Hi guys,
My second attempt at a broader sci-fi vista shot using Blender and Indigo. Hopefully more successful than the previous one. Credits to Rudolf Herczog and Chris Stoski for the inspiration.
EDIT: Just added a full-res crop
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Very good, very good indead! Awesome details… I’ll just shut up and enjoy it ^_~
Hi Bertrand,
Nice that you have found some time to make that great image. Very nice mood and very well executed. Are the background building also modelled ?
Very nice texturing/modeling! I love your composition; the way the camera is at a slight angle and your use of the rule of thirds. Gallery.
That is really really cool. I love everything about this one.
This is a really good picture, good job. I have a crit, though. This looks like a rather high-tech society. Where are the rest of the people flying to work? I think if you add in some other vehicles flying around down near the ground, it would really improve the life of the scene.
Thanks guys, much appreciated.
Enrico: Yes, the city at the back is modeled, though not to the same degree of detail as the foreground. The building’s lights were rendered separately (using textured emitters as only light source) and composited back into the image in post.
Nuntius. You’re right about this. Some traffic would have greatly improved this image. I might calculate another pass with some craft in the background.
The large skyscaper on the left looks out of place, i think the texture for the lighting in the middle is a bit too blurry and the reflection of those lights in the material look peculiar.
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Everything else is awsome, i am trying to get that city feel to one of my pieces but i’m running out of inspiration for all the different building i am going to have to include.
I love it, looks like old school 2D sci fi art(thats a good thing), beautiful stuff.
Great image but a couple of things:
- Something about it makes it seem like a scene from a video game. Maybe higher resolution detailed textures on foreground elements might help here.
- I don’t like the hovering ship. Show a motion-blurred trail of the exhaust, doesn’t have to be huge (right now its just a glow) and possibly slight motion blur on the ship.It seems Star Wars inspired (especially the ship) but I do like this piece. Can you provide a larger render?
I agree with Nuntius about the vehicles. Something else to consider: The fog isn’t heavy enough. In a metropolis as big and busy as that, there would be so many different gases, and fumes and polution. But at the moment it has a sort of mist you’d see over a lake.
Here’s a still from star wars episode III:
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/film/jeditemple.jpg
It not really the same perspective as yours, but you can see, the pollution makes a thick haze over the city. Vue does atmospheric effects quite well, and blender has always struggled, but it can be done with the right amount of tweaking. It’s all I can see that needs doing in this render.
The textures are spot on! The platform looks so dirty. And the modelling so detailed and crisp. I love this piece!
Greate scene awesome image. Inspirational to us all.
How long did this render in indigo? Did you use blender for the post pro?
All is looking great and really super fantastic except for some realism I guess. I thought for a while that probably adding a DoF effect would make it more appealing and satisfying. The vehicle reminds me of X-Wing from the Star Wars. Wow! 
reynante: Thanks mate. Glad you like it. I tried to avoid a short DOF on this piece as it tends to make large scenes look like scale models. Broadly speaking, big scales = no or very little DOF. (There’s a lot of Star Wars inspiration there - see below - but the craft is in fact inspired by a model from Babylon 5. Just caus I could find great references on the net).
musk: Hi, I rendered the main colour pass at 3000x1800 pixels for 20 hours on a quad core. But it actually looked pretty clear after 8 hours and I could have stopped it then. I used Photoshop for the compositing but I used Blender Internal to produce several layer masks I needed.
Redbyte: Thanks a lot for your feedback. I agree with the fog comment. A lot of the postprod had to do with adding some kind of atmospheric scattering (which wasn’t present in the initial Indigo colour pass). I could have done more. Rudolf Herczog (whom I mentioned in my first message) has done composits of Bryce and Maxwell images that had nice atmospheric effects in them. I must admit this aspect could have been pushed further in this image.
Wizard: Hi mate. Thanks for dropping by. Yes, this isn’t my most realistic piece, but it was meant to have a slight comic-book feel. You’re right about Star Wars. Chris Stoski, whom I mentioned in my original message as one source of inspiration for this piece, did all the matte paintings of Coruscant for Episode III. As for the ship, it is indeed hovering, so no motion blur there. I did try to create some kind of heat haze or distorsion effect behind the engines but I gave up after a few failed attempts.
Free-ality: Thanks, I’m glad to hear that.
Animal: Maybe you’re right. It’s neither far nor close enough and maybe not detailed enough.
BbB, utterly awesome! I’ve seen professionally done SF book covers that did not look half as good as your image. If I could make Blender crank out an image one-third as good as that I would be a very happy man.
And if you ever felt the urge to make a quick tutorial I and a lot of other people would be most grateful.
Nyrath: Thanks man. Much appreciated. I don’t know about a full tut, but I could post some intermediate stages, render layers, meshes, wires, and clay renders if anyone is interested.
PS: Here’s a link to a higher-res version where I’ve added heat haze behind the engines as suggested by Wizard.
http://features-temp.cgsociety.org/gallerycrits/291426/291426_1206549542_large.jpg
This is amazing.
This is very nice… but i am bit bothered by the fact that there is only one ship… and the buildings seems somehow … flat. All look so similar or something. Nonetheless one of the greatest works so far i’ve seen…
Oh wow, it looks real nice in hi-res. Time to nit-pick.
This makes me imagine a world not too disimilar to ours where skyscrapers only appear in big citys and hovercraft are only for the rich or for official services. One thing i particularly like is how you’ve explained away the big glowy blue lights by showing consistency with the main door. Although there are details visible it is primarily a bright glowing blue.
At this size some of the problems with the smaller version are less obvious. Imo the larger skyscraper on the left fits in better, there are smaller problems i can spot that i caouldn’t wioth the other. For instance, directly beneath the platform, there looks like a large spark texture that has been cut in half where that cluster of lights is. Some of the buildings have glowing edges against the sky. The clouds behind the distant skyscrapers look strange because the scrapers are so distant they look as if they should be interacting with them.
Finally the cables beneath the main platform look like they could do with one more level of subdivision.
This is a fantastic pic, but i gots one critic. The buildings in the background look flat, i almost thought it was a plane witha tex. I honestly don’t know how to fix it. I think its cuz theres a little white glow around all the edges, or maybe it isn’t blurry enough, idk
I’m not sure im digging the haze on the boosters, at least not that long. But, it still looks good. maybe it could be animated??? Hee hee hee, more work for you