Making of 'Reform'

Introduction

Once when I was driving through my town, I discovered an old agricultural factory. This abandoned place kick-started my imagination; the massive structure on the top of the garage and the whole feeling of the place made me feel, quite simply, spellbound. I later returned to the scene and took some photographs to use as reference images, and I worked on the environment for several months in my free time.

References

I started the project, first of all, by collecting some information about the factory and the structural elements on top of the building. This place was actually a sawmill, and at the top of the garage is a sawdust collector. As previously mentioned, I took some photos as reference images, but I also looked for other images to inspire me and to get some interesting ideas. I searched for images and references for not only the shapes, but also for the lighting and texturing (Fig.01 and Fig.02). And, of course, I collected some blueprints for the van that I wished to incorporate into the scene.

Fig. 01

Fig. 01

Fig. 02

Fig. 02

Modelling

All models were created in 3ds Max using editable poly geometry - a simple and easy way to model. I started with the sawmill collectors; they began as cylindrical objects, and I used the most standard tools to modify them, for example: extrude, chamfer, (target) weld, cut and so on. Here is some of the modelling work shown in wireframe (Fig.03 - Fig.05).

Fig. 03

Fig. 03

Fig. 04

Fig. 04

Fig. 05

Fig. 05



Moving onto the modelling of the van, I set up the blueprints on planes, starting from the front of the van, forming a simple plane. I extruded the edges and moved the vertices to achieve a nice overall shape (Fig.06). After I finished the model, I started to give a more worn and used look to the van; some objects got an optimise modifier, which made it easier to apply damage (Fig.07).

Fig. 06

Fig. 06

Fig. 07

Fig. 07

For the grass I used several types of grass strands, scattered with Advanced Painter action item. The plants were handmade from cylinders, scattered nails and spheres; one of the plants was from Xfrog - deformed and modified to suit my scene. To finish off the vegetation, I used an ivy generator to achieve an abandoned feeling.

Textures & Materials

In this project, the textures and materials played the largest role. I compensated for the low poly objects in the scene with high resolution textures; I unwrapped the main object, and for the small objects only I used simple UV mapping. I collected raw textures from CGTextures.com and edited them in Photoshop - which is the key to achieving great, unique and varied textures (Fig.08).

Fig. 08

Fig. 08

In some cases, I baked an ambient occlusion map. This helped me to understand where the different objects met one another, for example, the car lights or the accessories on the car texture, because it determined the punctual place for the leaking - or likewise (Fig.09).

Fig. 09

Fig. 09

For the shading, I mainly used a VrayMtl shader for pretty much everything (Fig.10).

Fig. 10

Fig. 10

Lighting & Rendering

As for the rendering engine, I used V-Ray, which I personally find to be one of the best and fastest renderers! There were two lights in the scene: a V-Ray dome light and a V-Ray sphere light; I put an HDRI map into the dome light texture slot and gave the V-Ray sphere light an orange colour, in order to simulate sunlight.

The render settings were also easy and simple. I used GI with an Irradiance map and light cache with the Mitchell-Netravali anti-aliasing filter to make it a bit sharper. I put the HDRI map into the GI environment and in the reflection/refraction slot. And finally, I used the VRayPhysicalCamera for the final render. Here are the passes (Fig.11 - Fig.13).

Fig. 11

Fig. 11

Fig. 12

Fig. 12

Fig. 13

Fig. 13


Post-Production

This found this to be the most enjoyable part of the work. First of all, everything was put into one image, because I'd rendered the grass, ambient occlusion, V-Ray and so on, in different passes. I didn't want to waste too much time with the post-production - everybody has their own style after all, and I didn't want to copy anyone else's. So I started by putting another sky behind the scene. After changing the contrast, hue and saturation, and colour balance, I gave a diffuse glow to the image and used the Sharpen filter to make the picture appear sharper overall. A few details were added after rendering, for example the dirt on the window and a little more leakage on the walls. I dramatically changed the colours in the end because I wanted to achieve an orange hue, similar to the sunset (Fig.14).

Fig. 14

Fig. 14

Conclusion

I hope this "Making Of" article has been informative and interesting for you. It was a lot of fun to create, and if you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact me.

Thanks for reading!

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