When my kids were small, at bedtime we had interactive “blimpship stories,” set in a steampunk world. I would set up the latest plot developments, each child would pick a character they wanted to focus on, and I would play the DM as we role-played for 15-30 minutes.

These stories grew amazingly complex and developed story arcs that lasted for years. For a while, the kids were pulling apart their Indiana Jones and Star Wars Lego sets in order to play scenarios from our bedtime stories. As they aged and their bedtime routine changed, they did more reading on their own, so our storytime together faded out.

But I’ve used our collaborative story environment as an inspiration to guide my Blender3D skills practice, having previously worked on details like control panels and smaller objects like a scout ship. This summer, I picked the goal of learning a new skill, which is implementing a huge, detailed environment. I put some extra attention to details in the bridge that’s visible in the opening sequence, but most of these details, such as the railings and the windows, are just textures applied to flat planes.

The people in this flyover are just cutouts, and of course they need work. I also need to render the volumetric lighting at a higher resolution in order for the spotlights to look less choppy. I can completely understand why 3D artists specialize (modeling, texturing, animating, lighting), and I am SO tempted to take this another step and import it into Unity, but for now I am forcing myself to finish up this summertime project and shift my attention to other tasks.