ALIENWARE Challenge Entry: Björn Albihn

[Bumbi]

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/915/915_1067427273_medium.jpg (http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/915/915_1067427273_large.jpg)

This is a rough sketch of my concept. Just drawn, scanned and inverted in photoshop since most of the light will come from the surface (clouds) it gave more the feeling I wanted, and the stars looked better.

The scene is in a distant gaseous planet near the center of a galaxy, a massive starfield will be seen and these jellyfish things are something equal to our trees and the center of this planets ecosystem. They are floating high up in the atmosphere.

A civilisation is also located here, building under the jellyfishs. Since there is not much of a atmoshere above the clouds the sunlight from the stars in the system are deadly, therefore they have to live underneath. And the planet comes to life during the night.

I have created a lot of other creatures living on this world and figured out how they work and how they have evolved. But I'll cover that with more sketches later.

[Bumbi]

I started with asking myself how life would look on a gaseous planet like Jupiter, or maybe if it's possible for life to evolve on a planet like that.

Here is an idea what life we might discover on a gasoes planet. These gigantic jellyfishs (there is probably no better name for them yet) have probably evolved first and are the platform for life in this world. They are attached to the surface with a long thin (compared to the Jellyfish) thread. The jellyfish are very balanced having giant bags filled with vacuum, and can rise or lower their altitude by taking up more "air" weight or loosing it. Sort of like a balloon but much less affected by gravity because of the distance from the planet.

The cord to the surfec gives the jellyfish it raw materials, partly from the surface itself but also from the clouds themselves through holes in the cord. Since the molecules have different weight and therefor exists on different altitudes it can get almost every gas there is depending on which hole that "breathes".

There are also other cords hanging out from the top, these are the offspring and will losse themselves when their "heads" grow big enough, then they will float and attach themselves to the ground.

To reproduce themselves they live in symbiosis with a smaller insectlike creature that eats of cetail parts of the jellyfish that contains genetic material, than when it caontacts another jellyfish the genes are shared, and the evolutionary chain is prolonged. Sort of like flowers. I'm also considering that they also use spores.

These "insects" are like fireflies, glowing to attract the other insects, which all are reactive to heat and light so they communicate with heat and light since the clouds make eyes superfluous.

Another species exists as a predator of these insects, a large mantalike creature that reacts on heat. I have sketches on this one which I will scan soon.

The final species is a alien civilisation, living underneath the jellyfishs in settlements small enough to not have too much weight on the Jellyfish. They have tamed the mantas using glowing orbs and rides them to get to other settlements far away, for those closer to them they have a aerial cableway.

Since there is no way to really get to the surface since all life is adapted to this high altitude they have to use the materials from the jellyfishs, making their homes of their skin, "bones" and floating pods.


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I have most of the ecosystem figured out, and I'm adding species every day, some wont even be visible in the final render but I need them to know how life have evolved and how it all works. New ideas pop up every day since this is such an crazy concept, with no boundaries. Maybe some day I'll kill my darlings, but not now.

It have also given me some creepy feelings like... I wonder how it is like to live on a giant organism... How would it feel like when it breathes? And so on...

I'm not sure if I'm going to reveal how the civilisation works, how they look and so on. I'm thinking of them in a way like in "Riven", that always gives me the right point of view. I sometimes want them to be visible and then I'm thinking "Riven!" and I decide not to. We'll see wath will happend...

[Diablo2_v]

Nice Concept! I love it. :thumbsup: This is gonna look sweet in 3d. Keep up the good work.

[FrankyMo]

Nice concept... Remind me one of the planet i did on my first game...

Commander Blood!!!

One of these planets called Ekatomb was exactly that concept... cloudly spatial atmosphere and some jellyfishs which were actually the habitation of the alien race who was leaving there...

