FROM THE COMMUNITY COLLECTION
Crater Factory
The idea for this piece came to me in April last year when I was still playing with Terragen. I had an "open field" render that was begging me to do something more with it. The actual work on the Factory began in November '07. I had to work mostly at night because of all the other things that I was "stumbling" over during daytime. Then came "q-bix"... and I put everything else on hold. Anyway, since January I kept modeling and re-modeling....and texturing. As always I like to create things on my own and this makes my job too slowly progressing at times. At the end (sooner or later) I'm happy with the results and share them to as much audience as possible. Cheers, guys! Now a little technical info. All the modeling, handmade UVs, lighting done in Maya. The textures were photos (off the net), which I modified to get them seamless when tiling and painted over in Photoshop. There are 50/50% drawn and procedural textures. The "sweetest" thing came when I had to match as acurate as I can the Terragen camera lens/point- and angle of view and the lighting in the environmental render. For the lighting I used one directional light (my sun) and Final Gather which seems very much optimized when rendering with Mental Ray. The maya scene took 47 min. at 2300x1500. Then I exported in *.tga (it has alpha) and cut-paste into the TG rend (this was done 90times till I get what I wanted :) PS has a counter for the layers). Finally I proceeded with the postwork, it includes the miner holes on the right, additional shadows to justify some models, snowflakes, dirt/small rocks on the ground, clouds (and smoke were modif. photos), foreground rock-textures. And that's pretty much it. I hope you'll what you see in the crater!
Comments 11
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WOW! The complexity of that model is UNBELIEVABLE! If you don't work for DAZ, you should! Great render too!
Beautiful. I think it has all been said already, so simply full marks then!
Fantastic This piece is so frackin' awesome. The detail, the atmosphere, just look incredible. As soon as I saw it I thought, WoW that could make an interesting game to play. What would you do there.. First person shooter? (Save the dolphins style?) Explorer adventure? (Find some artifact inside?) Puzzle (How to turn it on?)
Richter, I don't find it strange at all. All of us at one time as kids had things that must have held our attention or left some kind of impression with us. You have done an excellent job of bringing to life your memories. Also enjoyed your web site it was well done. I am doing research on building a web site and hope to have one before the year is out.
Thanks for the positive comments! @ Rashad - The smoke and the clouds are modified photos which I embeded in additional ps layers into the TG render. As usual I used the eraser tool with low opacity and flow percentage to slightly get the clouds/smoke transparent and blend with the TG sky (there wasn't any clouds in the tg sky btw). The final gather does miracles with the lighting when it is adjusted appropriately. I used incandescent hemisphere with something called "surface shader". It doesn't block my directional light which makes this shader usefull in such situations when I use hemispheres as light-sources for the final gather. @ FoxBoy - As the case with the clouds -- same here, only that eraser brush has to be much smaller for precise actions. @ Horo - I made a fan out of you, haven't I :) I'm kiddin'. Thanks for the nice remarks! @ Gat - The link that you pointed out turned really useful to me, thanks! There are a lot of talented artists and professionals there and I can learn a lot just by gazing at what they create. About this contest, I see they might have closed it already, because I can't seem to enter and post my factory. I'll try again... though there might be no time left. @ Connor - I was experimenting with custom monochrome 2D shapes to use as terrains in Terragen and rendered one of my previously planned views. I liked the results and rendered again, this time at 4000x3000, because I knew that picture this big can be swiftly utilized for further edit, be it within Photoshop or another paint package. That's the start. @ Render Man - Well, you might find it a little strange, but since I was a small kid I always had certain interest in factories and alike, moist twilight corridors with pipes, rusty cranes and such. So when I rendered my exerimental render in TG, my first thought was "This is exactly what I need to illustrate some old aircraft hangars or better yet a whole factory!" Then I had to come up with a good concept about what is this factory going to "produce" or recycle and if this is past, present or future, so this is it - something like a slightly sci-fi Ore Refinery built in a strange place with all the details I had imagined. I hope I answered the question :)
This piece demonstrates the many hours you eluded to in your description. I think it is simply amazing. I would like to know what inspired this piece of work if you don't mind me asking? I do allot of nature because I just love the out of doors.
This is amazing. A 5/5 from me. How did you start this picture?
. wow, impressive work man! Make sure to enter this for the contest at CGsociety: http://events.cgsociety.org/NVArt/02/
Now the landscape alone is beautiful. And the factory is so detailed. I always liked your works for your loving care of even the smallest things - like the railroad wagons lying around. Clouds and snow are excellent and the light outstanding. Even a 5/5 does not fully credit to this piece of work, but it has to suffice.
For sure, its def Pixar worthy. It pretty cool how well the buildings blinds into the snow.
Details! You do not skimp out on the details! I love what I'm seeing. It looks like a movie out of pixar or something. I really like the dreamy feel. Did you render the clouds in Maya or Terragen? I too have found final gather to render faster than I expected though I had never given it much thought. The color tinted lighting along with the contrast of direct sun and sky light intensities makes this image very pleasing to view. It feels cold, yet I do feel a slight warmth in the sunlight that works very well. You are an inspiration!