Grace Denied The human forms were generated in Poser 2, then imported into Bryce3D for texturing and rendering. I leave it to the viewer to conclude what this piece means; I'm not sure I entirely know myself.

Further Shores An alien vessel strikes out for new destinations. The piece is produced entirely in Bryce3D, though the background nebula is a freehand composition made in Photoshop.

Ejection Event This is a frame from a brief animation created in Bryce3D to illustrate a recent gamma ray flare event in a distant radio galaxy. The blob of gas ejected from the accretion disk surrounding the black hole moves at nearly the speed of light towards a nearby cloud. Backscattered light from the cloud passes through the relativistic blob stimulating the brilliant flare. An MPEG of this animation is also available.

Sub Search Here is my next Ray Dream Designer 5 image, though the searchlight has been touched up in Photoshop due to bugs that recently got fixed. RD5 has quite a lot of bang for its buck (you can find out more at the MetaCreations web site), but it can definitely stand to have its rough edges smoothed over in a version 5.0.2. This is based on an old spaceship sketch of mine which I thought might also double as a decent Seaquest-style submarine.

NEW! A Quicktime movie of this craft (330K) is now available! Some Windows users have trouble with the Quicktime, so I've also posted a slightly different MPEG movie (230K) as well.

Phantom Cruiser OK, I admit that I always thought Space Ghost was kinda cool, and his ship is slick. So I elected to model the Phantom Cruiser to break in my new Ray Dream 5 upgrade. There's a lot of power and potential in RD5: this image has not been retouched after rendering. The auras around the rays, the particle explosion, and the volumetric fog nebulae are all done inside the program. The new meshform modeller has a lot of power and is pretty much unmatched in RD5's price class, but boolean combinations are very problematical in this release. The wing alone took me over 5 versions before I could produce something with the right shape, enough smoothness, and would deform properly to get the upswept wingtips, though in principle, any of my approaches should have worked. Hopefully in version 5.0.2...

Valles Marineris With the spectacular success of the Mars Pathfinder mission, it is only appropriate to add a Mars image to this gallery. This terrain is rendered in Bryce 2 using terrain elevation maps generated from Viking orbiter data. It shows a high-altitude view of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system, named for the Mariner probe that first discovered this feature. Bonus! You can also view this image in 3-D!

Ice and Fire After enjoying the wonderful astronomical art show at Planetfest '97 I came home motivated to work a little on my "traditional" techniques. This fantasy nebula is an airbrush creation. Well it is admittedly a digital airbrush, but the techniques really are pretty much the same. Clean-up is a lot easier, though. I must admit this isn't entirely airbrush work; the ice asteroid is a Bryce 2 element.

Starburst Clouds Here is a 100% Bryce 2 attempt to render a scientifically accurate representation of a star formation region (hey, this is professional pride I'm talking about). I envision this being much closer to the center of a galaxy with a background densely packed with stars. The red nebulosity is from hydrogen gas ionized by the hot young stars and the blue glow is light from the stars reflected off the dissipating dust.

Breaking Free This is another excursion into the world of DC comics and one of my favorite characters: Green Lantern. This is a little more sophisticated than my earlier such work as I'm now trying out the limits of Poser 2.

Canyon Run Two aerospace fighters play tag through a volcanically active canyon region. This is a 100% Bryce 2 exercise playing around with multiple light sources and volumetric clouds.

The Consultation The pleasure of reading David Brin's latest uplift novels has proven a visually inspirational source for further Bryce work. Here is my interpretation of a shipboard branch of the Great Library. A Thennanin Captain has just entered the chamber to tease out some vital piece of information.

Streaker Down This image illustrates a scene from Brin's classic Startide Rising. The dolphin-crewed Streaker rests at the bottom of the poisonous oceans of Kithrup.