Particles

For the gun case, I modelled a case and then used the SuperSpray in 3ds Max 8 to create the case action (fig.07). I looked at some video references to estimate a ‘case's life'. I used a PCloud for the armchair and for the debris of the floor, but for the armchair particles I painted a fibre cotton in Photoshop – very quickly, and the alpha of this helped me to realise the shader (fig.08). I then adjusted my SuperSpray and all my PCloud to create something realistic.

Lighting/Rendering

I conceived the lighting of my scene with Vray 1.5. I used a Vray light and two Target Direct lights to create the mood (fig.09). I chose the Light cache for the GI engine, and adjusted the Irradiance map, the Light cache and the Environment according to my tastes. During this step, I created the beauty pass for the compositing stage. After I made an ambient occlusion pass with Mental Ray (fig.10), I saved another scene and put a mental ray material with an Ambient/Reflective Occlusion onto the Surface on all the elements. In the Material Editor, I adjusted the Ambient/Occlusion parameters (Samples: 128; Spread: 1,0; Max Distance: 30,0). For the DOF, I used the Default Scanline Renderer, but I'll explain this step during the compositing section. For all the images, I took the size of: 1979x3453.

Compositing

The final step is the most important step for me, because it is the step where I really create the atmosphere of the picture that I want. For this piece, I wanted to make more than just a 3d image…

I did all the compositing work in Photoshop (fig.11). I hand-painted some sparkles on the floor to illustrate the impact of the bullets (fig.12). For the motion blur, I rendered a separate pass of the main character, the robot, and then applied – in Photoshop CS – a Radial Blur.