FINAL PICTURE


MAKING OF


After two big chocolate "croissant", comes the idea to integrate a huge sticky monster in my bath. The weather was very nice, and the sun was in the best conditions. I took my camera to make some quick shots ( with my assistant). During that session, we also took shots in order to realise HDRI map thanks to a gazing ball i've just bought.

Finally, i selected one of the pictures. I split the picture in order to define some line colisions which will allow me to find some dots as reference. To understand a bit more the process, just go to http://evermotion.org/index.php?unfold_exclusive=144&unfold=exclusive

Then it's time to create the 3D scene. For that i had to measure all the stuff present in my bathroom in order to have the closest scene as possible. Don't create heavy objects, they won't be visible on the rendering so we don't need them to be detailled


Then i used the Camera Match tool to create and put in place the 3D camera in my scene. firstly, you select points on the picture that you previously put at the background (alt+B) and then you select the corresponding points in the scene.
Finally, juts press Create Camera.

don't hesitate to add more points if you're not satisafied of the result, but keep in mind that using to many vertices will make the process impossible to complete. Here is my result.

 

Time to finalize my scene by adding more elements/details
1- make the active objetcs which will recieve/generate shadows.

2- keep in mind you will have to create different shadows for the objects depending of their texture (ex, sink, tiles, etc...)

3- for lights, try to keep closer with your scene by creating the exact position, dimension, intensity and color of your lights. This will have a huge impact on the rendering. I mainly used VrayLights which have a very good default quality.


invader modelisation.

1- i started by a very simple cage for the "body" which will be sculpted in Mudbox / Z-brush later
2- i put in place the tentacles thanks to splines to define the trajectory and with a simple Cylinder. This method is quite useful, it's very fast and easy to change parameters, trajectory, twist, rotation, etc.... it's also good for memory because you use low objects so perfect for lightning experimentations.


Here is the sculpting, i have to admit it was the simple thing to do, octopus body is not the most difficult one. Nevertheless, don't hesitate to push up the level of details to compensate the loose during the rendering.

concerning the tentacle, you could see i've just worked on one piece. after it was done, i got back to the level zero of subdivision to bring out the cage from Z-brush and recreated the overall shape by duplicating this piece. the extremity of the tentacle was added then with a different ID. i didn't worked on the extremity, to small... we don't see the difference. The method will allow us to have a better texture quality.

the normal, displacement, cavity map creation was done with zmapper.


here are the only one textures i used.

1- for the diffuse, i used a small square from a reel octopus picture that i duplicated to have a kind of big pattern
2- i put the cavity map on that (multiply), main color previously changed to be in accordance with the pattern
3- i used the displacement and normal map to polished and add more volume on the textures (converted in black and white first and then applied in Multiply/overlay). The displacement map was not used as a displacement map itself.
4- then it's up to you to add more details in accordance with your ideas :)


it's time now to replace the tentacle cages by the reel ones.... heavier ;) same for the body which will be replaced by the level 3 mesh from z-brush.
now some tips to save some memory to allow Vray to render bigger scenes, in case...

1- in fact virtual memory uses maximum 2go for all the applications... time to change that.
go to c:\boot.ini and add "/3gb" (ex : multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professionnel" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /3gb)
do not do that with old computer, it won't help at all.

2- then you absolutely have to optimize your scene by creating proxis for all the objects... thanks to that your scene will become lower and will save memory during the rendering.
it's very important you'll see big changes. your scene will be more stable during the rendering.

For each environment objects of your scene, you should change properties to make them invisible at the rendering but present to generate/recieve shadows/reflection/refraction/GI.
Right clic on them and enable matte object and Shadow.


1- here are some screenshots of the shaders, the body, tentacles and the differents elements of the scene which reflect (tiles, sink, etc...)
these parameters depend a lot of your HDRI, they could vary depending on the intensity/color of your HDRI.


the HDRI map and his set up in max. the HDRI is volontary brighter to grab more the light.

Vray setup :

1- don't forget to unable default light if you use HDRI, it's very important to have a correct lightning.
2- very low is useful to render some tests but for the final iteration i use to check Medium.


Final picture :)