Welcome to my little tutorial about "Day After".

For this image only material from the 3D Total Texture CD's was used. Because the scene didn't require complex modelling, but lives mostly from the textures, I will concentrate on these here. As a reference for this scene served a painting by the German artists Carl Spitzweg titled "Schildwache bei Nacht" ("Shield-guard at night"). The little modifications and the time of day explain the title of my work. Apart from that I was able to do without sketches or other reference. I have worked on this piece over some weeks, the idea for the small modifications and the title were only produced shortly before the completition of the scene.

Modelling

To recreate the scene, I have placed the painting into the workspace-background and over the the objects. The elements were recreated using simple polygonal models that were placed accordingly. I was able to position the lightsource in the same way and directly compare the shadows cast with the original painting.

The lighting, but also the position of the camera and the aspect-ratio of the image was changed later afterall.
When the scene was mostly done, I picked every single elemtent out of the whole to rebuild and for detailing them individualy. You can follow the process here.

I have tried to create irregular lines and edges in order not to let everything look too fake. Most of the objects were made out of basic objects and were modifierd poly by poly utilizing the cut-tool. Through the use of polynurbs the objects were chamfered. I worked with as little polygons as possible to preserve speed. Instead the objects were worked on using a tool native to Cinema 4D (HyperNURBS Weights), to weaken the chamfering in some spots. The beams of the frame-work were also modelled. Because of the present objects the whole appears more three-dimensional. The fraw-work-wall was roughly cut into fields. Their polygons were duplicated to the inside and slightly pulled outwards. This creats a light bulge. The same was done to the windowpanes. The outcome: the planes don't appear so flat.

The decoration on the shield was done with the aid of splines and Sweep NURBS. The roof consists of single tiles, but they are instances. Through the randomizing function they were arranged somewhat more irreguarly.

Texturing

The texturemaps (from the CDs) were combined, colours were changed a bit. The textures were made especially for the objects. Allow me to take frame-work and gate as examples. For the frame-work I used wood, stone and grime-textures, placed and treated accordingly. E.g. I let some of the building material overlap the wood, so that it would seem like the frme-work was plastered.

The only texture for the Gate also containes the arch.
The gate conists, except for the window, out of one piece. The stones of the arch were copied from other texture-maps and pasted together. The model was made accordingly, to make the stone appear more threeimensional, similar to the frame-work.

To realize some moss in the corners and to save a lot of work on the textures, I used Maxon's shader "Dirty Nuts".

Dirty Nuts "collects dirt" in the corners of objects. To use the attributes of moss, I used a corresponding plant texture in the colour-channel of the material. Then I loaded the "Dirty Nuts" in the alpha-channel. This texture was put over the other textures. Because of the alpha-channel the moss is only visible in corners or in the shadow, where Dirty Nuts works, the moss texture appears.

Lighting

In "Day After" there are two lightsources. One is the sun, the other one a light that lights the tunnel-exit in the background. No other lightsources were neccessary because of the use of Radiosity.

This image was created using a few of the hundreds of textures from the Total Texture CDs - very comprehensive texture collections priced with the hobbyist in mind. To see more examples, download free
samples and read full details follow this link