Introduction

This scene was made especially as a quick test for the Total Textures collection. I mainly used textures from the following DVDs: Aged & Stressed, Around the World: Part 1, Around the World: Part 2, Dirt & Graffiti, and Trees & Plants.

It's very important for every artist to have access to a great texture library. Don't be lazy though: always take a camera with you everywhere you go, to make your own reference photo collections!

Modelling, Lighting & Rendering

There was no special modelling method that I used for this scene – mainly box modelling along with some spline extruding. I started off with a box shape and then gradually kept adding more details. After I was happy with the main building I decided to scatter some props around, to make the scene more realistic and interesting (Fig.01).


The lighting itself was kept as simple as possible; I applied a MR Sun and light system which was extremely fast to render and gave me nice results – this works particularly well for outdoor scenes. In order to avoid my textures looking a bit washed out, all the diffuse maps were connected via GammaCorrect with the filtering turned off (Fig.02).


The rendering took approximately 20 minutes with high anti-aliasing and FG settings on. I also used a few alpha maps to simulate shadows being cast from the surrounding trees (Fig.03).

Textures

I was going for high quality, which is why the texture resolution of the building is 4,000 (I always try to create textures twice as large as their rendering sizes). I un-wrapped the UVs and took them into Photoshop – that's where the fun began (Fig.04).


First of all, I went through the entire Total Textures 16 DVD library looking for textures that I thought might be suitable for my project. I quickly chose my base texture and, using a mask, tiled it to 4,000 in size. Masks are very important and helpful; they allow you to quickly add or remove parts of a texture without destroying the base, which is especially useful when you're trying out different things to see which works best for you. I also used lots of adjustment layers for the same reason as masks (Fig.05). Don't forget that you can also add masks to adjustment layers.