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Adding a dome to a set is relatively easy - create a sphere primitive, size it to cover, and play with the texture and transparency/opacity until you like the looks.
https://www.daz3d.com/space-base appears to have basic interiors and is appropriate for worlds with hostile atmospheres.
The only content I have ever produced are a couple of free texture sets. Making a spacecraft or base is way beyond my current capabilities.
Please let us know if this works. It looks like it might also work for chambers in the https://www.daz3d.com/starship-astra
Good point, namfluak.
The fact is I'm a complete novice at this CG modeling/texturing/rendering jazz (could you tell?), and still getting my toes wet. Guess it's time to roll up my sleeves & figure out how to make a sphere primitive look like a geodesic outer (protective) dome or, say, a translucent Spectra-reinforced inflated (inner) pressure dome. Or e.g. a water-filled double dome for protection against solar flares & cosmic rays on a planet or planetoid that doesn't have an atmosphere.
It can all be done, I know, I was just hoping to buy rather than do.
Here's a real quick and dirty of the base with a dome. If I were to continue with this, I'd add a torus primitive where the sphere hits the ground and use a concrete shader on it. and maybe another pair of torus primitives just inside and outside the spere on top of the 'concrete footer' to serve as 'anchors'. And as this was just a quick test, I grabbed a glass shader - I know I've got suitable plastic, but I'm past-due for supper . . .
Figures - I'm in a hurry, so the upload fails . . .
I'm pretty sure there's at least one Airlock in the store, too, plus you can crib various pieces from other stuff.
You can find a honeycomb texture here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=honeycomb+texture&tbm=isch&imgil=Y3nBHv8Q7fKxhM%3A%3BqZ3VyXd-1i7cBM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fzarodas.deviantart.com%252Fart%252FHoneycomb-texture-1-624072132&source=iu&pf=m&fir=Y3nBHv8Q7fKxhM%3A%2CqZ3VyXd-1i7cBM%2C_&usg=__xhBw9DliJrFZJ53_PfoQPqHHlDw=&biw=1920&bih=901&ved=0ahUKEwi0vcPNz7zTAhXFvRoKHVU-AJcQyjcILQ&ei=MLD9WLTlIcX7atX8gLgJ#imgrc=Y3nBHv8Q7fKxhM:
It is by zarodas at Deviant Art (I found it on the internet).
The texture is on a transparent background so you could simply apply it to your glass dome... that might give an interesting effect. You can use the UV scales in the Surfaces tab to scale to give the desired effect, or you could do that in a photo-editing program like Photoshop (there are also free programs like Paint.net), try adding a drop-shadow to give the impression of depth to the lines.
Have fun playing ... look forward to seeing some of your ideas come to fruition.
Thanks for all the helpful suggestions, comments, and advice! If I manage to put together something I'm not ashamed of, I'll be sure to post and/or share it.
Among other things, I see I need to get better acquainted with Daz Studio's built-in tools and capabilities (that's obvious), and I need to re-think my approach to CG graphics & rendering in general.
As a long-time RPG fan (Skyrim was my most recent addiction, Morrowind my first true love), I still tend to think in terms of cells and cell loads, where every element in a particular scene or area is present though not necessarily visible. This is not only superfluous for a CG render, it's virtually impossible. Impractical, anyway. Time to start thinking in terms what the camera will see, and choosing only those elements needed for a particular scene. For example, when I played around with Bethesda's various construction kits I didn't have the luxury of simply slapping in a background anywhere I wanted one: it wouldn't play in-game. Well, now I have that luxury (and many others), so yeah, maybe I'm beginning to see the expanded possibilities of limiting my P.O.V.
Much to think about, much to learn, and tons o' fun. As Tim Robbins (if my aging memory serves) once said, "It's never too late to have a happy childhood."
[later edit: Damn, my memory did fail me. It was Tom not Tim Robbins. I like that quote so much I decided to add it as my siggy. Words to live by (or take heart from), seems to me. ]
In case anyone else is looking for similar ideas and/or content, I just stumbled across this https://www.daz3d.com/the-modular-lounge.
Bury it in a hillside overlooking, say, Valles Marineris, open everything to let in the most spectacular view this side of Saturn's rings, and it could form the basis of a 3rd-generation Martian habitat for the ultra-rich.
[ edit/afterthought: Slap a dome on the plateau above, connect it with a sloping sci-fi-type corridor, and voila: a sunroom-slash-garden space to relieve all those 'earth' tones in the view windows. ]
Very basic. The two round buildings each have the base divided into 3 areas (visible from the outside) and a non-functioning central core. One's got a big room on top too. They feel more like they're meant to be shown through the windows from outside.
The long quanset hut is just one big room inside, but feels more like it's designed with interior shots in mind. Including rafters and signs, etc.
