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Chromattix β Watching the suns go down
Published: 2009-06-09 06:41:32 +0000 UTC; Views: 51683; Favourites: 1583; Downloads: 0
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This is that "something much more interesting" thing I said I was going to make based on what I learned from =nukeation 's Vue video tutorial - the raw results of which can be seen in my Procedural Vue terrain deviation.Been wanting to illustrate a binary sunset scene for a long time. For the un-educated - a Binary system is where there's two stars or "suns" in the center of a solar system instead of one
these "double stars" are surprisingly more common than single stars like our own Sun. Often both stars will be a similar size and colour/temperature, but to make this more interesting, we see a larger but cooler/dimmer red star accompanied by a brighter, hotter white one...The collective heat from two suns would probably make this planet very hot! But listening to science alone can really limit one's creativity - so I still included a civilisation, water and some really odd-looking foreign plants too for art's sake 
Well as stated already, this started out as a rather basic Vue scene. I saved time by recycling the same terrain for the landscape that I made after watching the tutorial - I also was able to use some sci-fi building models I made last year too. All this put under a a different lighting/atmosphere setting provided a very different base for me to matte-paint over (this is one of the few deviations I have that I think could be passed off as being a matte-painting
)Artwork is made and copyrighted by me and therfore should not appear on any other site or gallery without permission from me
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Comments: 372
An earth-like planet/moon in the Tatoo System of the Great Skyriver Galaxy.
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This is cool... things could be said but I rather enjoy just looking at it and see what I can imagine about this.
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This is a really cool piece, reminds me of an amazing book I read called "The Three Body Problem" (though of course, yours would be a two body problem lol).
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This is an apology, my computer went momentary insane and put my comments here 15 times!
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I only got it once
I've seen that movie (unless there's two versions, the one I saw a couple of years ago seemed sorta new) it was an eerie concept. I've heard of the "figure 8 orbit" scenario, but I never knew there was a story about it. I think you'd need a very regular system setup for that to happen
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The movie version of "Day of the Triffids" that I saw was made in 1963. There was an English televisionΒ program in 1981(I never saw that one). The planet with the figure-eight orbit was weird in other ways.
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The one I saw definitely was newer than 1963 
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Lovely landscape! The plants remind me of triffidsΒ ,from theΒ movie "Day of the Triffids", based on a John Wyndham novel. There is an old science-fiction story about a planet orbiting two stars in a figure-eight orbit, I believe the title is "Placet is a Crazy Place."
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I really like such scenes and your's especially. The two suns give a distinct alien touch to the image, as do the strange plants. You have done both very well and convincing. The terrain is very naturalistic and the city... well, it might be.
The galaxy is to a large extent populated by similar binaries, very often composed of M and K type stars, lighter than our own sun. Your illustration is very correct and the two stars might actually be seen at the same angular separation when viewed from a planet located in the habitable zone. Some exoplanets have even been found in binary systems and at least in one quarternary system. If they had a chance to accumulate water... well, that's a different story.
I would only disagree with your description. The smaller star cannot be a white one. As such it would be a White Dwarf, which forms after a sunlike star has found the end of it's main sequence existence in a nova event. But the nova would have destroyed any habitable planets in the system, leaving only barren deserts at best.
This is not a big point. Your image looks perfectly like a binary comprising an M and K star. The smaller, but redder M star is the foreground star, closer to the planet at this position in their orbits and therefore appearing bigger.
Great work!
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I must admit when I chose the colour of the stars and their respective sizes/distance I was just going according to what looks most artistically appealing, so any truth in this one was just out of dumb luck 
Tough you could be right about the position of the stars, the that appears bigger could actually be the smaller of the two, but much closer
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A nova involves swelling of the star and shedding of the outer shell, until the iron core collapses into A White Dwarf. Our own sun will end that way. Earth as a planet may or may not survive that event, this is still under debate. In the most optimistic case, all atmosphere and water will be lost and surface temperatures will be high enough to melt the bedrock.
M dwarf stars - i.e. Red Dwarfs - are very popular among science fictionists nowadays, and they make up about 90% of the main sequence population (normal stars). Some of them will shine for 500 billion years, inspiring many speculations about possible biospheres... OK, the two most serious drawbacks have to be ignored.
Anyway, your illustration is very convincing in terms of astronomy and biology.
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Just finished up my own scene using Vue / PS, seeΒ fav.me/d7dt450 which includes a binary star system. Β I hadn't seen this work by you before I posted however. Β A lot of similar elements. Β I'm not to your level with Vue though. Β I've only been using it for a few months now. Β Trying to get better with Vue but life, job, etc. keep getting in the way...
U.
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If the planet is in the Goldilocks Zone, this could be very possible. Sometimes we just limit ourselves to much, I doubt Science is as limited as we make it. I would say this is more likely than unlikely. We have seen all kinds of planets so far--or should I say inferred-- Planets that go around a sun in 8.5 hours, planets that could float in water--puffy planets, planets that make Jupiter look really small and so on. We will probably find even more that are just strange but that is our take, for the universe it is justΒ typical.
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I think science is held back mostly by ignorance. Every serious scientist out there is eager to learn as much about the thing they are studying as possible. But things like funding limitations and even social stigma (like how some religious groups are against certain things, like stem cell research for example) do act as a ball and chain weighing the progress speed down 
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It is really bad here in the U.S. We have become such a divided country on these issues. Now certain groups are demanding we not do this or that saying we can't afford to while they line their own pockets. We now pay the Russians to go to the Space station?! We use to lead and of course all the benefits we have accumulated because of it. It is sad state of affairs here now, the Universe can wait but can we afford to? We are limiting ourselves by doing so.
