3d art

Character
Lighting the girl
Creating the ambience of the scene
Three lights were added with ray-traced shadows
09 using Photometric Light. The lighting was created to give
a backlit effect. The light in the back left was made the strongest;
it is an image of the backlight. The two other lights were used to
brighten up the foreground of the image, as it was too dark
otherwise. They provide fill-in lighting.
The camera was
10 set up inside the
church model, focusing on the
girl, with the church window in
the background. The HDRI
map was made using
Panorama Exporter. This map
was then put on the sphere
model. This map was also
used for reflections when
rendering with mental ray.
mr Photographic
11 exposure control was
used (in Environment and
Effects). The light and shade of
the image were adjusted with
the image control. With backlit
images, it’s very easy for the
foreground to become too
dark. Even though a couple of
front lights were used, the
backlit light was permitted to
blow out the highlights to
produce a volumetric effect.
48 hours
render time
Resolution:
4,336 x 3,000
Four individual
13 render layers: volume
light for the background,
highlights on the fine facial
hair, the girl and background
of the image were output and
composited in Photoshop. The
final adjustments made to the
depth of field were output with
the lens filter using a ZMAP
file. The background was
already out of focus because
it is distant from the viewer.
The volume light
12 is set to the backlight.
Volumetric light is an effective
means to producing an airy
feeling. To edit it back in
Photoshop, the rendering was
done as a Monochrome map
file and details tweaked to
improve the depth of field.
Modelling
the figure
From the start,
I wanted to base the
central focus of the
image around the
serene girl as much as
possible. Considerable
attention was needed to
create the model’s face,
as I concentrated on
getting the balance of
eyes, nose, mouth and
even the length of the
eyelashes, just right. To
give your character the
most realistic hair at the
rendering stage, set the
Sampling Quality filter
in mental ray to the
maximum. If you want
to shorten the rendering
time, consider using a
third-party plug-in,
though, if you’re happy
to wait, even the
standard Hair/Fur
functions can produce
impressive results.
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