Making Of 'Engine Room 4'

Introduction

Hi, many thanks for reading this Making Of!

We created this image for a client here in Mexico. The image has a lot of high poly modeling and, at the other end of the creation process, a lot of post-process work in Photoshop. So this Making Of is going to be split into these two important parts: modeling and post-production work.

Modeling - Ivan Rojo

When we started this project, we could barely imagine how much modeling we were going to need to do. We just focused on having a lot of patience!

We did a lot of internet searches, for all of the engine parts. For the final look and animation, Terminator and Starcraft were really great references. Here are some of the images that we used as references (Fig.01 - 02).

Fig. 01_refrence_photos

Fig. 01_refrence_photos

Fig. 02_refrence_photoes

Fig. 02_refrence_photoes

Everything was modeled in Maya 2009. Some of the modeling was easy and other bits were very difficult. We only used deformers, booleans and the Extrude, Rotate and Scale tools. Look at the screws on your chair - it helps a lot for this kind of work!

Here are some of the simpler models (Fig.03 - 05).

Fig. 03_springs_and_cogs

Fig. 03_springs_and_cogs

Fig. 04_pipes_and_wheels

Fig. 04_pipes_and_wheels

Fig. 05_cog_wheels

Fig. 05_cog_wheels

For the more complex models we used the same tools, but we took more with each model. Luckily Google was there to keep providing us with photo references (Fig.06)!

Fig. 06_machinery_parts

Fig. 06_machinery_parts

Some of the pieces drove us mad, but with time and a lot of patience we finally managed to model everything successfully (Fig.07 - 09).

Fig. 07_machinery_parts

Fig. 07_machinery_parts

Fig. 08_machinery_parts

Fig. 08_machinery_parts

Fig. 09_machinery

Fig. 09_machinery

So, this was our modeling workflow. Sometimes we ran into problems with Booleans, but adding geometry, or exporting the low poly object and adding the Booleans in LightWave helped to sort these issues out.

Maya's modeling tools made this project possible. I'd always suggest using all the tools you can when modeling. Don't be afraid of experimenting; it's a great way to learn a lot. Just try and have patience and make full use of the tools you find.

Texturing, Rendering and Post-production Work - Eugenio García Villarreal
We did some sketches directly in the 3D layout in LightWave, adding pieces and looking for a nice composition. The idea was to make the main central piece our main character and surround it with lots of metal pieces, wires, lights to make the whole thing very mysterious and industrial.

For the render texture, we used a basic metal texture and a simple shader, just to catch the reflection and specular bounces (Fig.10).



Fig. 10_material_editor

Fig. 10_material_editor

Fig.11 - 13 show the render with a basic area light to keep the dark mood we were looking for.

Fig. 11_mesh_render

Fig. 11_mesh_render

Fig. 12_lighting_effects

Fig. 12_lighting_effects

Fig. 13_scene_render

Fig. 13_scene_render

We did all the passes in Photoshop, after doing a color correction first. Playing with the levels, we put in some photo filters to get the right mood (Fig.14).

Fig. 14_scene_render

Fig. 14_scene_render

Later, we did a RLA pass for FOV, adding some lens blur. We then added some metal textures with blending mode, like overlay, screen, multiply (Fig.15 - 16).

Fig. 15_material_textures

Fig. 15_material_textures

Fig. 16_filter_effects

Fig. 16_filter_effects

Next we did some touches with the Burn and Dodge tool to get bright values and darken some of the other areas.  When we were happy with the result we merged it all and continued drawing in the light spots, putting glows in the brighter zones with round brushes and using the Sharpen brush to get nice textures in some places.

After three hours of post-production work, here is the final image (Fig.17).

_Final image -

_Final image -

Fig. 17

I hope this Making Of gives you an idea of how this image was made and helps you in your next project. We have a lot of fun doing it and with a lot of researching and patience we achieved an image we're proud of.

If you have any questions then please just ask us.
Ivan Rojo & Eugenio García Villarreal

 

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