"Just after the noon prayer in the city of Hereke-Taif on the world of Arabyj'did, Representatives of the Emir await the arrival of a visiting potentate..."
This image was inspired by some paintings by artist Ralph McQuarrie, who did a lot of work for George Lucas on the original Star Wars trilogy. Specifically, the buildings in this image were inspired by his depictions of Alderaan and its architectural progeny, Cloud City on Bespin, as shown in The Illustrated Star Wars Universe (Bantam/Spectra 1995, paintings by McQuarrie, text by Kevin Anderson). The clean curved styles lent themselves well to the futuristic/Islamic feel I wanted.
The shuttle is a ship I built from scratch in RayDream 5.5. The enhanced exporters of the new 'interim' version make it much simpler to import a RayDream model into Bryce, with all textures intact - a feat which had stumped me up until then! Imported objects in Bryce 4 themselves retain much more information about mesh names etc. than previous versions, making them much easier to 'tweak'...
(Notice also the ubiquitous 'eggtanks' parked on the apron and flitting around the city; exemplifying the 'recycling' philosophy!)
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