Rendering and Environment

At this stage, I had to decide upon an environment for the plane. I opted against a mid-flight scenario and decided to park the plane on an airstrip somewhere, which would let me show off more of the detail on it.

I chose to create a composited image, using pictures I took myself at the local airport which formerly served as a Canadian F104 Starfighter airbase. Some of the old hangars are still well preserved, and I found the perfect spot for the final shots. The limiting factor was the rather low-quality camera I had at my disposal, but in the end the results were satisfying enough. As a side note, I didn't put down any measurements, but rather took the photos guessing where the plane would be depending on my position (Fig.10 and Fig.11) – when assembling the cameras in Max later on, it turned out I was pretty damn accurate with my guesses, too!



Rendering was done with V-Ray, using a lightprobe I created at the airport to ensure realistic lighting. I added a weak direct light to enhance shadows on the ground, and after a bit of calibration and material testing, I rendered out the final images, each rendered at 1024 resolution and taking between 1:20 and 1:40 hours (Fig.12and Fig.17).