The Making Of Wake Up Call

Hi Guys,

In the past 3 Days I have been working of this image I have named "Wake Up Call" As you can see its a huge monster fish chasing this very small fish it jumps out the ocean causing a huge splash.

The Idea for this image came after reading a lot of 3D World Magazines at they front of the magazine they have a readers gallery were readers can submit 3D Work they have created. I wanted to make an image and hopefully get it printed in the magazine so I decided to go for it! I am responsible for creating everything in this image except for the fishing boat. I sculpted and textured the fish by myself in Mudbox, Made the 3D Ocean Scene and Splash inside of 3DS Max then Lit and Rendered everything with V-Ray. Here is some screenshots of the process of how I made the image, I also have made a Making Of Video which you will find at the bottom of the page.


Ok So I made the base mesh in 3DS Max just by using a sphere, then using Soft Selection to create the Tail,Eye Sockets and Mouth shapes.

I Then went into Mudbox (2012) and spent around 4 hours sculpting the Lips, The inside of the mouth, the eye sockets and the tail. As well as sculpting the overall look of the fish.

Once Sculpting was complete I spent the rest of the second night as well as the following morning Texture Painting the fish. I used the basic paint tools with stamps and stencils I was careful not to go overboard on the colours.

I Wanted something tropical but it also had to look like a monster fish as I knew I would be adding big eyes and teeth in later on. I then added another paint layer which I used in the sub surface scattering in V-Ray, this layer had a lot of blood on scars on to make this fish look look like it may have been in a monster fish battle as you can see below.

After 1 day and a half in total I exported my mesh back into 3DS Max where I modelled the fish's teeth using cylinders and also the eye's which I created the texture for.

After I was happy with the model, I exported it and started making the still image "Wake Up Call". Here was my initial 3D Set-up. I had the splash from a Particle Flow System I had the Ocean Surface which I made Using HOT For MAX.

I then added in the ship and also water drops all over the fish's body which again I used Particle Flow for. I just modelled one water drop from a sphere and the used a shape instance to scatter them on the fish with size variation.

I Then set up my lights in V-ray using Two V-ray spotlights then another few hours was spent on setting up shaders. Then I did my first test render.

Once I was happy I rendered all the scene elements in different passes to make the compositing easier. I used After Effects for the Compositing and Colour Corrections as well as the Final Grade.

I added the water splashes which I rendered with Krakatoa, a Particle Based Renderer for 3DS Max and Maya. Its an amazing plugin! Then another hour of tweaking and this is the final image!

Also Here is a Making Of Video where I talk a bit more about how I made the image.

Thanks for checking out my blog, Theres more to come soon!


Niall

Making A Photorealistic Image

Hi Guys,

As you may know I read a lot of 3D World and 3D Artist Magazines, at the start of each magazine they have a gallery section on readers 3D Work. All of it I find very inspirational, the amount of Ideas you can get for your own work by looking at someone else's is phenomenal, not only that the amount of time people put into to creating one single still frame of 3D Work is also quite amazing.

I had a go at making a 3D Still back in January, it was of a Frozen in Time Car Crash. Back then I thought it was the bees knee's but looking back I see many faults! I used Maya for everything 3D and the Composited all the elements in Photoshop as well as adding in Fog ect.

Anyway recently I saw a nice piece of 3D Art Work of a Tomato with water droplets on and I thought I would try and recreate it. I Used 3DS Max (Of Course!!) and for rendering I used V Ray which I have just started learning and am still getting to grips with but I think its an amazing Renderer, very powerful and speedy. (Better than Mental Ray!). The Project took under 2 hours, the modelling of the tomato is relatively easy first you start of with a sphere and then I deformed it a little with a FFD Modifier. I then modelled the Water Droplets I just used 1 sphere and then used a particle system (Pflow) to scatter them on the surface of the tomato, I also set the size variation a little mixed so you could not tell it was the same object instanced. The Leaves and Stem very just Splines with a leaf texture off Google Images. 

Next Came Lighting and Rendering, As said I used Vray and I used Sub Surface Scattering (SSS2) for the Tomato which makes it look so much more realistic than just using a standard red material. The Water droplets were just Vray Mtl's. I Lit the shot using 2 Vray Lights and a HDRI Image. 

My First Intial Render looked a bit disappointing

, The Water Droplets looked fake and the HDRI was not integrated into the lighting well.

So I went back in and adjusted my lighting and shaders to get this render about 15 mins later.

As you can see the water looks so much better.

I then composited it with a still image of a garden blurred out due to the virtual cameras Depth of Field. A little bit of Colour Correction with the Hues and Saturation and Wella!! There you go, the finished Image.

Thanks for looking at my blog,

I'm working on a few other VFX Shots coming up later this week so that will be an ideal opportunity to post some info on them!

All the Best,

Niall

Visual Effects Destruction

Hi Guys,

I love the film Battleship (Its got to be my current favourite film!). There is a really cool sequence involving robots called Shredders which attack the military bases across the island. Anyway I really like that sequence so I decided to have a go at a shot where a Shredder attacks a Building, Here it is:

I used 3DS Max along with two plugins, Thinking Particles and Demolition Master. The simulation times were pretty slow as the Building Model was rather High Poly. The amazing Shredder model was made by John Mesplay. Because the model was so detailed I had to use some Proxy mesh for the destruction simulation.

For the simulation I had a hard time making it so the whole building did not collapse on the impact of the Shredder, after about an hour of tweaking I got a really nice simulation. I cached it and rendered it. It took around 4 hours to render due to the high poly count.

I hope in the near future to work on a little VFX Sequence with the Shredders causing a lot of destruction.


Thanks for the viewing my blog theres more to come!