These are all test renders for a spot Blur did for the SciFi channel. The final piece looks a lot different then what you see here. As just a quick rundown of the plot, an asteroid falls from space, enters the atmosphere, and hits the earth in a desert. The asteroid is now quite small, and bursts open to reveal an alien pod. The pod sends out it’s slimy tentacles, and starts burrowing into the ground. The piece continues with all kinds of alien plants bursting from the ground, however this part was handled by other blur animators.

So we have the earth, which is really just a texture map applied to a sphere, and a lens flare for the sun.

We have the desert, that uses a displacement map for the main bump, and then two different textures were applied, one for the smoother rock above, and one for the rough pebbles in between. Clouds were done using Blur’s firestorm, the sun is a flare, the grass is sisyphus’ druid. The first desert is straight out of max...

...the second is after a fusion pass adding depth of field, blur, film grain, and a slight glow.

The third test is a close-up of the ground, passed again through fusion.

Then we have lots of tests for the pod. The basic asteroid shape that burst open is just an editable mesh I shaped and then meshsmoothed and textured, the organic pod is made using several displacement map layers to get the gooey center and the rock shell bits still attached. I animated these maps to allow the thing to move and breath. Path cylinder was used for the tentacles. Later the pod was changed to a biomechanical pod, which is just an editable mesh with meshsmooth applied, and a shellac material with several hilight layers. The pods were all originally designed by the almighty Chuck, who does a lot of cool concept work for blur.

Last we have 4 animated test shots, one of the asteroid going towards the earth (with particle system rock chunks falling off)...

Then the asteroid streaking towards earth (the smoke trail is Firestorm, and about 5 layers of particles and glowing elements)...

then the asteroid hits...

and it cracks open in a shower of rock to reveal the pod inside.

Watch for it on the SciFi channel!

All work above done at Blur Studio.