Chris Foss was one of the great pioneers of sci-fi art, and his grand visions adorned many book covers and posters of the ’70s, and had a huge influence on his artist peers, as well as filmmakers.

For me, one of his most memorable and influential trademark styles, was of vast, organic and brightly coloured ships, covered in various cavernous intakes and protrusions, and speckled with the lights of hundreds of windows. Last month I demonstrated how one might go about modelling such a ship using Maxon’s Cinema 4D application, by introducing the basic necessary tools, and the procedures used to create an organic 3D ship of this kind. This month, I am going to show you how to use Cinema’s material/texture functions to bring that ship to life, as well as how to create and set up the sea and sky in the illustration above. Cinema 4D is a professional 3D package, but its power and sophistication are equally matched by its ease-of-use, friendly interface, and shallow learning curve compared to other programs in its class. If you have been wanting to delve a little further into the exciting possibilities of 3D within your sci-fi art endeavours, then this (and last month’s) tutorial could be a useful introduction for you. I use this package for 95% of my illustration and multimedia needs, and I know of a few very well-known sci-fi artists who have also added it to their artistic toolset.

From issue 07.