Description

A connection between Half Life 2 game and my hometown, inspiration taken from a place called Mandalina, actually the path from Mandalina to Solaris, it really looks like Half Life 2 down there. I wanted to capture that bright sunny day glow, preferably morning.

Technical Overview

Modeling, lighting, setup: 3d studio max 8
Texturing: Adobe Photoshop CS
Rendering: Brazil Rendering System / Vray Advanced 1.45
Compositing: Adobe Aftereffects 7

Objects: 1,163
Polygons: 1,371,404
Lighting: 2 omni lights (baked in the irridiance map), generated skylight, HDRI background Global Illumination, Irridiance map, no secondary photon bouncing (yes it's only 1 bounce)
Rendering Technique: 6 layers, 3 passes (reflections, refractions, RGB map)

Rendering Times:
Irridiance Map - 1 hour
Rendering passes - 3 hours

Hardware:
Dual Xeon 3,4 Ghz
2,0 GB DDR
Quadro FX 4400

Inspiration / Idea / Concept

Here are some of the photos I used for inspiration, in most cases you probably won't connect Half Life 2 with these, because 90% of my inspiration is based on memory 7-8 years old. These are from my hometown of Sibenik.