"The Border", my newest render. Let me know what you think!
All made in Blender š
All made in Blender š
grumbles "and the lift is still broken... hate these shitty stairs... 350th floor flat was a stupid idea..."
Lol! š¤£ "When the ad said 'just a short walk from the downtown core', this is not what I had in mind."
Could you speak generally on what techniques you used? Like is this all mesh geometry, textures, lights ans fog? Cause it looks awesome
Sure!
All the foreground stuff was modelled first, then sculpted with rock textures / general wear (posts, steps, cliffside, etc). The giant spires were sculpted from a cube. Textures are mostly procedural, a few texture maps but I prefer doing things procedurally as I don't have to worry about UVs and seams. The vegetation, moss, ivy, trees, etc were scattered using a few add-ons (Baga Ivy, Geo-Scatter). The landscape was made with noise textures and masking in TT5 add-on, then sculpted slightly afterwards to get the exact shape I wanted. I used the same add-on to texture the landscape with masks. The clouds and fog are all volumetric using noise textures, and the human is built from the HumGen add-on which I made to resemble me (it's a good way to watermark my art - hard to remove digitally, distinctively me and less intrusive than a big logo or something).
Hope that makes sense. Happy to answer any other questions if you have them š
That is very cool! For some reason it reminds me of a 00s adventure game, like Myst or The longest journey
It was inspired by it - I actually only found out about the competition after I saw the compilation video, so decided to see what I could do with the stairs concept š
Didn't use the project assets though, built my scene from scratch so it might differ slightly in proportions, etc
This is really nice! I especially like how the wooden posts guide the viewer toward the man. Great composition!
I'd like to offer some constructive critique as a (very) amateur photographer and even more amateur 3D artist. I'm probably talking out of my ass, and this is all from a realism perspective, so if you're not going for that, feel free to disregard š.
I think the foreground should have a bit more bounce light from the sky behind/above the camera, and maybe each stair could have more bounce from the the one behind it. Not sure what GI or ambient occlusion settings you used, but IMO the foreground contrast is a little too high, and this might cause the viewer to wander a little before finding the man. In other words, the focus-guiding path implied by the posts would be more effective if it wasn't fighting the rest of the foreground.
Oh also the SSS in the vegetation looks really nice, especially the fronds in the top-right. I kinda wish we could see more!
Overall, your work is very inspiring and I'm excited to see what you do next. Keep it up!
Thank you!
Now that you've mentioned foreground contrast I can see it and completely agree. I think when processing the photo I probably did the easy mistake of cranking the contrast a bit high - gives it a nice punch but loses some of that shaded foreground detail. Good to keep in mind for future projects though š
And I usually post here when I make something new, so I'm sure you'll see me crop up again!
Total Blender noob, so I'm curious; how long does it take to make something like this?
Took me a couple of days, around 18 hours total. A lot of that time was spent playing around and tweaking things because I didn't actually go into this fully knowing what I wanted to create