The Making of Paracete

Posted by Jeff Mottle 25 July 2012 1:28 am

The Making Of "Paracete" by artist Tianyi Zhu

The Final Image:

This is the wireframe for the main building is by usual way to make. For the surrounding buildings, I used the techniques in the video here: http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/texture_modeling_for_games_with_3dsmax_2011 and here: http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/show/7979/tipoftheweek-3d-building-modeling-part-1

Next I establish the tone and feeling of the scene. Choosing the right sky map is the most important thing. I use a cylinder to simulate the sky and adjust the brightness to match the reflection of the glass. Of course you can do it with an HDRI map as well, however I used to use the sky map on a sphere or cylinder. I find it easier to adjust and the the render setup is simpler.

This is the glass material adjusted with the sky. The refraction color is little pink to match the light map behind the glass. I want a warm colored light in the interior.

This is another glass shader setup.

The light map behind the glass (ID1) is with light. You have to adjust it to fit the perspective of camera. ID2 is just black to simulate the unlit offices. All the materials are lit in the same way.

This is light positions in the annex and some simple billboards. There is no main lighting in the scene.

These are the small lights and the result.

The sidewalk material uses Refl. Glossiness, Reflect, and Bump map to simulate the wet ground.

I could not recall how I did the material for the road once I finished. :)

The maps forthe road.

The image below shows the light trails for the cars to make the scene more interesting.

I used a light map to make the reflection on the road more realistic. Its property is invisible to the camera.

The trees are from the ICUBE model library. For the branch I used particle system > PArray or PF to create the small lights on the tree. Pick the tree as an object-based emitter.

The setup for the street and zebra crossing material.

In the image below you'll see the material for the surrounding building. The maps on the wall and glass and a segment of glass all surround the buildings the same way.

This is another building that you can not see but it is used for reflection in the glass. It's just box and a light map.

The image below is the raw rendering. Next there are two steps in photoshop: 1) Render the people layer, then blur and merge it in Photoshop. 2) Ppaint a little red for the car light trails.

In Fusion I first adjust the rackdefocus for a little bit of blur. The bright part can be more like a photo.

Then adjust to make it a bit brighter.

Add a vignette to make it more like a photograph.

Add a little glow to soften the image.

Adjust the color a little bit.

Blur on the sky with no gradient color level in the end. Up to now all of the adjustments have been small with just little changes. All of this work is for the next steps.

Use filmstyle for the contrast strength.

Adjust the brightness a bit more.

Adjust the color one last time and we're done!

37 Comments

blalank 3dviz

said 25 July 2012 1:40 am

very nice... thanks...

Jo Hannes

said 25 July 2012 2:10 am

Thank you.

San Mahajan

said 25 July 2012 2:27 am

Thank you miss

Max Gooday

said 25 July 2012 2:30 am

Great write up and you make it look so simple (if only it was!!!!)

Adam Kaminski

said 25 July 2012 2:33 am

Thank you , I was waiting for it. Great work

David Houston

said 25 July 2012 2:57 am

Whats is the DFusion you are using, is it standalone or is it a photoshop plugin?

tianyi zhu

said 25 July 2012 2:59 am

Quoting Max Gooday:
Great write up and you make it look so simple (if only it was!!!!)

yes, I always like to do things as simple as I can,as easy as I can.

Sergio Merêces

said 25 July 2012 2:59 am

Great making off, thanks Tianyi

David Houston

said 25 July 2012 3:04 am

Or is it Fusion?

tianyi zhu

said 25 July 2012 3:09 am

Quoting David Houston:
Whats is the DFusion you are using, is it standalone or is it a photoshop plugin?

it is a post production software for animation. standalone.like photoshop for image.
you also can use After Effect or combustion. they are same thing .

tianyi zhu

said 25 July 2012 3:11 am

Quoting David Houston:
Or is it Fusion?

Digital Fusion

David Houston

said 25 July 2012 3:16 am

Okay cool, thank you, lovely images as always.

Kostas Katsaras

said 25 July 2012 4:13 am

Thank you very much....
Impressive work and very nice breakdown...

msje rafajesa

said 25 July 2012 6:39 am

thanks....so good..

Pasca Putra

said 25 July 2012 7:07 am

thanks..great tutorial.

