Making of 'The Gift'

Introduction

This image was based on the following idea: A carpenter wishes to give his son a gift and the only thing he knows for certain is that he wants the gift to be new. Finally he comes up with the idea of a wooden car.

This image took two months to make. Over this time, I was able to establish a model library of tools and equipment which would typically be present in a workshop. In this Making Of, I will discuss all the stages of this project, without going into the creation process in too much detail. If you'd like more specific details, such as how I did the cars, then you can see this old tutorial: Z4 Unleashed

References

Here are some of pictures that I used as references and which I found on the Internet (Fig.01).

Fig. 01

Fig. 01

Modelling

Although you will find a lot of modelling in this image, most of it was done by the traditional method of using editable polys, which always begin with a plane or cylinder. Using this simple method, I was able to build up a complete model library of tools (as mentioned before). Here are some of the models from my library (Fig.02 - Fig.05).

Fig. 02

Fig. 02

Fig. 03

Fig. 03

Fig. 04

Fig. 04

Fig. 05

Fig. 05

After finishing all the modelling on the tool library, I established the environment of the carpenter's workshop (Fig.06).

Fig. 06

Fig. 06

To complete the modelling process, I then added in all the equipment and tools to the workshop (Fig.07).

Fig. 07

Fig. 07

Textures

The textures I used in this project included maps within 3ds Max, 3DTotal Textures Vol.1 and some textures from www.cgtextures.com (Fig.08).

Fig. 08

Fig. 08

I used a UVW Map in the dressing, with box or cylindrical parameters. I used simple materials too, all of them Blend, with the simplest form containing two materials and a mask. For this piece I used nearly 75% of this simple type and the rest had more components (Fig.09 - Fig.14).

Fig. 09

Fig. 09

Fig. 10

Fig. 10

Fig. 11

Fig. 11

Fig. 12

Fig. 12

Fig. 13

Fig. 13

Fig. 14

Fig. 14

Lighting

For the lighting, I used a VRay light, a Target Directional Light with V-ray shadows and an HDRI Image (Fig.15).

Fig. 15

Fig. 15

The settings for these lights can be seen in Fig.16.

Fig. 16

Fig. 16

Render

Because of the many details and metals present in the image, I chose the simplest type of rendering. Rendering preferences differ from person to person, so I'd advise you to visit V-Ray Help Index which will explain the different rendering options and help you to discover which works best for you.

The settings that I used for the render can be seen in Fig.17 - Fig.24.

Fig. 17

Fig. 17

Fig. 18

Fig. 18

Fig. 19

Fig. 19

Fig. 20

Fig. 20

Fig. 21

Fig. 21

Fig. 22

Fig. 22

Fig. 23

Fig. 23

Fig. 24

Fig. 24

Please note: the time of the render was more than 63 hours because of the number of polygons (nearly 2.5 million) and also the size of the picture (4000x3000). This was the result of the render (Fig.25).

By this point, I hadn't quite finished the render as there was a second stage which involved rendering some volumetric lights and merging this with the V-Ray and target direct lighting. I started by hitting "Save As" to save the original file. Next I deleted all the lights except for the target direct light, but this time I selected the type of shadow "shadow map" with the addition of "volume light effect" and made sure that I'd turned off the V-Ray environment. I then selected all the geometry, assigned it a V-Ray material using black for the colour and then repeated the rendering again. This foggy lighting was the result (Fig.26).

Fig. 25

Fig. 25

Fig. 26

Fig. 26

Post-production

At this stage I imported the composition into Photoshop. Then I merged the fog picture into the original picture by changing the layers to screen and giving it opacity 60% (Fig.27). Inside this great program, I was able to correct the colours and I also added some simple effects by using the brushes and the pretty plug-in "color efex pro 3.0" to add atmosphere to the scene (Fig.28). And here is the final result (Fig.29).I hope you found this Making Of useful and if you have any questions about it, don't hesitate in sending an email to me. Very best wishes and a special thanks to everyone at 3DTotal!

Fig. 27

Fig. 27

Fig. 28

Fig. 28

Fig. 29

Fig. 29

 

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