About the Sun, Earth, Moon Image


In case you haven't noticed, there is a prevalent picture throughout this site.  There's a bit of a story behind it.

First of all - NO! This is not a screenshot from the film.  I have to make that clear here because there are those who think this is from the film.  Believe it or not, some individuals copied the image off my website and put it on their own 2001 site or page with other screenshots from the film.  Whenever I've seen this, I've made attempts to inform the webmaster that it's okay to use the image, but it's a 3D rendering and not from the film. By the way, there's another, older version of this image that's from the old site. 

Both images were created primarily in software known as Lightwave 3D.  Lightwave is something I've used since its inception in the early 1990's.  

The opening alignment of the three heavenly bodies that's so striking in the film inspired me to create my own version.  It took several hours in Lightwave and Photoshop, but I was able to come up with something I was rather satisfied with.  The 4:3 image directly above came from that initial session.  I was just starting with my 2001 website at the time so for a while, that was the one and only image here.

Later, I revisited it, made a few tweaks with it, and came up with the 16:9 version that I now mostly use.  I like both images, but the newer one, (the one at the top of this page and the one you see in my other pages) is my preferred version as I like the stars and the contrast of the Moon a bit better.

Here are a couple of Lightwave screenshots to look over.



Well, much to my surprise, this little image definitely caught people's attention and it didn't seem to take a whole lot of time before it was all over the Internet on various 2001 sites and pages, not to mention personal sites. .


Not only that, not one but two publishers contacted me and asked me for the rights to the image. The image is now in two textbooks.



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