Making of 'Knocked Out'

Introduction

The idea for the image came from a short scene in one of my favourite movies, "Pulp Fiction". In this particular scene, we see actor "Bruce Willis" playing the character of a boxer named "Butch", as he wakes up in a boxing dressing room after having a little nightmare just minutes before a big fight (Fig.01). Obviously, I didn't try to remake the exact scene, it was just inspirational for me.

Fig. 01

Fig. 01

Searching for references

I started with the search for good reference images for lockers and dressings rooms (sports related) (Fig.02).

Fig. 02

Fig. 02

 Then I searched for other references, such as props, boxers' clothing, rats, and basically everything that I wanted to appear in the final image (Fig.03-04).

Fig. 03

Fig. 03

Fig. 04

Fig. 04

A few places for great references are: www.imagebank.com, www.dreamstime.com, www.photo.net, www.google.com, and www.morguefile.com.

Modelling

In this part I'm going to explain some of the methods I've used to model the environment. I'm not going to talk about the character modeling, there's a lot of excellent tutorials on the web and on 3dtotals website  about character modeling, check them out.

Modelling the room

I started with a spline; drawing - from the top view - the actual plan of the room's walls (Fig.05).

Fig. 05

Fig. 05

Then I used outline to determine the initial thickness (Fig.06).

Fig. 06

Fig. 06

With editable spline vertex sub object, I changed the thickness (Fig.07).

Fig. 07

Fig. 07

I added planes for floor and ceiling and booleaned a long box from the right wall to make a long window, I used box primitives to make small window frames.

I've cut and extrude the walls to define the hallways. This is how it looks like from the inside and from the outside (Fig. 08 & 09).

Fig. 08

Fig. 08

Fig. 09

Fig. 09

I used cylinder primitives for the water pipes in the far right corner of the room, and box primitives for the acoustic ceiling; editable spline was used for the ceiling frame (Fig.10).

Fig. 10

Fig. 10




 I cut, rotated and deleted some of the ceiling plates and added electricity pipelines made from renderable splines. With editable poly I cut the wall corners for some damage details. Tip: you can add temporary omni lights inside the room which make it easier to see things in the view port, whilst working on things inside the room - just make sure you don't forget to delete them when you start working on the final lighting  (Fig.11-12).

Fig. 11

Fig. 11

Fig. 12

Fig. 12

Modelling the fan

For the cage of the fan, I started with a chamfer cylinder (Fig.13), and added an "Affect Region" modifier to blow it up a little (Fig.14)

Fig. 13

Fig. 13

Fig. 14

Fig. 14

 I selected the edges, as shown in Fig.15, and pressed the "Create Shape from Selection" button from the Edit Edge rollout in the Editable Poly Edge mode. I turned this shape to renderable and set the thickness to the appropriate size, repeating this action to the selected edges, as seen in Fig.16-17.

Fig. 16

Fig. 16

Fig. 17

Fig. 17

Fig. 18

Fig. 18

I used the same method for the back part, but this time I skipped the "Affect Region" action to get a different shape (Fig.18).

Fig. 19

Fig. 19

 For the blades, I drew the blade shape with a spline (Fig.19), applied the "Extrude" modifier (Fig.20), and then applied the "Twist" modifier (Fig.21).

Fig. 20

Fig. 20

Fig. 21

Fig. 21

Fig. 22

Fig. 22

Tip: make sure you uncheck the "Optimize" checkbox from the Interpolation rollout, in the Editable Spline, and check the "Grid" checkbox in the "Extrude" modifier for smoother results in the twist action. I then created chamfer cylinders for the blade mechanism (Fig.22).

Fig. 23

Fig. 23

 For the back "hanger" of the fan, I started with a simple spline (Fig.23), then used chamfer on the two vertexes, as seen in Fig.24, and used fillet to round the corner of the splines.

Fig. 24

Fig. 24

Fig. 26

Fig. 26

Next, under Spline Sub Object, I used outline to determine the thickness and applied the "Extrude" modifier (Fig.25).

Fig. 28

Fig. 28

I converted it to editable poly and booleaned cylinders to make the holes (Fig.26). I created a tube primitive and a renderable spline for the outer ring and the handle (Fig.27).

Fig. 29

Fig. 29

Fig. 30

Fig. 30

Fig.28-29 shows all of the parts combined together.

Fig. 31

Fig. 31

Fig. 32

Fig. 32

Modelling the Rat

I started by placing a background image, that I found in "Google Images". I then drew a spline along the image's contour line (Fig.30).

Fig. 33

Fig. 33

 I applied the "lathe" modifier (Fig.31) and, with edit poly, I adjusted the vertexes to make the body shape, trying to use soft selection when moving more than one vertex at a time (Fig.32). In the top view, I adjusted the vertexes again to make the shape closer to a rat's body shape (Fig.33).

Fig. 34

Fig. 34

Fig. 35

Fig. 35

Fig. 36

Fig. 36

 I cut and extruded the head polygons to make the ears (Fig.34).

Fig. 37

Fig. 37

I drew a spline in a shape of a back leg and then extruded the back polygons along this spline (Fig.35).

Fig. 38

Fig. 38

I added a symmetry modifier so that everything that I did on one side was then reflected on the other side (Fig.36). I did the same thing for the front legs and in editable poly mode I extruded some polygons to make the fingers and the nails (Fig.37).

Fig. 39

Fig. 39

Fig. 40

Fig. 40

Before I started modelling the tail, I collapsed the modifier stack to get rid of the symmetry, and created the tail shape with spline (Fig.38), and extruded the back polygons along the spline, in the same way that I had done the legs (Fig.39-40). I made a very simple bone rig so I could duplicate and pose the rat in different positions (Fig.41).

