With the directive to create a unique alien scene, the recent Alienware Challenge spawned a superb collection of alien landscapes. In an underwater scene on an alien planet where metallic and semi-transparent organisms vie to survive, Lux Mortis depicts life in the dying light of a place unseen and unheard of by humans. London-based artist Steve Green takes us through the making of his Alienware Challenge entry which was awarded an Honorable Mention by the jury and the digital arts community on CGTalk.

After considering the Alienware Challenge brief, I decided on a portrait format, since my original interpretation had me envisioning something cavern-like, with the viewer looking up. This concept evolved to depicting a scene looking down into an abyss, but my plan to have the main crater act as a waterfall with light pouring down into this abyss didn't eventuate.

I'd decided to keep a fairly organic look throughout to avoid the impression of any structure being obviously artificial. The general color scheme of blues, purples and reds varied little over the duration of the contest, and became more desaturated over time to tone down the image.

The eggs and tendrils were included in the scene almost from the very beginning; the implementation of these elements that took a while to settle on. Since I had considerable freedom in designing their appearance, I experimented with different modeling techniques (mainly procedural), as this allowed me to quickly bash out concepts giving me ideas on how the image could develop.

The general concept was for the environment to go through a progression from light to dark, and that the light would be fluid substance that crystallizes as it darkened. Some of the original concepts included the pipes/tendrils with layers where the light was visible between the cracks of the solid material. I considered splitting the scene as if you were viewing different areas at different stages through a warp in space. I abandoned this idea, however, because I thought that imagery would carry better as an animation rather than a still.

This unused concept for a tendril incorporated a mixture of wireframe and additive transparency combined with a post volumetric effect