3d art

Modelling
How the elements were put together
5 hours
render time
Resolution:
2,500 x 1,406
Here I deployed another one of my favourite elements – cloud shadows. They
04 strengthen the spacial impact and – if placed correctly – help to create a focal
point for the eye. Volumetric lighting was turned on so that the Spectral 2 clouds cast some
nice shadows throughout the atmosphere.
After various tries with procedurally placed
05 EcoSystems, I decided to paint them by hand.
Consisting of Vue’s Plum Tree and two other kinds of small
shrubs, I painted an ecosystem to emphasise the weird
topography of the crater/vortex. Here you can see my very
simple setup and the final painted ecosystem.
I usually like to ‘underexpose’ a bit so no part of
06 my render gets overexposed. I rendered this with
Ambient Occlusion with the simple ‘final’ settings. Not very
spectacular, but I personally like to do a lot of tweaking in
Photoshop as I find that method much quicker.
A great thing about Vue is that it can render a layered Photoshop file, containing
07 useful passes and Alpha channels. This image shows the different layers I used to
‘mix down’ a version of the render for me to paint on. Left to right show: Diffuse, Shadow,
Reflection, Indirect Lighting and Atmosphere Gain channels activated step by step.
A lot of things happened
08 once I took the image into
Photoshop. First, I flipped the whole
render to make the composition
more readable. I replaced the water
with a photo I took and cranked up
the spec of the water surface to
boost realism. The background was
cleaned up and trees cloned to break
it up. Quite severe colour corrections
and some painted-in atmosphere
tweaks finished this step.
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