Friday, October 15, 2010

3D backgrounds and sets: a room with a view







I call this series of renders "A room with a view," which is a good title, because the view is at least as important a focus of the art as those gorgeous shadows and textures. The whole point of these render is that it looks like the real world out there ... and it's not!

The trick is to work from the bottom up. Which means you have to think about the far, far distance, and the sky and hills. So you start off in Bryce. This was done in Bryce 7 Pro. Imagine a skyline, add some hills and some haze, and the right weather and lighting conditions:



So far, so good. You don't have to worry about making the bottom of the shot look real, because this is going to be insisible behind, or underneath, the middle distance. So hop over into DAZ:


This whole thing is HUGE. There are six copies of the Gadomar building loaded up, plus two copies of the Requiescat mausoleum, plus the Anardhouse tavern and two copies of the Palenque Ruins in the background, miniaturized, adding rooftops in the distance, as if there's a whole town out there. The perimeter walls are interesting. I actually made those myself and just imported them over and over, and assembled them. The gates are borrowed from the Curious Passage set. Then there's about 15 trees, some by Merlin, some by DM. It looks ... busy. Now...

Bring the Bryce background into DAZ as a backdrop, and render this. The composition becomes a new backdrop which is set in DAZ as the background you're seeing outside the window. Then you waffle on with the lights until you get fantastic shadows and textures and ... render away to your heart's content! The set is part of DM's Fantasy Visions, with every single texture changed out, then a load of props added. They're drawn from the Anarhouse, the Greatroom, the Mirador, the Old Patio ... loads of stuff. The textures have been changed on some.

I said a couple of days ago that I was going to tell how to to the costume Jesse Lawrence is almost wearing ... and I will, I promise! It's not a big secret. Stuff happened, and I haven't had the time to return to the Rhapsody in Blue shoot. I'll get there, guys ... bear with me!

Jade, 15 October