Christopher Kowal

said 25 July 2012 10:26 am

cool....I like your style. Thanks for sharing.

Jeff Mottle

said 25 July 2012 10:39 am

Quoting David Houston:
Whats is the DFusion you are using, is it standalone or is it a photoshop plugin?

Fusion: http://www.eyeonline.com/Web/EyeonWeb/Products/fusion6/fusion6.aspx

Glessner Group

said 25 July 2012 4:14 pm

This is a beautiful render Tianyi!!!

hary jumayan

said 25 July 2012 9:36 pm

really great tutorial, simple procees stunning in the end!

Patricio Viale

said 26 July 2012 7:59 am

Very nice and patience image.

Husam Hallak

said 26 July 2012 8:11 am

Thank you for sharing Tianyi!

deli labarck

said 27 July 2012 7:16 am

Good job!

sherwyn españa

said 28 July 2012 8:38 am

Nice share. Clear and useful workflow.

Antony Terry

said 29 July 2012 10:55 pm

. . one among the few tutorial using fusion . . ^.^

. .Great !

Sam Dawn

said 3 August 2012 7:49 am

Outstanding job, Tianyi! This again prooves that the simpler the better.

Could you tell me how long does it take you from kick-off to completion on a job like this?
A couple of days or is it in weeks?

Many thanks

tianyi zhu

said 3 August 2012 2:27 pm

Quoting Sam Dawn:
Outstanding job, Tianyi! This again prooves that the simpler the better.

Could you tell me how long does it take you from kick-off to completion on a job like this?
A couple of days or is it in weeks?

Many thanks

after finish the model.for the first rendering,took around 2 weeks ,then some renderings around 1 week,some rendering 2 days...
many many thanks

Adam l

said 7 August 2012 3:49 am

Very nice Image, am very impressed with the pavement. although we are not lucky enough to have an entire 3 weeks on an Image!!! more like 2-3 days lol. I some how feel this is misleading to some people, as I see this sort of quality in CV's & portfolio's, we would then employ them, and they would suck miserably since they can't keep to real-life deadlines of architecture. was this for a company or just a personal project? Good work tho!

Ramiro Alcocer

said 10 August 2012 8:58 am

Thanks for sharing.

jinlong shen

said 15 September 2012 8:05 am

好图顶顶

Chris Jackson

said 14 January 2013 8:32 pm

Thanks for sharing.
What is the filmstyle plugin you are using?

tianyi zhu

said 20 January 2013 5:18 am

Quoting Adam l:
Very nice Image, am very impressed with the pavement. although we are not lucky enough to have an entire 3 weeks on an Image!!! more like 2-3 days lol. I some how feel this is misleading to some people, as I see this sort of quality in CV's & portfolio's, we would then employ them, and they would suck miserably since they can't keep to real-life deadlines of architecture. was this for a company or just a personal project? Good work tho!

it was a personal work,thanks

tianyi zhu

said 20 January 2013 5:24 am

Quoting Chris Jackson:
Thanks for sharing.
What is the filmstyle plugin you are using?

filmstyle is a one of tools of Speedsix plugin for DFusion.

jun li

said 20 February 2013 9:56 am

支持依然，非常不错的作品与教程，谢谢分享.

CS B

said 1 March 2013 8:59 am

Great work... Thank you for sharing!
Could you tell me how long did it take to render this?
(and perhaps, your vray setting and the machine specs?)

Thank you!

tianyi zhu

said 2 March 2013 5:29 am

Quoting CS B:
Great work... Thank you for sharing!
Could you tell me how long did it take to render this?
(and perhaps, your vray setting and the machine specs?)

Thank you!

Don't remember clearly .should be around 5 hours for 3000 pixel.
vray setting is already in the tutorial.
intel core Quad CPU Q6600,8G RAM for it

CS B

said 2 March 2013 7:07 am

Quoting tianyi zhu:
[QUOTE=CS B]Great work... Thank you for sharing!
Could you tell me how long did it take to render this?
(and perhaps, your vray setting and the machine specs?)

Thank you!

Don't remember clearly .should be around 5 hours for 3000 pixel.
vray setting is already in the tutorial.
intel core Quad CPU Q6600,8G RAM for it[/QUOTE]

Thank you for your kind comment, Tianyi
it helps