Tek wrote:

>Thank you :) It's particularly good 'cause these pictures take only about 30
>seconds to render on a 2GHz machine!

That's amazing. I need a new machine (and perhaps more thought in my
construction).

>I confess I've put no thought into what colour they should be, apart from
>very loosely taking inspiration from after burners on fighter jets. I like
>your suggestions :) Nuclear thrusters are a good explanation. I'd already
>considered the idea of having the flames change colour, I think I might also
>make them change shape, e.g. so the concentric rings scroll outwards from
>the center as it warms up.

The outward scrolling sounds like it would look great!

>I tried putting the flame deeper inside the booster, but it looked wrong.
>All you saw protruding was a bunch of parallel lines, 'cause you couldn't
>see that the flame's cylindrical without being able to see the circles at
>the hot end of it. Having that sticking out the booster looked wrong, and
>very flat.

I understand what you mean there. Could you leave the flame as it is with a
deeper tunnel (more visible chrome on the inside of the nozzle)? I have no
idea what that would look like, but I know the orbiter's main engine's blue
flames appear to be detached from the nozzles. The orbiter's engines also
have a nice "focusing" effect when they start up.

>Right, this is where I'll explain the whole "cockpit" thing from above...
>You see, those spots are meant to be windows! That's where the sense of
>scale is, I reckon the ship's about the size of an average passenger jet. I
>guess I'll have to improve the window effect, and maybe go for a different
>style of window entirely. Any suggestions you have would be appreciated :)

Maybe a shiny rim around the windows, similar to the thrusters, to give it a
port-hole look. More regular spacing might also help, and none right next
to thrusters (especially since they're nuclear :-).

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