Island 3 Space Colony

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sweetcement
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Island 3 Space Colony

Post by sweetcement » Wed Jun 10, 2009 3:02 am

Another rough draft of a space colony render.

This is the "Island 3" space colony that Gerard O'Neill proposed in the 1970's -- a cylinder 7 kilometers across and 35 kilometers (!) long (O'Neill proposed a cylinder 4 miles across and 20 miles long, but it's easier to work in metric). It has 3 panels of land, and 3 panels of glass windows that let in sunlight reflected by three very big mirrors. It spins about once a minute or so to give "gravity" through centrifugal force...kind of like a big windmill spinning in space. A second colony is wired to it in parallel, rotating in the opposite direction, to stabilize its rotation...not shown in this render.

Modeled in Blender, rendered in Indigo 2.06, cleaned up with "surface blur" in Photoshop.

Air is a scattering medium, Heyney Greenstein, eccentricity 0.6.

Ed Sweet
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Isl3-Downaxil1a.jpg
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suvakas
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Re: Island 3 Space Colony

Post by suvakas » Wed Jun 10, 2009 3:40 am

Cool ! 8)
What was the rendering time? All that scattering for air must have taken a bit...

sweetcement
Posts: 22
Joined: Sun Jun 10, 2007 1:35 am

Re: Island 3 Space Colony

Post by sweetcement » Wed Jun 10, 2009 6:40 am

Rendering time was about 12 hours, on a rather slow Dual Core E6400 PC (which still has a 32 bit operating system). I used Photoshop's Surface Blur filter to get rid of the worst of the noise.

Lighting was more challenging than you would think. Originally tried "Physical Sky" sun with "Extra Atmospheric" on, and the sun on the horizon. It reflected off the three mirrors...unfortunately, the reflections did not work correctly, and the lighting for two of the three land panels was incorrect. Was this because my camera was "underground" with the cylinder centered at 0,0,0? A bug in Indigo related to the "Sun Light?"

Next, I tried an emitting mesh far away, reflecting off the mirrors. This worked, but it was incredibly slow when rendering with the atmosphere in place.

Finally, I compromised and put three emitting meshes right next to the "mirrors," which gave slightly inaccurate lighting, but worked well and rendered very fast.

Ed Sweet

sweetcement
Posts: 22
Joined: Sun Jun 10, 2007 1:35 am

Re: Island 3 Space Colony

Post by sweetcement » Sat Jul 25, 2009 12:06 pm

Here is a "sunset" version of the colony -- light shining in at an angle, with the mirrors at an angle -- simulating dawn or dusk.

No city lights in the dupli-verted buildings yet...

Notice that the Earth is a crescent -- the light is reflected into the colony's cylinder by the mirrors, so the sun is behind the end cap seen in the middle of the photo.
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ColonySunsetNolite1a copy.jpg
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