http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/ chuckcarter's gallery of images en-us 120 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/594459

An illustration done for the 2008 January/Feb Wired Magazine - details the areas where various countries are staking claims to huge undersea tracks of land.

The illustration was done in Modo using high res blue marble data to make the illustration. ]]> Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:09:28 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/420352

This image represents the before and after of an illustration done on Saturday - the last one for the book I've been doing for two years. It is an alien world with some pretty obvious geologic features (which make it a lot less realistic) that the students studying with the book can point out and identify. The sketch is what I started with - which was drawn by the author and the bottom render is the raw 3D render done out of Lightwave. It includes displacement maps and a hand painted texture derived from many Google Earth screen grabs and an assortment of planetary images maps from our solar system as wel as a lot of photoshop brush work. ]]> Sun, 22 Oct 2006 18:08:12 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/417671

Illustration showing the results of water dissolving a limestone cave system. 4 hours. All Lightwave, Illustrator and Photoshop - which is pretty evident once you look at the hi-res file and see all my color scribbles over the LW rendering. All I had was a morning to do this in - and it's one of three I did in a day. Gotta love publishing clients! ]]> Sun, 15 Oct 2006 18:32:30 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/414052

Done in Lightwave from a greyscale Digital Elevation Map. The key to making this work as an informational graphic was to literally redo the landsat surface texture and then map it on the 3D displaced model. It's another in my textbook illustration series. Not real sexy - but a challenge to make some pretty bad color data read as an illustrated surface.]]> Fri, 06 Oct 2006 18:04:52 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/413740

This is an illustration for a college geology textbook. One of about 2000 for this particular book where I'm lead illustrator and a co-author. It took about 4 hours to do from start to finish. I use zBrush to create and detail out the terrain with the flat plain tool, and rough out the rocks and avalanche shape... then I use Lightwave to boolean it out of a block and add a rough texture to the surface. Then after setting up lighting and doing a hi-res render (this is a two column illustration - 5 inches across) I bring the final render into Photoshop to further detail the image up to illustration quality.]]> Fri, 06 Oct 2006 01:33:14 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/413737

Another textbook illustration - 3 and a half hours to do. This one on avalanche debris from a landslide. This is for the same geology textbook - I know, not a sexy, science fiction block buster - but it pays the bills! And actually these are fun and challenging to do. There has to be a lot of information in these block illustrations - but they also have to read fast and be very easy to understand what's happening so as to not lose the reader.]]> Fri, 06 Oct 2006 01:21:42 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/410764

I've always enjoyed the idea of a derelict spaceship - I mean who in here hasn't? So I had some fun and did a little thing for my own ongoing personal project - Murdok's World and a 100 Kilometer wrecked spaceship. ]]> Thu, 28 Sep 2006 16:54:16 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/410876

Just working on a couple of pieces for fun - trying some new color schemes. Modeling in Photoshop, Illustrator and Bryce - brought into Photoshop and tweaked further.]]> Thu, 28 Sep 2006 22:31:36 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/404513

A concept piece done in Bryce and Photoshop - lots of mixing of both programs]]> Wed, 13 Sep 2006 15:55:36 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/404498

A quick protoype image/concept done in Bryce. ]]> Wed, 13 Sep 2006 15:27:57 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/403019

This image is from a Westwood Studios Game, Dune Emperor. It was a background matte painting and was made with Lightwave and Bryce - mostly Bryce. I've since taken the models I built and have been creating a new scene or two experimenting with composition and color. I still use Bryce for some things because I can create highly complex objects very quickly and allows for a slightly painterly look and feel - something I've tried in Lightwave and Vue 5 Infinite with mixed results. This is great for quick prototyping of scenes, color schemes and compositional sketches. I like to work fast and this technique (the complex models took about 20 minutes to build using greyscale images I churned out in Illustrator and Photoshop) mixed with some tweaking on lighting, color, textures and scene compostion took about 4 hours to make. (give or take a few hours to render some hi-resolution tests).]]> Sat, 09 Sep 2006 16:26:39 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/403703

A concept sketch for a now dead game. What else is new. Anyway - I really enjoy it when I can just let loose in Painter and get into the watercolor tools. This was sketched out totally in Painter from beginning to end. The tree was designed to be the home for all sorts of small critters - to be used in the game in all kinds of ways.]]> Mon, 11 Sep 2006 16:25:08 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/403745

Taken from 30 meter Digital Elevation Map (DEM) data with a matched and color retouched landsat image drapped over it. Pretty simple stuff, just the thing you need in a textbook. I'm pretty lucky in that I've got a partner who has access to DEM and Bathymetric data and texture sets from all over the world - great for building very accurate terrains and real locations.]]> Mon, 11 Sep 2006 18:08:51 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/403740

Taken from the same Digital Elevation Map (DEM) data with a geologic map drapped over it. Pretty simple stuff, just the thing you need in a textbook. I'm pretty lucky in that I've got a partner who has access to DEM and Bathymetric data and texture sets from all over the world - great for building very accurate terrains and real locations.]]> Mon, 11 Sep 2006 18:04:24 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/403453

This is one of the illustrations for the book - investigating the formation of rifting geology (where plates split and form new continents or valleys). The idea is to let the student look at the image and try to figure out what's going on... a sort of visual test. While these images appear simple to begin with, they hold a wealth of information like the basalt (lava) flows at the top right of the large rift. This tells students of the deep nature of this kind of a rift - deep enough that lava pushes up and out in a huge area. Anyway - this is another 4 to 5 hour piece. zBrush, Lightwave and Photoshop. (And Illustrator for line work) were used to make this one.]]> Mon, 11 Sep 2006 00:27:41 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/403202

This Babylon 5 painting started life as a concept by Netter Digital, was then disected in Adobe Illustrator to create and refine all of the various shapes/templates I would use to model in FormZ. The final render and scene was created in Electric Image. It then went into Photoshop where I added trees and some rough details and finally into After Effects where additional elements were added and animated to bring it to life. Art director was George Johnsen. ]]> Sun, 10 Sep 2006 07:12:22 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/403406

This is an illustration from a new geology textbook I'm co-authoring and illustrating for McGraw-Hill. it's an example of how simple environmental elements can influence the weathering of a landscape - a small landscape in this case. This piece was done in about 5 hours - since deadlines are so rushed to finish some 2000 illustrations total, I've learned a lot of shortcuts - especially as I near the end of the book. The object was started in zBrush, and was booleaned out of a block in Lightwave, textured and rendered and then quickly painted over in Photoshop to make it look less like it was computer generated. ]]> Sun, 10 Sep 2006 21:09:30 +0000 http://chuckcarter.cgsociety.org/gallery/402870

This is an image from Westwood Studios Game, Dune Emperor. It was a background matte painting and was made with Lightwave and Bryce. I've since taken the models I built and have been creating a new scene or two experimenting with composition and color. ]]> Sat, 09 Sep 2006 03:43:54 +0000