02:35 PM

Never having been so close to a red giant, I can't be sure, but the lighting on the ship looks a bit off. the light seems to be coming directly from beneath the ship, which is flying away from rather than over the star. Also, for some reason the star doesn't look quite hot enough. The flares look nice, though.

meshula · October 15th, 2000, 09:28 PM

The things I'll do for ya. I moved a Main Sequence G class star close by to make a binary, thus accounting for the lighting

Also, I replaced the infrared photo of the real sun with a procedural sun and photoshopped solar flares.

(again, when we are ready to update the glads site again, I'll provide a version without copyright message.)

[This message has been edited by meshula (edited 10-15-2000).]

skyhawk223 · October 16th, 2000, 02:19 AM

Nice! However, I am not crazy for the flares from the second star. They need to be more transparent or something. THey look too whispy.

meshula · October 16th, 2000, 07:22 PM

Okay, hit refresh in your browser. The image should now show the suns as a paired binary with the big red one sucking the juice out of the poor little yellow one. How's this one? I wanna start a new image, wah!

skyhawk223 · October 17th, 2000, 02:20 AM

That, my friend, is cool!
A small nit-pick: I think the matter would look more like plasma and less like lightning for a realistic point of view but you did a great job on the image.

October 17th, 2000, 02:50 PM

That's cool. But I agree, no lightning. Just big columns of gas being sucked up.

Thomas P · October 17th, 2000, 03:26 PM

One more vote on nixing the lightning! Great pic.

meshula · October 19th, 2000, 03:15 PM

Arrgh! Okay, the lightning is gone. Now there's a kind of splash thing going on. I wish I could find some good reference for how this could look. Hit your Refresh button and tell me it's a LITTLE better, pleez!!!

[This message has been edited by meshula (edited 10-19-2000).]

skyhawk223 · October 20th, 2000, 02:34 AM

Getting there! I think you should make the brightest streams a tad more transparent, so we can vaguely see the backround star. The plasma stream should also spread out a bit more as it gets close to the star and should blend more in color.

Having said that, what you have done so far is awesome! It is a really killer concept. I am just trying to help you make it spectacular! This will be one of the scenes that will be posted on the page?

October 20th, 2000, 09:52 AM

....woah...

October 20th, 2000, 02:59 PM

Sorry, another comment. I was thinking about how a large body would suck gas off a smaller one. I suspect it would be pulling something into your orbit rather than down to a specific spot on the surface as your pic now shows. So rather than having the gas jet ending at a spot on the surface, the end should be more dispersed and look a bit more like it's in being pulled along a line of rotation.

Thomas P · October 20th, 2000, 04:52 PM

Masao - good call and very correct. Sorry man, you should change it if you can.

meshula · October 20th, 2000, 08:13 PM

yes, it's intended for the glads page!

I think you're right Masao, but I'll have to think about how I could compose that visually without having to throw away the existing image...

Man, I just had the worst bummer! I crashed my machine, and Minnow became unmapped! It's the first time I hadn't been keeping backups of a model, so it's going to be a little while before we get any more Minnow renders! Arrrgh! Save early and save often! Why don't I follow my own frellin' advice???

The good side is I reinvented my warp nacelle effect, and it looks much better now. I'll post the effect this weekend and show how I did it.