Making of 'La espera'

I am proud to present this Making Of to all of you great artists out there - thanks very much!

"La espera" was created entirely in LightWave. At first I used version 9.3, which had already incorporated significant advances in fast skin and global light, but then I looked at version 9.6 and I could see that the improvements were even more notable so I decided to use this version for the rendering.

Modeling

In the following pictures you can see the modeling process. Please note that LightWave will occasionally send error messages and you'll therefore lose the model file or scene. The solution to this sort of trouble is to duplicate objects. Copying objects also gives you the chance to show more details in the modeling process (Fig.01).

Fig. 01

Fig. 01

Here the process was to basically form and leave empty spaces and then put eyes, nose, ears and mouth in (Fig.02).

Fig. 02

Fig. 02

All of these parts were created as separate objects so that they could have a full level of details. Then I subdivided the model and merged the polygons, taking into account the number of points that were generated as they needed to be equal to one another. This technique avoids odd merge points which can result in a rectangular grid without triangulation (Fig.03).

Fig. 03

Fig. 03



Next I bound the subdivision and separate objects together. Then the basic shape of the body and the shirt were modeled (Fig.04).

Fig. 04

Fig. 04

 

In Modeler, the shirt had a minimal amount of polygons because I used the Layout for Node displacement for details. I also increased the Geometry tab in the Display subpatch level to 30 to get the desired results. 

At this stage, I also joined the head to the body and added wrinkles to the neck.

Details

I used splines for the hair, eyelash modeling and the hand. The hair had spline type guides and those few guidelines were sufficient for Fiver FX to make abundant hair.

To avoid unnecessary work, the hand lacked details in some areas. For example, it was not necessary to create all of the fingers; I only needed the parts of the hand that were going to be visible in the scene. So with a previously saved scene type "Layout" and the corresponding camera position I was able to identify which sections needed work and which didn't.

The eyelashes were created with subpatch. The eyelashes and some other final details can be seen in Fig.05.

Fig. 05

Fig. 05

The eye has several layers with different volumes to add depth (Fig.06). The iris, translucency and reflection are responsible for capturing the brightness of the light.

Fig. 06

Fig. 06

As for the brightness of the main light, I used a plane with polygons and properties of a UV map with Luminosity set to 500%. This site also served as HDRI for its high light irradiation.

As you can see on the bottom of the chair in Fig.07, I created a set of polygons in low-quality function to act as shadow generators.

Fig. 07

Fig. 07



Here's the final model with a preview of the textures (Fig.08). Please note that all the textures are 360 degrees. The surface baking camera option gives us this possibility.

Fig. 08

Fig. 08

Layout Composition

Here is the image displayed on its own (Fig.09). I'm not going to say much more about the setup because it often happens that viewing a screen shot is more explicit than words.

Fig. 09

Fig. 09


I used two area lights (main and lateral support for filling) accompanied by a global light and more HDRI for the entire lighting system. I used eight of these for quality and to avoid noise in the projection of shadows, although even six is sufficient (Fig.10).

Fig. 10

Fig. 10

It is at this point that I decided to render the image in LightWave version 9.6. Unlike previous versions, 9.6 incorporates "use gradient" and "use bumps". These options add additional important details, especially the Nodes fast skin (Fig.11 - Fig.18).

Fig. 13

Fig. 13

Fig. 14

Fig. 14

Fig. 15

Fig. 15

Fig. 16

Fig. 16

Fig. 17

Fig. 17

Fig. 18

Fig. 18



Noise was added in post production, a point of blur, chromatic aberration 1 px to work on the curves and variation of the tones. Some of the feedback I received suggested a change in the tone towards more brown to generate drama, but I decided to change slightly towards blue instead, due to the fact that almost 50% of the image was skin and I was worried about a monotony of one color.

On the other hand, I played with the child's look, from dramatic, to lost, to calm, to patiently waiting for their lunch time - hence the title of this piece (La espera means "The delay" in English). And here's the final image (Fig.19).

Fig. 19

I hope you enjoyed this Making Of. If you want to know more about my work then you can find me at the following website: http:// www.buildmultimedia.com.ar or contact me via email at:

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