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This is exactly what I imagine Gallifrey to look like!!
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FFFFF- this looks almost like Gallifrey~
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I've never heard of that until this comment
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*Gasp* Priteeboy hasn't seen Doctor Who? It seems like the only show you would watch, what with all the space traveling and all! You would love the planets and their landscapes!
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Oooh I like those plants in the front. The whole lighting and landscape make me feel like I'm on this world. Fabulous job on it!
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I love coming up with alien plants, most draw alien creatures or spaceships etc - but I don't know where to start with those, so I took the road much less taken among sci-fi artists and started thinking about the vegetation of these worlds
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I think backgrounds are just as important as characters. Rare to find anyone who prefers them. I have to force myself to do them.
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Thank you for this photo. The known universe is so vast that not only the nearest star outside the Solar System but the three nearest stars still appear as a single point and the very closest of them a red dwaf cannot even be seen with the naked eye. This is just the nearest most of the nearby stars cannot be seen with the naked eye and almost all of them appear as just a point of light even though at least large fraction of them have entire systems around them. The amazing thing is even if there was a huge Solar System with at least several large suns and maybe a few dozen planets a large fraction of wich above the jovian benchmark for mass and close by, all that would be known of this system would be a single point of light as far as regular vision is concerned. Extend this perspective to possibly any equadistant position within a galaxy or galaxies and the true magnetude of the universe is grasped. This is orders of magnetude above the ambition of what was known a short time ago.
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Sounds like the kind of thing someone would say in a documentary
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Simply wonderful work. I'll have to be checking out this tutorial, as this sort of art is what makes me want to continue to train in graphics training.
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Thanks for commenting and faving! the tutorial I follwed though was only useful if you have the Vue program since it was about generating realistic landscapes in that program...all the flash sci-fi stuff I just went out on limb and did that my own way
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Damn, is vue only available to specific OS or could I use it in Linux? That image was just plain amazing, seriously. I just started using graphics design stuff, and I've only been able to do things like name designs and planets (On my main page 
I checked your page and you got quite a bit of stuff man, I can see you've been doing this stuff for a long time. Thank you for taking the time to respond to a new person like me.
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Well the site that Vue is advertised and sold from is here [link] I think though it's only in Windows and Mac versions. But I bought my copy ages ago so it might have changed since then. You may have heard of Terragen before, Vue is a bit like that but can do more stuff. Mainly good for landscape creation though like this, but if one can just draw good landscapes in Photoshop then they don't need it. But I use it anyone since it's fun. I think what I do in Photoshop is more professional but I do enjoy using Vue more
Oh yeah, I've been doing digital art for years now...Oh where does the time go
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Well I almost just passed out seeing those prices,
It's hard to think that I'll be able to do things like your work in GIMP, but I'm sure there's some tutorials out there.
I gotta ask man, how is it, being so veteran to digital art? I mean, it seems your some-what famous by looking at your page.
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Yeah. It cost a fortune. And I would even consider getting it unless you have a legendary computer. I have 4GB's of RAM on mine and it still crashes dozens of times during the creation of one scene. All added up it adds days of unnecessary re-doing shit
I've never used GIMP. Photoshop is the top program - but like with anything good it costs and arm and a leg too, same with a good drawing tablet. Sometimes I feel like I've wasted my money since in four years I still haven't mad as much money off my digital art as I have spent on getting the stuff necessary to do it
Being a veteran in digital art actually lacks the excitement that someone new to it has. With experience you start seeing flaws in absolutely everything and suddenly nothing impresses you anymore - not even you own best efforts. But I still enjoy the process and the reactions people have otherwise I wouldn't keep doing it
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Jeez I never even thought of the computer abilities. Well that definitely means I'll be saving up for that new computer before getting Vue. One thing I did notice was there was quite a few different versions of Vue, what did you choose to use for that realistic landscaping?
I mean, art is in the eye of the beholder right? So as long as you feel like you're doing good overall, even if you see the mistakes, should indicate that you still like it.
I have some favourites that are your work, and I am simply amazed at the big horn trees and the beach one. I almost can't believe that it was possible to make that, which is why I am simply amazed. I hope if I continue to work in digital art that I get that good
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I use Vue 7 Infinite. But I started out with the much cheaper and simpler Vue 6 Pro Studio for starters. Different versions of Vue open different possibilities, Infinite can do everything that matters to the hobbyist. XStream is the only one higher up and it intergrates with other 3D programs and does all this really high-end stuff that I don't really need. Vue Pro Studio is kinda midway and the "casual user" will have everything they'd care about in that. The other versions are even more cheap and basic/limited. I guess the more you spend, the better version you get 
Well, good luck on your own. I sure had a hard time figuring all this out myself but there's a lot more learning materials today. Plus artists are nicer too - when I was new absolutely NONE of the artists I admired ever bothered responding like this. Surprising to think Elitism was much stronger on dA then than it is now. Chose a bad time to join I suppose
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Hey man thank you for taking the time to talk to me on here. If I get a job soon I'll seriously consider getting photoshop and possibly Vue. You really keep a high standard of awesomeness with your art, and I hope you continue to love making the stuff man.
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An alien desert is a good thing to conceptualize. What would it look like? I love the plant life here. It's utterly alien, with the exception of those pine-tree thingies. Great atmospheric effects as well!
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