Space Habitat 269

Many years ago I created a design of a future city in space where the inhabitants lived in a massive space complex with many tunnels that stretched for miles.. .. These designs varied in size and complexity but always with a lot of detail and many hours of painting an airbrushing. I thought I would revisit this using 3DS Max and Vue with post work in Photoshop to get the look I wanted to portray.

This turned out to be something different than I had originally intended but I like to go with the flow and allow the design to change as different elements present themselves and depending on how the renders went. I wanted ti portray an idyllic waterway with waterfalls and lush vegetation but in a space environment, with heavy influences from Syd Mead’s work as well as a slight dash of Silent Running. If you’ve never seen Silent Running I recommend it as a dark 70’s sci-fi movie with no happy ending and some very strange singing, but sill a well crafted movie if not a little depressing. I modeled the tunnel in one section in 3DS Max and then repeated it so I could get all the detail without having to model each one which would have taken an eternity.

The model was then exported as a vob and imported into Vue. I added some terrains and vegetation and then spent a lot of time experimenting with lighting and plant distribution. Even with a very powerful system the final renders where about 30+ hours and the trees did not have the detail I wanted. So I added more trees from some of my other Vue projects. The viewing platform, domed building and bridges were all modeled in 3DSMax and imported and textured in Vue. The planet in space is a stock image but worked perfectly for what I was looking for, Highly recommend zooming in to see the detail, I definitely enjoyed making this piece but already thinking on what’s next. Hope you like it!.

Space habitat modelled by myself, landscape 3d elements from Cornucopia 3D