![9s3rie2ztk.jpg](https://img.esteem.ws/9s3rie2ztk.jpg)

Lately I've been getting really into the Joe Rogan podcasts where he has people on talking about their theories and evidence for ancient civilizations. Really interesting stuff. I wouldn't have imagined that the scientific evidence for this has come as far as it has. Like there is a pretty compelling argument for the actual existence for Atlantis. 

Also I knew that there were things we didn't know about the construction of say the pyramids, but I'd never read about the specifics or understood exactly how crazy some of that stuff is. 

Anyway that was a little bit of the inspiration behind this image. Just a little though, other than the fact that it has one really big building among a bunch of smaller buildings it's mostly a generic sci-fi city hehe.

Making this is a combination of 3D and 2D techniques. I was reminded about this cool little app, JDisplacement by an artist I just found the other day here on Steem @francescomai(cool stuff over there, you should check him out) This app basically produces greeble and has a few controls to be able to define how you want the greeble to look. I've got a post somewhere back in the archives where I was talking about greeble, but I was doing a lot of experimenting of making my own. This app is pretty cool because it's really fast and easy as well as being procedural.(Just sliders to make adjustments), but yea that was the majority of the 3D part, then there's a few other kitbashed buildings and parts in there to break it up.

After that I brought it into After Effects, then Photoshop to finish up.

Here's some of the 3D passes
![hc4ivo2t72.jpg](https://img.esteem.ws/hc4ivo2t72.jpg)
This is called the depth pass, and I use it to add atmosphere.

![krcv6lrbvt.jpg](https://img.esteem.ws/krcv6lrbvt.jpg)
This is a normals pass, and I can use it to select different directional normals on the surfaces, basically it allows me to relight the image if needed.

![c1qsjfqryy.jpg](https://img.esteem.ws/c1qsjfqryy.jpg)
And this is a material ID pass which separates the objects based on the material each one has applied, in this case I can use it to add further variety in the greeble, it's subtle, but it's there.

So after a bit of tweaking and color correction in After Effects I went into Photoshop and just hand painted the clouds, the tiny flying cars and a tiny bit of touchups to some of the greebly parts to break up the repetition.

That's about it for that, in other news, I won the blocktrades contest! I was totally NOT expecting that. When I saw that there were 200+ entries I'd pretty much written off any chance of winning. But when I read how the winners were chosen(randomly from everyone who qualified) that made a bit more sense, although I typically have terrible luck when it comes to things of chance, maybe I've hit a new era in my life and should take another shot at gambling :D... nah.

I'll be getting back to my Quickstart to Steem series tomorrow talking about account creation. Thanks for looking peeps!