Cupola view

[Hannes]

...and again something spacey...
This time no planetary rings. Just good old earth (although I didn't use earth textures).
Once again I had to render the parts separately, since objects far away from the origin don't render correctly. The view from the ISS is more or less correct. I placed the camera very close to the cupola. In a lot of NASA images from inside the ISS they used a wide angle lens, and so I used one as well.
Even though the ISS model is very detailed I noticed some not so smooth edges. But you know what? I don't care...

Postwork: rescaling, compositing, chromatic aberration and lens flare.

[Dune]

And a great render again! You are really taking off!

I do notice some pipes where the vertices are visible (not smooth enough normals), or perhaps that's how it should be?

[Hannes]

Thanks Ulco! Much appreciated.
Yes, I noticed this too. I guess it's not intended. I'm planning to rework this (huge!) model in the near future.

[mhaze]

Great stuff!

[RogueNZ]

Amazing planetary render!

[Hannes]

Thanks guys!!

[masonspappy]

That's a great image!  Maybe throw in one of those UFOs that people claim they see on live feeds from ISS?

[Hannes]

Thanks a lot!!   Great idea!

[zaxxon]

Another stunning image from near Earth orbit!  Excellent work.

[Jo Kariboo]

Your images are always excellent. Very well done once again, I particularly like the light and shadows on some shaded parts of the station. The reflected light effect is very realistic in these areas.

[Hannes]

Thanks a lot!! Since the ISS is rendered with the path tracer and the areas you described are in indirect light I had to increase the "Max paths per sample" to the highest value (144) to avoid noise, which resulted in higher rendertimes. But since it was a still image, it's OK. I could have tried playing with the Pixel noise threshold, but I was too lazy to try more settings...

[pclavett]

Really beautiful render ! Your earth surface looks quite good..... what did you use ? Procedurals or image textures

[Hannes]

Thanks Paul!! I used a high res image map and some procedurals as well.

[pixelpusher636]

I shutter to even think about the time involved in the earth alone. Wow, fantastic!

[Hannes]

Thanks Jay!! Actually once you know what you have to do, the earth is set up quite fast. It mostly depends on the quality of the maps you have and the color tinting to create the look you want to achieve.