Gimpdome

Just wanted to see if I could recreate the 'Nexus' image in Art of Illusion as I first did in Bryce. Again, this isn't 'polished' as I don't know how to use all of AOI's settings and the render quality was set to medium so I could see the results before going to bed, but you get the idea.  Right click on the image and choose View Image for a better view.



I made the central globe a metallic blue as I couldn't get the glass texture to work like I wanted with the 3 crossbars....too much distortion. 

At any rate, if you're interested, I'm attaching the AOI file for you to play with, it's at the bottom of this post in a zip file called Nexus. Just extract the contents to your desktop and then open AOI.  Go to File Menu > Open to access the template.  I guess you can't just double-click on the AOI file to automatically open it up.

When you open it up, you'll see a large gray cube and nothing else.  That cube is actually 6 cubes formed into the shape of one large cube.  Each cube has a mirrored surface (couldn't get AOI to map the inside of one cube with a mirror like I can in Bryce, so I improvised!)  To see what's going on inside of the big cube (again, the 6 cubes), just right click on any or all of the cube objects in the Objects Window on the right side of the screen and choose Hide Selection.  You can always turn them back on later.  To check out the settings for the textures/materials go to the Scene Menu > Textures...(or Materials).

BTW, this render took 20 minutes to complete.  So, if you decide to render one for yourself, make sure you get some popcorn and go watch a movie!

Let me know if you have any questions.

Art

Yeah, based on Darth's past work and comments regarding Blender, I suspected this wouldn't be on y'alls radar. 

Hopefully posting stuff from the various products will pique the curiosity of folks enough to experiment a bit.  Of course, it may do just the opposite and cause them to stay away...

I do agree.  The problem with Wings is there's no rendering interface....you have to use a separate program to render.  As far as a modeler, it's fast!  But, if you're like me, you like to do this with one program as much as possible.  And, since AOI has added the polygon mesh editor (it was originally a trimesh modeler---still does that, btw), it puts it above Wings in my book.      Plus, you can lathe, skin, boolean, array, etc. One day I'll definitely go back and try Blender, but for now I'll give AOI a test drive and see what comes of it.

Oh, I completely understand.  No misunderstanding here.