So, I decided to start blog here, at first I wanted to do it on Deviantart, but blogs there lack certain capabilities, and require to have premium account even to paste images in there -_- To make first post little more useful to anybode who'd read it (if anybody ever will :D ) I decided to make brief making-of about my latest artwork - "Steam-powered Factory", it was quite popular after all, even got daily deviation to my greatest surpirse.
This work started as a concept art for a game. At first I wanted to draw good old 2D art in photoshop, even started scribbling something, but then decided to try making concept art right away in 3D. So I switched to 3ds Max. It went quite well, so I decided to make full artwork with environment.
It turned up that someimes it is quite possible to create nice model without 2D sketch. As well as in drawing, firstly you start blocking in some simple object to get right basic shape, so at in the begining tank looked like that:
The rest of modelling process was pretty simple. I created some repeating parts like screws and gears, and started to add details. Basic principle of adding detail is to group smaller objects around bigger ones.
Hoses were created with spacing tool. It's nice thing, unless you don't need dynamic objects, spacing tool only duplicates objects along path, further changes to shape won't change object's positions.
At that point I hadn't decided to make anything but tank (or whatever you like to call this thing), so I started assigning materials.
I didn't have clear image of what I wanted to get in the end, so I just created some suitable metal materials, colored ones for big surfaces, and bare metal for screws, different parts etc. (I used V-Ray materials, by the way), here are some of them:
And here's the tank with materials. Actually, there are not many of them, enought to make parts look different, but to make it look as whole device.
After that I finally created surrounding factory, or warehouse, or garage, or whatever, just that metal environment, I didn't care about purposefullness, honestly :D There's nothing special about it, there's much less detail than in tank itself, as it is the emphasis of whole scene. Also, I was somewhat tired of this work and wanted it end it more quickly.
The final step was postproduction. Don't underestimate importance of this stage, it makes all the difference between rough render and finished image.
I separately rendered three layers: background, tank with platform, and foreground pipes, so I didn't have to make Z-depth pass, but just made color correction of different layers to create aerial perspective. Then I tweaked lighting a little with color dodge layers and added steam clouds with volume light.
That is basically it, I hope you will find somthing useful, though I'm not sure this article will be really helpful, but, this is just the beginning and I'll try to do my best in future.
This work started as a concept art for a game. At first I wanted to draw good old 2D art in photoshop, even started scribbling something, but then decided to try making concept art right away in 3D. So I switched to 3ds Max. It went quite well, so I decided to make full artwork with environment.
It turned up that someimes it is quite possible to create nice model without 2D sketch. As well as in drawing, firstly you start blocking in some simple object to get right basic shape, so at in the begining tank looked like that:
You see that initial idea was a little bit different, it was supposed to be transportation vehicle, so I had on idea of some kind of house attached to the hull, but then I dropped it because it was spoiling silhouette.
Hoses were created with spacing tool. It's nice thing, unless you don't need dynamic objects, spacing tool only duplicates objects along path, further changes to shape won't change object's positions.
I didn't have clear image of what I wanted to get in the end, so I just created some suitable metal materials, colored ones for big surfaces, and bare metal for screws, different parts etc. (I used V-Ray materials, by the way), here are some of them:
And here's the tank with materials. Actually, there are not many of them, enought to make parts look different, but to make it look as whole device.
After that I finally created surrounding factory, or warehouse, or garage, or whatever, just that metal environment, I didn't care about purposefullness, honestly :D There's nothing special about it, there's much less detail than in tank itself, as it is the emphasis of whole scene. Also, I was somewhat tired of this work and wanted it end it more quickly.
The final step was postproduction. Don't underestimate importance of this stage, it makes all the difference between rough render and finished image.
I separately rendered three layers: background, tank with platform, and foreground pipes, so I didn't have to make Z-depth pass, but just made color correction of different layers to create aerial perspective. Then I tweaked lighting a little with color dodge layers and added steam clouds with volume light.
That is basically it, I hope you will find somthing useful, though I'm not sure this article will be really helpful, but, this is just the beginning and I'll try to do my best in future.
That's awesome man. I can't believe it only has 4 materials, although when you really stop and count them it's clearly true.
ReplyDeleteActually there are 6 or 7 seven materials, image from material editor does not show all of them. But, yeah, it doesn't change a thing, everything's quite simple =)
DeleteAmazing work, beautiful detail
ReplyDeleteLou