The Making of… Catch Me If You Can

 The Making Of...  Comments Off
Mar 232011
 

Had a few ‘how did you do thats” so here it is :)

SETTING UP

First thing I did was make a ‘wavy sea cube’ in Hexagon.  Nothing too fancy or complicated.  Exported as .3DS and imported into Vue.  I experimented with several water materials, starting with Vue’s ‘default’ and in the end I used ‘Calm Vyrnwy’ from my Water Materials 2 pack.

I set up the camera as shown above

I modified a standard terrain in the Terrain Editor.  Terrain resolution was increased to 1024×1024
I created a larger terrain for the distant ground and added Quadspinner’s Rock Z (Marine) material to both terrains

I made a couple of Hyper Terrains and placed them as shown above.  They have a sandstone texture with displacement.  I also added a small green ecosystem to the HT on the right which is further back in the scene.  I unchecked ‘Decay Near Foreign Objects’ so that the greenery would also be populated under the water – even if it is barely visible!!.

3 spotlights were placed around the scene as shown above.  All with a caustic light gel applied and given a wide spread and the power set to 180.   A further volumetric light was added which is highlighted in red above.  This had a narrower spread (17.5) and was placed out of camera view inside the water object directed into the scene.  The narrow spread was to keep the rays INSIDE the water.

 

To give the illusion of light rays penetrating the water, I made this in Photoshop and used it as an Alpha Plane, placing it just in front of the first Hyper Terrain.  I bumped up the Diffuse and Ambience of the material to 100%.

In the background I put a procedural terrain to the right and a standard terrain way back to the left.  A flock of birds was added, and a couple of layers of clouds, using  Dick Scherzinger’s White Magic. A few underwater plants were added either side, just in front of the camera.

ATMOSPHERE  SETTINGS

 

 

END

 Posted by at 10:28 pm

The making of…….Unauthorised Drainage

 The Making Of...  2 Responses »
Feb 282011
 

People are always sending me interesting photos. I received one a few days ago and as usual, my mind wandered into Vue mode. Could I make this in Vue? Well it seems I could and it was very simple to do….

Original photo

So…the obvious solution was boolean.  But, a standard cube / sphere boolean gives this result

Standard Boolean operation

There’s a hole but it has a hard edge.  I want a smooth, soft edge.

So,  go back and undo the boolean group.  Instead, make the cube and sphere a metablob.

Metablob

But that’s not right either.   The fix?  Easy!

Select the sphere only and then go to object properties.  By default the effect is set to ‘additive’ – change this to ‘subtractive’

Set the sphere effect to subtractive

Now the edges are smooth

Smooth edges

I made the water object large enough for the scene and positioned the sphere part of the metablob close to the camera (but not too close)

Water Object

For the main water material I started with ‘Tropical Water’ and then altered it considerably.  Here are Colour, bump and transparency settings

Colour, bump and transparency

Here is a view of the function editor.  As seen on the right of the screenshot, I also added Quadspinner’s “Shimmerwind” metanode.

Function editor

I used the same material for the ‘hole’ but added an extra layer :

Transparency tab

Function editor for additional layer

THE REMAINDER OF THE SCENE

I used just one procedural terrain mixing fractal with Geo Control 2

A blend of Variable Roughness fractal with a Geo Control 2 exported 16bit TIFF

I tilted the terrain toward the camera and placed it to cover the edges of  the water object.

Terrain position

 

The terrain has a rocky base material and I added an ecosystem with variable density and scaling.   (dynamic population was used)

I loaded a small trawler and positioned it on the edge of the hole and tipped it so that it looked like it was just about to fall in…

Trawler

Finally, the atmosphere settings :

Lighting tab

Clouds - I started with 'Thick Cumulus' layer and made adjustments as shown

Sky, fog and haze settings

POSTWORK

In Photoshop, I selected the area around the hole and used the motion blur set at 90 degrees

I then added a new layer. I used my colour picker and chose a light part of the water.  Using a 9px brush with the settings shown, I drew a line of dots along the edge of the hole

I used the smudge and blur brushes to drag the dots down to look like falling water

I then added another new layer and painted in a few splashes around the front edge of the trawler

I further enhanced these 2 layers adding highlights and shadows.

The finished image

 

END

 Posted by at 1:52 am

The Making Of….Buildwas Abbey

 The Making Of..., Vue  Comments Off
Feb 182011
 

NEW – I’ll be adding details of how some of my scenes were made.  Starting with ‘Buildwas Abbey’

The Making of “Buildwas Abbey” Created in Vue 9 Infinite

The Abbey model is available for purchase from Cornucopia 3D

The Original photograph taken on a visit to Buildwas Abbey, Shropshire, England in 2002
Step 1 – The abbey model and terrain

First thing done was load the abbey model into Vue, rotating it slightly until it resembled the abbey in my photograph.   I also loaded in some ruined wall models to extend the building beyond the hedge.  At this point I also adjusted the height and pitch of the camera.   Next I loaded a standard terrain.

Terrain Editor – Full scene view enabled

In the terrain editor I reset the terrain then use the Altitude brush to get the correct height so that the abbey model just sat on the ground, then I used the 2D Raise to add a mound to the side of the building, then inverted the brush to dig out lower parts – all the time switching to my photograph for reference.

Hedge – Hedge models available from Cornucopia 3D

I loaded a hedge model then duplicated and repositioned it several times.

Adding a wall – Metablobs and booleans

I created the front wall within Vue using 2 stretched cubes, and removed a little chunk where it drops down by making a negative boolean with another cube.  Also, the wall and rubble was added using a few cubes metablobbed plus a rock and a small terrain.  All of these items were given the same material of an old stone wall (made from a seamless photograph) with a layer of moss added to show at the base.

Houses

I loaded a couple of low polygon houses that are almost hidden behind the wall and foliage

Adding Trees – Ecosystems and single plants

For most of the trees in the background, I used ecosystems.  I loaded a 2D flat plane and as this would not be seen, I left the default material and added an ecosystem – this is for the group of trees to the left, behind the houses.  I loaded another 2D plane but made it smaller.  To this I added some different trees to an ecosystem to appear in the middle and to the right of the scene.  I loaded 2 Summer Cherry trees and changed the colour of the leaves to create the 2 deep red trees by the houses, and a line of small Rural Maples to give extra depth behind the hedge.

ATMOSPHERE SETTINGS using Spectral 3 Model
Sunlight only in this scene – no extra lighting added.

Light
Clouds

I added 2 cloud layers from Dick Scherzinger’s “White Magic” available at Cornucopia 3D altering the altitude levels on both layers.

Sky, Fog and Haze
Metaclouds

I added a few Metaclouds to the scene.  I changed the material on the metaclouds using some of my own Metacloud materials available from Cornucopia 3D, and also put a bench in front of the hedge and a picnic table (just seen far left of image).   Finally, I placed a tree in front of the camera to cast the shadow in the foreground.

The final image

The render was surprisingly fast – less than 2 hours.  A little lighting correction done in Photoshop afterwards

 Posted by at 2:24 am