July 31, 2006
I based this piece on the feeling of awe when one looks up into the big and beautiful night sky full of stars; the mystery and wonder of life's greatness. The piece is starring a little redhaired boy in pyjamas, looking fascinated up into the huge sky, at that moment realizing how small we all are compared to the world around us.
The render time in Blender for all rendered layers alltogether was about ˝ hour at a native resolution of 2400x900 pixels, so it's not that bad at all. A good amount of post-processing work has been done (in Photoshop) to get the right finished look.
A very big thanks to the people commenting and criticizing on the project while it was under production in wip-threads on the Blender Artists Forums and the Danish 3dmaxer.dk forums. "Starry Night" would certainly not have been the same without the great quality feedback given here!
I have written a 3-part tutorial thoroughly covering the process of making this piece that can be found in the resources section of this site.
Special appearances
"Starry Night" has appeared in many galleries, blogs and websites around the Internet. Here are some of the special highlights:
In August 2006, "Starry Night" and the related tutorials on this site were featured on the big Blender related news site BlenderNation.com. Read the article on BlenderNation.com.
- Screenshot of Blender 2.43 startup splash.
"Starry Night" won the splash screen contest for the official release of Blender 2.43 in 2007 and acted as the public face of the release, appearing in announcements all over the internet including on the front page of large 3D community sites like CGTalk.
- The Essential Blender cover.
"Starry Night" was also the main piece featured on the cover of the popular and acclaimed book the Essential Blender released in 2007. The Essential Blender is a good and solid introduction to the vital functions and features of Blender, ranging all the way from modeling and materials to lighting and rendering. On top of getting one of my images featured on the cover, I was happy to get the chance to write half of the Lighting chapter in the book (the discussion part). The Essential Blender can be bought at the official Blender.org e-shop or elsewhere such as Amazon.com.
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