Playing with some new toys. The starships were made in Ray Dream Studio 5.5, using the Blubble metaballs modeller to shape the hull. After making the basic shape I converted it to a mesh object, cut it in half lengthways with a Boolean operation, made a symmetrical duplicate and then Boolean union'ed the two halves back together so that I would have one, symmetrical object. I then added a bulbous shape at the rear of the craft, and two trailing pods. The whole was converted to a single mesh object, set for parametric mapping, and exported as a Wavefront OBJ file.

This was then imported into Painter 3D SE for texture mapping. The output UV map from Ray Dream contained some overlapping regions so paint in some regions of the image got splurged onto others. The hull texture of these ships is basically just an extended doodle. Note the use of a reflection map (also made in Painter 3D) for the cockpit glass.

The object file was then imported into Bryce 4 and reunited with its maps. The background to the image consists of three large terrains, and a rising sun set with a larger than usual disk and a good dose of horizon illusion. Bryce 4's new Sky Lab proved useful for tweaking the atmosphere to get the effect I wanted.

Not a great image (and "Hey Ma, look! It's another spaceship-and-sunset scene! Doesn't the guy ever do anything else?"), but it was a learning exercise.