(with reference to my reply to Gail's post)

Here's a version taken with a lower exposure. I've lowered the exposure 
enough to stop the lit side from saturating, so now you can see how much 
darker the dark side is. Though it's still not black since there are a lot 
of nebulae

-- 
Tek
http://evilsuperbrain.com


"William Tracy" <wtr### [at] calpolyedu> wrote in message 
news:463f82bf$1@news.povray.org...
> Okay, I can't shut up any longer. :-)
>
> First off, the image is awesome. Your ship is great, your nebulae are
> beautiful, and the black hole is trippy-cool.
>
> Now, a personal pet peeve: In space, there is no "ambient" light.
> There's no atmospheric scattering of light, so shadows are *black*. Take
> a look at a crescent moon, and you'll see what I mean.
>
> Almost everybody gets this wrong, including Hollywood. :-) At the same
> time, I think there's some new artistic ground to cover here--you can
> create some *really* dramatic images by fixing the shadows.
>
> The big challenge is making the object still be *visible* when half of
> it is black, and it is against a black background. I'm still kicking
> some ideas around in my head for dealing with this.
>
> You could bend physics a little with the lighting :-) such that both
> edges of the craft are highlighted, outlining it and making the shape
> visible.
>
> Alternatively, you could take the route of not having space actually be
> black. Make the stars a lot more dense, and beef up the nebulae until
> the dark parts of the ship are silhouetted against the background. Take
> a look at this guy's backgrounds: http://www.crimsondark.com (note that
> he gets the shadows wrong, too...)
>
> Finally, you could not go *all* the way, and just darken the shadows as
> far as you can without making them actually disappear.
>
> Or, you being The Incredible Tek, ;-) you could just come up with
> something way better than anything I can imagine.
>
> Anyway, the image is great as it is. Right now it's up there with
> Hollywood. I just feel that you can do one better than Hollywood. :-D
>
> -- 
> William Tracy
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> You know you've been raytracing too long when you were ever dragged out
> of a theater for yelling "Cheap rasterized graphics!!!" in the middle of
> Toy Story.
> Stephan Ahonen

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