Hi thanks for looking in... really appreciate those of you who still tune in and comment when I catch a break from all the insanity in my life to actually paint. It helps that my computer is recovered from a sick motherboard and I can actually work on stuff again (THANK YOU E-BAY!). "New Sunrise" was a working title that just kind of stuck. If you look back in the gallery a bit, the techniques used here have been pretty fully explained. This is very much an incremental development and a polishing of what's come before. The planet is essentially the same from "Boldly Going" with some materials tweaks. The station is skynet3020's 'Manufacturing Facility' as in "Edge of Oblivion" with somewhat better lighting. Believe it or not; the background nebula is actually made from the same initial layers as "Shadows." The starfield has been pretty well recycled in every image above with minor tweaks each time, because really - would you have noticed if I didn't mention it ;) Every once in a while I'll flip it for variety... Knoll Light Factory for the big and little flares and glows, including the titles. So what's changed? I painted the heck out of the nebula and played with the colors a lot. I fine tuned the composition and the lighting and took the time to really get things the way I wanted (I scrapped the nebula paint and started over at least twice). Because I didn't have to mess around with a lot of the 'block and tackle' aspects of wrangling my assets and getting the base lighting down, I had the luxury of lavishing time on what I've always considered the fun parts of these sorts of images: the little details and the broad strokes. The Station's "somewhat better lighting" was the worst of it - there are a pile of linear point lights ringed around that thing to get that soft lighting - the product of a couple of hours work. Individual elements rendered in DAZ Studio, with separate passes for the sunlight, ambient lighting, planet lights and station lighting. Composited in Photoshop. Planet textures (except for the clouds), by yours truly. Starfield and nebula painted in photoshop, some elements for same created in POVray. "Ron's Cloud Brushes" were essential for painting the nebula and PWSurface and PWeffect for DAZ Studio are my goto tools for getting a planet to look right. It was a lot of fun to put together, hopefully it shows. As always your comments and constructive critique are appreciated. Please don't hesitate to ask questions. .:theSea:.