DzFire, in his Nurnies, Parts, and Pieces Vol 2, has a geodesic sphere; as well as a lot of pieces for adding detail.
Thanks, I missed that. My search on 'geodesic' didn't produce any results on this or any other relevant site. If the dome could be subdivided (i.e. smaller panes/partitions suitable for big structures) it might be just the ticket for what I have in mind. Otherwise I may have to settle for net-reinforced inflatable domes, or *gulp* tackle making my own large-scale geodesic dome. The details look well worth acquiring, and even a small geodesic dome could have its uses.
Editorial side note: I'm glad to see that this thread has sparked some interest even though it's a little off the beaten (well-beaten, IMHO, in fact beaten half to death) sci-fi track. As I said in my 1st post, there's plenty of cartoony/B-movie-grade content available, and very little of the kind that some of us seem to want but are too lazy and/or inept (guilty on the 2nd count, and maybe the 1st) to create...
Cheers, eh?
Thank you thistledownsname, it is good to know that the Space Base has basic interiors. Space Base and the New Colony may be my go to options for colonies on other worlds. I will probably do a little kit bashing from other sets for solar panels, power plants, defensive weapons, and such.
I like that idea. You could also put the modular lounge in a hillside or cliff, then put the space base on the top of the cliff. Put some of the Antares or other spacecraft interior scenes inside the hill/cliff, and connect them all with corridors for a large base or colony. Stonemason's sci-fi bedroom and crew quarters would fit in pretty well, with windows looking out of the cliff face.
I find images posted of what people have in mind to be the best way to trigger ideas and possibilities.
and as far as carrots goes, actually buying during intro will let the PA know its what people want and need. I'll try making any particualr genre of product once, but if it doesn't clear a certain threshold to justify the time and work that went into it, I will not make something like that again. It just simply a business decision.
"I find images posted of what people have in mind to be the best way to trigger ideas and possibilities.
and as far as carrots goes, actually buying during intro will let the PA know its what people want and need. I'll try making any particualr genre of product once, but if it doesn't clear a certain threshold to justify the time and work that went into it, I will not make something like that again. It just simply a business decision."
Absolutely, FirstBastion, which is why I started this thread: hoping that other sci-fi freaks share my feeling that a big chunk of the hypothetical future seems to have gone AWOL. To judge by the comments I'm not alone; but whether there's enough interest to justify any kind of effort to fill the gap, only you (and other PAs, of course) can decide.
I'll see what I can find in the way of suggestive (meaning evocative, not prurient
) images of the sort of content I have in mind, and I urge my fellow sci-fi freaks to do the same. With a little luck we'll all more or less agree, and with a lot of luck you'll look at 'em and say "Shucks, I could knock that off in an afternoon!" Yeah, well, here's hoping.
Thanks for weighing in, FirstBastion, your attitude makes perfect sense: after all, this is your bread & butter. For what it's worth, I'll even commit to a pre-buy—sight unseen—if you decide that this kind of content is worth your while.
Cheers, eh?
All right, here are some images that suggest the sort of content I'd like to see more of. More to follow, if anyone can stand it...
Some cool pics here. there are plenty of possibilities.
I've been doing some thinking on some of this (probably too much thinking . . .)
First, the environmental suit (AKA "spacesuit") - virtually everything sold here at DAZ is designed to kill the wearer by suffocation within 5 minutes of putting on the helmet or closing the faceplate. I don't remember seeing anything that included some form of portable atmosphere. The PLSS used on the lunar missions weighed 84 pounds and was good for up to 8 hours in the final version; this is pretty heavy (and plain bulky) for planetary use. So we'll probably have to accept 'some magic happens here' - BUT - there still needs to be some kind of backpack/fanny pack/bottle setup on the suit. And it would be nice to see some type of umbilical connection that could attach to a support unit on/in the vehicle or the exterior of the habitat or work camp.
Second - vehicles. Will probably be electric (if you con't breathe the air, it probably won't support combustion either). Tesla has shown that batteries will work for small (dune buggy/lunar rover type) to midsize (mid-range SUV) type vehicles. These can be charged from solar arrays, geothermal, wind, or nuclear generators. Fuel cells won't be viable without readily available power and water but would be more easily transported initially than battery power. In any case, the vehicles need to have seating appropriate to the suit atmosphere hookup (room for the air bottles/backpack) if the passengers are exposed (dune buggy again) or a suitable airlock setup. Larger vehicles may need some form of nuclear power.
