[Knight Templar]

hey it works for me. As long as nothing smashes into it.

[Stryke 9]

Not until I get something that can do better particle explosions, at least.

The real-life plans mostly either run underground or up a mountain (or both) and just try and get enough speed to clear the atmosphere, so that's not a problem, but holes in the ground aren't all that fun to model.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
That would be a launch catapult- rather than spend all that money on chemical rockets and such, just load everything into a mass driver with an geosynchronous sattelite on one end to keep the thing from falling apart. It's also about four miles off (or 8000 inches, if you wanna listen to Ray Dream...).

I suppose if I say you've watched Kiddy Grade, you'll say that no.
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I suppose that was spam.
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after all no, coz I'll add advices:

1) Move the ornithoptere away from the camera. Why? coz I say so!
2) Looks like late afternoon to me, I think it would be interesting to increase the shadows opacity ( more contrast, black shadows, etc ).
3) In the same order of idea as 2), I dunno how you'd do that in your prog, but try to make the deeps ( that's a name? ) of the fog darker ( it's tricky to do, usually it just looks like it's the close fog that is dark, but with some work it looks cool ).
4) That looks like you want to make an industrial looking city nightmare cyberpunk chmilblick. -> Bring the camera down to the level of the lower buildings, above the fog, increase the buildings density ( clone like crazy, not much work to do ), point the camera up. NEVER let the horizon be shown ( horizon= great distances, great freedom) :
Makes the viewer feels like he's suffocating ( weird psycho thinguys I've learnt in art school ). Gets you a cool Blade Runner feeling.
5) Feel grateful for I've share my Great Knowledge, young grasshopper.

[Carl]

there seems to be two suns. one in front of you and one in back.

[Stryke 9]

Carl: Yeh, I thought about that, actually. But the problem is, if I rotate the scene around so the sun is facing behind the camera, youjust get this darkish ****e-looking sky all around (something like the edges) that ruins the whole color theme and ambience. And, of course, if you move the light around to approximate where the sun is, you get a lotta silhouettes. So I decided to sacrifice accuracy for aesthetics. Pretend it's a big artificial light from a skyscraper or something.

Venom:
1. Yeeh... maybe a bit, so the entire wings show. They did at one point. But it's supposed to be kinda close-up, give some depth. Also, since there's some heavy compositing going on here and I do believe I deleted the 'thopter from the scene for the later bits (freed up render time for the lower level, and it was casting a big ol' shadow to boot), it'll be a bit tricky.
2. This- a good idea. I'll give it a shot.
3. I'll see what I can do. Fog's a bit of a trouble in RDS, seems that it renders it separate from the objects which leads to all sorts of transparency foolishness. Particles are Reason #1 why I'm trying to get a computer that supports cracked MAX.
4.It's supposed to be sorta an open picture that way. Most of my cities are pretty grim places to look at, and that's only partially because I'm terrible at making buildings- it's supposed to be, you know, different aspects of the place or something. Just because it's a grimy, polluted, dystopic ****hole (the billboard in the front was supposed to be a joke on that before it got covered up- "Miss blue skies? Visit MARS!") doesn't mean that it's gotta be hell on earth for the residents all the time.
5. I'll think about it.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
Carl: Yeh, I thought about that, actually. But the problem is, if I rotate the scene around so the sun is facing behind the camera, youjust get this darkish ****e-looking sky all around (something like the edges) that ruins the whole color theme and ambience. And, of course, if you move the light around to approximate where the sun is, you get a lotta silhouettes. So I decided to sacrifice accuracy for aesthetics. Pretend it's a big artificial light from a skyscraper or something.
 

Your answer lies in the use of a minimum of three lights. One fairly intense light in the background and then two more in the foreground, most likely behind the camera. They shouldn't be very intense at all, and they should be complementary colors. These key and fill lights will pick out the details of the foreground models without lighting them brightly, solving your problem with having two suns.

[Stryke 9]

Hmm.

[diamondgeezer]

Nothing wrong with two suns. Doesn't have to be set on Earth.

[Stryke 9]

Who says it is? I don't wanna have to explain a habitable planet in a binary system, though.