3DThe Dominion War

New Homelands

Hey guys, I don't post here much, in fact I think this may be my first ever photo But I've been lurking for quite a while and have learned a lot just from reading other threads. That said, comments and especially [constructive] criticism are welcome on this photo.

I converted a couple of meshes I found on google sketchup to Lightwave format and wanted to do a render to show them off. The Galaxy, Nebula, and Keldon class ships are the ships in question. They're really high quality models and I was quite surprised to find them on google sketchup.

It has been suggested by others that the sketchup artist who released them may have taken them from somewhere else and just converted them to sketchup format and claimed them as their own, I have no way to confirm or deny this, but if anyone recognizes the Galaxy, Keldon, or Nebula class models as their own, or recognizes them as someone else's, please let me know [via PM] so I can give appropriate credit.

Sam

spacefighter

nice work. of better quality than much of the original VFX. would like more emphasis on the D'deridexes, consider putting them closer to the camera? i also think that some of the beams and explosions could do with a little more lens flare and being somewhat brighter. all in all very good.

Saquist

I disagree. Space battles are supposed to be fought beyond visual range. Of course DS9 wanted to bring everything up close especially during Fortune Favors the Bold but stacking ships like that is nonsense. No manuvering room and unnecessarily within withering range of ranged beamed weapons.

Those Warbirds are part of a formation. I would only orient them differently. They don't have to up & down. A better angle is from above while moving to the left in formation coming from the deep field.

I would also say show Galaxy's Alpha Strike power with multiple torp detonations and simultaneous phaser strikes. (something they never did in the War)

It think it's good.

New Homelands

spacefighter wrote: »

nice work. of better quality than much of the original VFX. would like more emphasis on the D'deridexes, consider putting them closer to the camera? i also think that some of the beams and explosions could do with a little more lens flare and being somewhat brighter. all in all very good.

Thanks, that's high praise indeed. The D'deridexes were placed in the background as an afterthought. Indeed they were originally Klingon Vor'Cha class cruisers but it didn't quite look right from the angle so I changed them to Romulan ships. The image was mainly intended as a showcase of the Nebula, Galaxy, and Keldon classes, so that's also why the other ships are in the background away from the camera.

As to lensflares... I like them (though not to the extent JJA does), but I don't have any particularly good ones in After Effects, only the three generic ones that come with it, and the ones in Lightwave aren't exactly the best, so I opted to leave them out. Someday I hope to purchase some which can be used in After Effect's. Thanks for the feedback, in the future I'll try to make the explosions and phasers brighter. The explosion is actually a still taken from the Borg cube explosion in The Best of Both Worlds.

Some suggestions as to improvements which could be made in relation to the credits were offered, so I reworked the credits a little, here's an updated version.

spacefighter

an improvement, the beam looks brighter and better now. saquist is right about the lack of a true"up" in space so any unusual arrangement of angles for ships is valid. he is also right about it being realistic fro the ships to be separated by great range although that makes it harder to show as much detail in an image. maybe consider moving one of the warbirds into the foreground somewhere rushing past the camera to attack the cardassian from it's rear.

New Homelands

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I think I'm gonna call this a finished image now, but I'm working on another Dominion war image and I'll take all your suggestions into consideration.