[cg]

This is a 3D piece that i just finished recently.. it's titled: "Serenity"

i was done using Maya, After Effects, Photoshop and Deep Paint 3D and it was done in about a month (working at night on it-- as a personal sort of 'therapy project!')

lately, my 'day job' has me working on a lot of interior architecture (hard edged objects, corridors, confined spaces, etc) and i wanted to something 'organic' and open..

i grew up on a farm in Ohio-- and this piece was a result of those memories.

questions/comments/feedback-- are appreciated!


_________________
_____________________
Chad Greene
digital artist/film maker
http://www.cg-2.com

[the_insider]

i guess i don't know too much about dimensional art...but i really dig everything except for the bridge..i guess it looks a little flat...great lighting on the barn and trees though
_________________
www.andresguzman.com
---Would you believe me if i told you i was a liar?...

[Sno]

Well it defintely looks like good ol' Ohio. I love all the little details.

[cg]

Sno: thanks for the kind words!

as for the details.. all the grass/foliage/vegetation were created in Maya using Paint Fx.. i'll be posting some detail renders-- and wire frames of the geometry later tonight when i get home.

-cg
_________________
_____________________
Chad Greene
digital artist/film maker
http://www.cg-2.com

[Duracel]

I think the most problematic part is the water and especially the bank.
The water is missing the "flow" of this brook - it looks more like water on a greater River where the wind is dominating the surface but not the stream itself. And on the bank it looks like the water is as deep there as in the middle ... or the water is a bit milky; i think you should be able to see more "through" the surface and see some stones just keep short unter water or something. Also on the left side there have to be shadows on the watersurface thrown from the bank ... now it looks a bit like illuminated water in this part.
_________________
Lars G�tze

www.duracel.de Gallery

Detailling a speedpainting is nothing but speedpainting in detail.

[cg]

duracel--

great comments and feedback.. i truly appreciate it..

as for the water-- i TOTALLY agree! i'm re-working it now and i'll post a new version shortly.. it's amazng how sometimes you can work on something for so long-- and NOT notice certain (obvious) mistakes, etc.. eh?

cheers..

-cg
_________________
_____________________
Chad Greene
digital artist/film maker
http://www.cg-2.com

[Iddi]

I find the water weird too. It's too hard, it should run more. And the bridge is too bright.

Another thing I noticed is that it almost seems as if you just blurred the image in some random spots. Like the grass under the bridge all the way right, it shouldn't be blurred at all.
_________________
The truth hurts. Sure not as much as jumping onto your bike with the seat missing, but it hurts.

[cg]

here's another version i worked on..

the water has been reworked.. i added shadows from the left bank.. and also rocks and misc ripples associated with the rocks..

i also adjusted some settings for Depth of Field (it was a selective lens effect before-- in that it was focused on the barn-- and faded off radially to the right)

now it's a standard DOF lens.. where the focus is in the foreground/midground plane.. falling off to the background..

here's the reworked piece:


_________________
_____________________
Chad Greene
digital artist/film maker
http://www.cg-2.com

[cg]

ok.. over the next few posts-- i'll be sharing some images regarding to the creation (and process) of the final art.

questions/comments/feedback?


here was the first stage, Layout..

this image (below) shows the initial layout curves and main geometry (which is stand in geo for the moment).. you can see that i was trying to define the curves and shape of the river and the dirt path with these curves.



once the curves were drawn and i liked where they were flowing (from the camera's point of view), i then created a poly plane primitive and subdivided it many times. I used the sculpt polygon tool (Maya) to get the shape of the terrain to be what i wanted.

Here are a couple of images which show the scene being developed.. and first pass (very rough) textures being applied -- just to get a sense of color and feel. (the water was just a reflective plane at this point, too)




once the terrain was acceptable-- i moved on to modeling the buildings and major props.. All of these objects were 'box modeled' using Maya. (note: i only added details where it was needed and based this on the objects distance from the camera/viewer) i also used displacement maps for the stonework on the house and the chapel-- so the wire frame geo was kept low res, for poly count issues.



here's the boat geometry and stages:



_________________
_____________________
Chad Greene
digital artist/film maker
http://www.cg-2.com

[cg]

the hardest part of this piece was the grass and misc foliage such as plants, trees, flowers, etc.. -- because of high polygon counts that they caused! all of the grass and flowers totaled over 12 million polygons! (and that is NOT counting the trees!) because of this, i had to render out sections of foliage and later comp then together in after effects.

here is an animated gif -- that shows some sections and grass and how it was split up into seperate layers/renders:




as for the grass/foliage, it was created using Maya's Paint Fx, and then converted into polygons, so it could be rendered using Mental Ray. here are some images which show the wireframe and the rendered out foliage:











_________________
_____________________
Chad Greene
digital artist/film maker
http://www.cg-2.com

[cg]

the trees were created with software called Xfrog (great software, by the way!-- for trees, etc) i created the trees and placed them around the 3D scene.. and i rendered them out in sections (5-8 trees at a time) and then later composited them in the final scene.








as for the water-- i first studied how fluid dynamics worked on a simple plane (Maya).. and then i applied what i learned to the river geometry in my scene.. (i also added the rocks and the river bank as collision geo for the ripples, etc.. )


_________________
_____________________
Chad Greene
digital artist/film maker
http://www.cg-2.com

[cg]

..and finally, here's the environment wire files.. (note: i'm not including the trees, etc.. because most of the work for that involved comping effects and post painting to complete the look)






thanks for your time!
_________________
_____________________
Chad Greene
digital artist/film maker
http://www.cg-2.com

[Francis]

Nice piece man. Thanks for the detailed walkthrough too.
_________________
Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[tttia]

Great work, details all over. And looking at all those models that must have taken tons of time! (2 months..wonder how many hours a day).

The lighting is nice. I am living around quite a few old barns lately too, and you captured well the feel.

The back buildings look a bit like they are out of focus. Perhaps this was done to bring attention to the foreground, not sure, but it is the only thing about this piece I don't like!