Must have a 320x130 (My god that was the image size at that time!!!) image of it somewhere... :rolleyes:

Hope you'll have as much as i use to when i did it ages ago with 3DS2... Damn I'm so old!!! ;)

[Bumbi]

I must be a mind-reader :rolleyes:

Would be very fun to see that image as well, post it or email it to me!

3ds2... must have been like 1993 or something (long before I even heard of 3D).

[Pyke]

I was also a 3D Studio boy.....aaah...those 'MAXless' days.. :) Also DATACad and RenderStar....
Hell, im only 19...but i do still feel old. :)

I like ur idea of the jellyfish type floaty things...especially cool if you give them a sort of blue etherial glow...

[Bumbi]

Heh. I'm 20 now but I got hooked when reading a magazine that promoted MAX 1... I hadn't even heard of 3D before that, still pixling on my Amiga back then :)

Yeah. I'm thinking a lot about colors, I've decided to leave that open for texturing/lighting as much as possible ... I think it will be the same colours as the clouds since they breathe the "air". I'l make them transparent as well so there will be lots of colors, just not sure which yet...

I'm not really sure which mood I want the picture to obtain so I'll probably render a grayscale rough image soon and look at different color settings in photoshop to see what I like the most. I'll probably post the different color settings here then so I can get some feedback.

[FrankyMo]

That's the only one i found, unfortunatly we can't see that much those jellyfish :hmm:

Was part of animation i did in 1993!!!!

http://fm.infographie.free.fr/OldWeb/b_ek_01.gif

[Bumbi]

Really Sweet :)

Mine will be a bit further up in the atmosphere... and in a bit bigger resolution :D

1993...I was only 10 then :)

[Bumbi]

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/915/915_1068493540_medium.jpg (http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/915/915_1068493540_large.jpg)

This is one of the creatures I intend to use in the scene. I'm considering using this shader on it, even if i originally made it for the jellyfishs floating pods. The maps are all procedural. I'm still planning not to be too certain about anything but the concept and letting it have a little bit more time to grow even if I'm having most of it locked.

Maybe every organism in the scene will be made in similar materials. I'm certain that they will be semi-transparent at least, but colors and textures are still not certain at all.

[Bumbi]

Merde!

It seems I've compressed it twice. It looks ugly as hell and all the nice transparency looks bad.

Is there any delete-option?

Well... I'll post more images soon, finally I have some time for this project.

[Sandpiper]

This is a great concept. Something very alien about jellyfish in general I think.

I think to delete an image, you have to go to the edit button at the bottom right of the post, then check the box and then hit "delete now" on the right. If that doesn't work, just PM one of the mods and they can delete it for you.

Looking forward to what you intended to post. :)

[TechnicallyArtistic]

Looks cool, but just one thing you might want to note. The instructions for the contest said that there was nothing living seen in the scene. Looks great as far as personal work goes, but if your going for the gold on the project, don't forget the criteriea set for us.

[Bumbi]

Well in the instructions it says more or less that there are no lifeforms, true. But in the FAQ-thread also says that we are more or less free to do whatever we want.

I'm trying to keep focus away from the creatures, but the idea is more or less that the only surfaces in the world are creatures. My concept makes it impossible to neclect them.

The creature above looks cool, but will probably only be seen far away, circling under the jellyfish or maybe in a pack moving through the clouds.

I've at lest decided to keep my aliens out of the image, even if there would have been neat seeing them ride on these creatures. I've decided not to since they will take too much of the viewers attention.

I intend to make every settlement as subtle as posssible, they are camouflaging their homes, trying not to be seen. The wires are the only turely visible proof that they are there, or have been.

I'm very inspired by this contest and will probably make some more images and hopefully a animation later on, if there is time.

[Bumbi]

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/915/915_1068556211_medium.jpg (http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/915/915_1068556211_large.jpg)

I've started to model inner organs of the manta. This is actually the creature's belly although it might look like a brain, it has several gaseuos enzymes which illuminate the belly. You can also see the backbone, which also contains vacuum to keep down the weight of this creature.

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