Also known as "The Wake-up Call that was joining the TSML".

During my insomniac surfing, I re-visited the Caligari page and decided now might be a good time to join the TrueSpace Mailing List (TSML).  Up until this point, I thought I'd been doing pretty good.  Oh boy, did I get a shock when the first requests for image critiques came through.  So after a few days of reading the list, and looking at all the amazing images that were being offered for critique, I decided that I badly needed the kind of advice that was being offered.  So I posted the URL for the previous incarnation of this page, and sat back and waited for the howls of derision to come my way.

Of course, they didn't.  What I *did* get, was helpful advice, and it gave me a bit of my confidence back.  It also gave me the confidence to take more risks, and some of the tips that were posted gave me ideas that I could put to use.  So I did.

		This image came about as a result of some of the feedback I got from the TSML.  The large planet is a combination of three spheres, each slightly smaller than the one before, and with different textures applied.  The inside one being the one with the main planet texture, the middle one with a dust texture and the outer one with a cloud texture.  The smaller two planets were done using the same technique, although to a lesser extent.  The light is a single inifinite light, to the far right of the picture.  If you click here, you'll see my attempt at animating it.
		This was when I also hit on another great idea.  Render your background first, then put your stuff in where you want it.  Sounds simple huh?   Is when you know about it!  The ship was made in sections, the engine is six misshapen spheres each with a more transparent texture, the outer one having a wire frame texture on it, and a local light glued inside.  The part of the ship holding the engine on was made by drawing a spline around the engine and then using the lathe tool, this was then attached to a cylinder which was attached to a larger copy of the engine, where this time, the inside sphere is a glass texture and the outer section the same texture as the rest of the ship.  The windows were done by painting the face with a transparent material to let the inner texture show through.  The background is the above image.
		For this image, I used some of the techniques from the earlier image, but completely re-did the textures on the large planet.  To make the space-station, I drew a hexagonal polygon, used a 360 degree lathe on it.  Then, I joined two cylinders in the middle, and did a boolean subtraction from the outer ring, so that they'd look like they were leading from the center into the rings.  I painted them with a class/metal ring texture that I got from a lot of fiddling with sliders.   The sphere in the centre uses one of the textures I created when doing the ships on the previous page.
		This image was as a result of feedback I received from the TSML.  You can decide which you prefer.  Clicking here will take you to the animated version.