Fig. 41

Fig. 41

Fig. 42

Fig. 42

Fig. 43

Fig. 43

Fig. 44

Fig. 44

Modelling the Garbage Can

I started with the body of the garbage can, by drawing a spline in a shape of the can profile (Fig.42).

Fig. 46

Fig. 46

I then lathed it (Fig.43),

Fig. 47

Fig. 47

And did the same with the garbage bag (Fig.44-48).

Fig. 48

Fig. 48

Fig. 49

Fig. 49

Fig. 50

Fig. 50

Fig. 51

Fig. 51

Fig. 52

Fig. 52

 Next, I converted the garbage bag model into an editable poly, and in vertex sub object and soft selection turned on, I moved the vertexes to create folds and distortion (Fig.49).

Fig. 53

Fig. 53

I then subdivided the first two rows of polygons and added push modifier (Fig.50), noise modifier (Fig.51), and turbo smooth modifier (Fig.52-53).

Fig. 54

Fig. 54

Fig. 55

Fig. 55

Fig. 56

Fig. 56

Fig. 57

Fig. 57

Modelling the Lockers

For the lockers cells, I started with a box primitive (Fig.54), converted it to editable poly and used the "Insert" command to scale-down the front polygon, and then extruded it inside a little (Fig.55).

Fig. 58

Fig. 58

Fig. 59

Fig. 59

Then, I booleaned 12 smaller boxes from the main box to create the cells, and converted it again to editable poly (Fig.56).

Fig. 60

Fig. 60

 For the doors, I started again with a thin box primitive (Fig.57)

Fig. 61

Fig. 61

And deleted the back polygon and scaled down the front one (Fig.58).

Fig. 62

Fig. 62

I selected the vertical edges and used the "Connect" button to cut them in the upper part (Fig.59).

Fig. 63

Fig. 63

Then I used chamfer to split them up a bit (Fig.60).

Fig. 64

Fig. 64

 I selected the horizontal edges and used the connect button again to cut them (Fig.61). I switched to polygon sub object mode and used the "Hinge Polygons from Edge" command to create the little upper slot of the door (Fig.62). Then I deleted the slot's bottom polygons (Fig.67), and repeated these steps to make the other slots (Fig.63).

Fig. 65

Fig. 65

Fig. 67

Fig. 67

Fig. 68

Fig. 68

Finally, I added turbo smooth (Fig.64) and duplicated the door for each cell opening (Fig.65) with vertex sub object selected. I pooled out some vertexes with the soft selection mode, and turned on to create bumpers and damage to the doors (Fig.66-67).

Fig. 69

Fig. 69

Fig. 70

Fig. 70

Fig. 71

Fig. 71

Fig. 72

Fig. 72

Fig. 73

Fig. 73

Texturing

90% of the base textures that I used came from 3DTotal's great texture CDs.

Before I started to paint the textures I laid out the models UV's. For simple models, like the bed's metal parts and the garbage can, or the scales, I used regular UVW mapping (planar, box or cylinder), and for the room and the character I used the UVW unwrap modifier.

 I wanted to be able to control the wall texture in a single map so that I could maintain continuity with all sides of the room's walls, so I laid out the wall's UVs on a single map and set the resolution to 5000 pixels long, to get good results in a close-up render.

Fig.69 shows the wall's UV map.

Fig. 74

Fig. 74

The base textures that I used for the walls (the posters were found in "Google Images") can be seen in Fig.70.

Fig. 75

Fig. 75

The final wall's map, with close-up in full resolution, can be seen in Fig.71.

Fig. 76

Fig. 76

For the floor, I used a different map on different UVs and gave the shader a slightly glossy reflection. The floor texture breakdown can be seen in Fig.72.

Fig. 77

Fig. 77

 For the ceiling, I used simple planar mapping on each square and created four different maps, and then spread them randomly across the ceiling squares. The ceiling texture breakdown can be seen in Fig.73.

Fig. 78

Fig. 78

Lighting and Rendering

I started to set up lights before I made the textures, which was important to see how the shaders and textures reacted to the lights and shadows. I made changes along the way to achieve the desired result. I used CEBAS - "Final Glow" plug-in for the glow effects on the light models.

Eleven V-Ray lights were used to light up the whole scene. The light setup from different angles can be seen in Fig.74-76.

Fig. 79

Fig. 79

Fig. 80

Fig. 80

Fig. 82

Fig. 82

The rendering time was 2 hours, 2 minutes and 11.7 seconds, for a resolution of 1280x1024. The render parameters I used (all the rest remain at their default settings) can be seen in Fig.77.

Fig. 83

Fig. 83

Finally, I rendered the image in .rpf file format and checked the Z depth check box so that I could apply depth of field later on in After Effects (Fig.78).

Fig. 84

Fig. 84

 I rendered one pass for the character and the bed, and another pass for the room and props. I did that to avoid bad antialiasing, and other artifacts, that tend to appear after applying DOF with .rpf file format.

Compositing

As I mentioned before, I used Adobe "After Effects" to composite the final image. In "After Effects" I opened the room render pass in a new composition and duplicated it three times; the first layer (bottom one) remained the same, then on the middle layer I applied a "Gaussian blur" effect. On the last layer I applied the "Extract 3D Channel" effect and set it to Z-Depth, then I changed the black point and white point to get the right balance. The middle layer uses the first layer as a Track Matte, set to "Luma Inverted Matte", and the breakdown of the layers can be seen in Fig.79.

Fig. 85

Fig. 85

Final Image

Well, that's about it. I hope this will be interesting and helpful for you. I enjoyed making this article and I must thank you all for reading it. If you have any questions, comments, criticism or anything else that you want to share with me, please send me an e-mail and I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible.

Thanks!
Ilan Cohen
 

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