In The Case For Mars, Zubrin favors plain old internal combustion engines fueled by liquid methane & LOX, both of which have extremely high power densities (i.e. power-to-weight and power-to-volume ratios). IC engines themselves have very high power-to-weight ratios (a 50 kW engine might weigh 50 kg) and could be used for other things besides propulsion, e.g. to power generators, drilling equipment, etc. Silane (SiH4) could be produced on Mars to use as a rocket fuel for planetary-scale exploration and transportation. Silane has the outstanding advantage that it will burn in a CO2 atmosphere, which means you don't have to drag the oxidizer along. This would yield specific impulses in the 1,000-second range, as opposed to the 350 to 450-second range of present-day rockets.
As for portable atmospheres, high-strength materials (approaching the theoretical maximum) could contain gases at many times the pressure that's currently possible. The gas inside would weigh more than the container, which would make for very compact and long-lasting 'air' supplies. Or we could have a miracle, of course.
IF metallic hydrogen is possible, and IF it's metastable (IE: once created, stable under normal conditions, like diamonds), it would be revolutionary for rocketry...
But that's 'if'
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/doubts-cloud-claims-of-metallic-hydrogen/
Heck, for sci-fi purposes we could almost take metallic hydrogen as a given if necessary. Innocent until proved guilty, sort of like swampy, steamy Venus.
Here are some more suggestive images I culled from countless tons of dross. Some artists' so-called conceptions are just plain ludicrous, for instance a space elevator cable that resembles a twisted-strand ship's hawser. I mean really, why even bother if you don't have a clue what you're doing?
An idea, regardless of how ludicrous it may seem at first, is necessary before anyone can move forward on creation. I'm not sure why a space elevator cable sounds ludicrous, as I believe anything with more rigidity would probably break under the incredible rotational stress, whereas a very thick cable would still allow an elevator to run along it.
-- Walt Sterdan
Out of interest, MIT and NASA collaborated and came up with the Flexible Biosuit. The figure hugging suits aren't that far off the mark, and are less exposed to micromeoteorite decompression.
There were a couple of science articles and an editorial or two in Analog back in the late 70s or early 80s to the extent that the ultimate suit is human skin, with appropriate reinforcement at the genitalia and abdomen, if there was a good way to get a seal for the helmet.
It doesn't have to be round - think carbon-fiber strap (or equivalent), maybe 2 to 4 mm thick and half a meter wide, and as many side by side as needed.
LOX and methane works just fine - if you can generate the LOX on-site. Not such a good fit if you have to import it. Mayhap if you bomb the surface with a few chunks of ice from Saturn's rings to provide water (thinking Mars here).
If there is a source of Di-Hydrogen Monoxide, you have yet another option to fuel an ICE.
I'm trying to remember, isn't the elevator in Sir Arthur C. Clarke's Fountains of Paradise made in this way, from flat straps?
I think so. Also used in a comic (Hammer Locke, IIRC) and another that came out at the same time as Clarke's.
The late Charles Sheffield, a physicist and sci-fi writer, considered the problem of a space elevator (in The Web Between the Worlds) at around the same time Clarke wrote Fountains of Paradise. The reason a twisted (i.e. a rope-style) cable would never even be considered is that it's much weaker than straight bundles of e.g. graphite whiskers, monocrystalline metals, buckytubes, or what have you. Regardless of the material used, the thing would weigh millions and perhaps billions of tons and (for Earth, anyway) would require materials at or near the theoretical limits of strength. So twisted cable is definitely a non-starter. [edit/afterthought: And so is anything woven, since fibers under extreme stress cut one another, reducing ultimate strength. Fine for securing a load on a flatbed trailer, but not for a space elevator.)
Re: methane, it could easily be synthesized on Mars provided a source of hydrogen was available, whether imported from elsewhere or mined from permafrost (or drilled for by, say, a methane-and-LOX-powered rover).
Remembering that we are discussing "hard" scifi, the idea of metallic hydrogen being stable (or metastable) is highly unlikely, sorry. To become metallic the covalent bonds between each pair of hydrogen atoms, in hydrogen gas, must break so that the hydrogen nuclei (single protons) can form a matrix with the then free electrons. If this can be achieved then enormous pressure or gravitational force would be required. As soon as the pressure is released the protons would pair up with electrons again and hydrogen atoms would then pair up to make the more stable hydrogen molecules. The comparison with carbon forming diamond is not valid since in diamond carbon has still got 4 covalent bonds (to other carbon atoms) and it is the physical "infinite" tetrahedral structure which makes diamond so stable and hard. However even diamonds will burn under the right conditions, just like coal.
Regarding human skin being the ultimate environment suit, this is only true if the environment is Earth Standard atmosphere and only true for humans, as it has evolved to be (whales with human skin would not last long). Put unprotected human skin under low pressure conditions and capilliaries start to burst! Sorry, but human skin is fit for Earth atmosphere only! Anywhere else and it will not be so fit!