A Space station

[Francissimo]

Hello everyone
I'm curently playing with sketchup and photoshop to depict a big space station with industrial and commercial purpose.
At first it was just some space art stuff but the station became bigger and bigger (playing with sketchup 3D wharehouse is a bit like playing lego) and i'm now thinking about a map with some zoom on various sections.
here's the first wip:
space.jpg
Feedbacks are welcome, i'm still not sure how i'll map the station, i was thinking of a global view like this in the center, with some focus on various parts all around.

[Diamond]

Wow, so I'm a little in awe of you right now. That is... words fail. I guess if I can dig for ANY criticism, it might be that it could become hard to pick out station detail against the detail of the planet below. Maybe change the planet to a gas giant, a moon, or a planet with large cloud cover so there's less distraction from the station? But that's it. Other than that - totally freaking amazing.

edit: And I just noticed that the eyes on your avatar glow and dim! Have they always done that?

[Francissimo]

edit: And I just noticed that the eyes on your avatar glow and dim! Have they always done that?

Yep, for almost 2 years now

[Diamond]

This is going to be an Atlas Award nominee for sure. Just beautiful work, man.

Yep, for almost 2 years now

Call me Mr Unobservant.

[Francissimo]

This is going to be an Atlas Award nominee for sure. Just beautiful work, man.

Thanks, i would be honored if that happens
The map is almost finished, i guess i'll post it tomorow on the finished map section if no new ideas come with the night.
EXPORT5.jpg
Thanks again all for the interested looks and advises. It's really cool to be able to share this passion with a community like the guild.

[Ilanthar]

Wow... You're way better than me with SK! I'am struggling with my orbital station for the Current Challenge, and it's clearly a poor thing compared to this.
How did you use SK Warehouse? If it's what I think, it's quite a mess and I didn't find it easy to use...

[Francissimo]

Thanks Diamond
I'm strugling with the background with this one, never really satisfied in how the space station blends with the background. Here's another attempt with a gas planet, and some lights in the darkest parts.
About the SK wharehouse Ilanthar, that's a huge base of 3D model made by other people on lots of subject. For this one i get a bunch of models, cut some pieces and merge others to get the station.
EXPORT4.jpg

[Falconius]

Looks fantastic. I much prefer the newer upload with all the outlining. Also the dark background puts the focus where it should be, on the station.

[johnvanvliet]

for gas giants i found a rather cool bit of code called "GaseousGiganticus.c"
it is part of this
https://github.com/smcameron/space-nerds-in-space

this is a bit of C code to compile a fun tool

you can get something like this out of it


or this




other tools are also needed to convert the CUBE maped images to a simple cylindrical , but that is easy to do with the perl or python "pano-tools" that are part of hugin

they are in pip or cpan

[Francissimo]

Thanks for the comments and for sharing that tool, it seems cool. I usually use gradients in photoshop for gas giant but that seems more usefull.
Here's an update with some labels and another background.
space.jpg
here's also a space view of the station:
Digital Art - L'antre du cartographe - Mozilla Firefox.jpg