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Hi there! This week I want to share my entry to the “Render Challenge #5 The Thing” organized by Fabio Palvelli and the D2 community. This challenge consisted of generating an image orbiting around a model created by Vamzee. So I invite you to follow his channel and join the D2 Community on Facebook. Here you can find a couple of links:

• Fabio Palvelli’s Channel
• D2 Conference Community Page
• Vamzee’s Instagram

Narrative

The main narrative is a simple idea about a couple of bandits in the middle of a getaway. To fill the narrative I imagined the 3D models as a megalopolis with flying cars and a lot of connections between buildings in some kind of alien city.

Look & Feel

On this project, I tried with a non-photorealistic look & feel, something cartoonist with vivid colors. In order to achieve this goal, I used a combination of Vray toon effect and Vray Toon Material. About the material, I used a “Multi-sub texture” on the diffuse filter that way I was able to use one single material for the entire scene and make changes or adjustments to the material parameters with a few clicks.

In addition, I included a gradient map with diagonal bars in black and white to affect the shadows only. So the final material has a very subtle pattern over the shadows.

Finally, I didn’t want to hide details of the city so instead of painting depth with atmosphere effects, I decided to use contrast by color.

Composition

I started this project with very standard composition. Eye-level, the city at the distance, water in the middle ground, and a dock with people in the foreground. However, I decided to experiment with something more dynamic because I wanted to represent the main narrative of the image in a very intense way. So I moved the camera over the city, distorted the lens a little bit, activated the motion blur, and moved the main characters to the foreground.

3D Characters

For this effort, I used DAZ 3D. I found this software very helpful when I want to create a specific narrative. In this case, I placed a simple pilot on the flying car, after that, I copied the same asset and pose hanging from the car.

Once I exported the two characters to 3DS Max, I applied the same Vray Toon material to both of them.

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Paintover

I enjoyed the paint over process. In this case, it was very specific, I painted caustics on the water and birds flying over the city. Also, time was short for the entire production of this project so I decided to paint over one of the 3D characters instead to keep tweaking the original mesh.

Finally I painted some bills flying around in order to reinforce the narrative of the getaway.

Tools I used for this project

This is a list of the main hardware I used for the production of this image.

• Intel i9-9920X CPU @3.50GHz
• Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti
• Wacom Cintiq Pro 16″
• Benq PD2700U 27 inch 4K Monitor

Project Gallery

So I hope you enjoyed this Making of. Please don’t forget to subscribe to my blog down below, share, and comment.