Gazing Constellations

Artwork Finished Projects
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A painterly 3D Rendering. A small blueish fox-like dragon cautiously emerges from dark trees of the foreground. Behind a foggy lake, a range of snowy mountains rise against a starry night sky. Above the mountains, a huge creature seems to be emerging from a constellation of stars. It's body is shaped like a sea-horse and it's abstract head resembles the shape like a deer head. It's mane and wings glow like northern lights. The image has a blue foreground, a purple sky and the large dragon glows green. A watermark reads: Watermarked Constellations, a derivative work made by the original author of "Gazing Constellations". To comply with blenderartists Forum Rules, this derivative work uses a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The actual project uses the less restrictive Creative Commons-Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 License.
A painterly 3D Rendering. A small blueish fox-like dragon cautiously emerges from dark trees of the foreground. Behind a foggy lake, a range of snowy mountains rise against a starry night sky. Above the mountains, a huge creature seems to be emerging from a constellation of stars. It's body is shaped like a sea-horse and it's abstract head resembles the shape like a deer head. It's mane and wings glow like northern lights. The image has a blue foreground, a purple sky and the large dragon glows green. A watermark reads: Watermarked Constellations, a derivative work made by the original author of "Gazing Constellations". To comply with blenderartists Forum Rules, this derivative work uses a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The actual project uses the less restrictive Creative Commons-Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 License.1348×1920 454 KB

This is my latest artwork, gazing constellations. I think it is visually the most striking work I have done so far and I am really happy with it! It Also is really not that complex to be honest and i am happy about, how effective I managed to work.

First and foremost: it barely uses any image textures. pretty much all Materials used here are procedural (including the sky) and I could not be more happy with it. So enjoy some examples of the shaders, I’ve used:

3 Spheres of different materials in front of a foggy background. A stilised mossy fur sphere. Text: 2 UV channels: flow and fur size, fur color and intensity, UV-based gradient texturing. A sphere with snow, rocks and some green labeled: Landscape snow/grass transition based on world normal and elevation. And a crystal ball with a starry sky, clouds and a moon inside reads Clouds ans Stars fully procedural world environment Volumentric Clouds.
3 Spheres of different materials in front of a foggy background. A stilised mossy fur sphere. Text: 2 UV channels: flow and fur size, fur color and intensity, UV-based gradient texturing. A sphere with snow, rocks and some green labeled: Landscape snow/grass transition based on world normal and elevation. And a crystal ball with a starry sky, clouds and a moon inside reads Clouds ans Stars fully procedural world environment Volumentric Clouds.2048×1080 288 KB

Here’s some iterations this project went trough …

Multiple iterations of the artwork. From a very rough sketch with a stick figure to a version with a bright beam in the middle and a creature holding a fire towards the giant dragon to finally a version with the Fennec dragon cautiously stepping on a low-poly stone.
Multiple iterations of the artwork. From a very rough sketch with a stick figure to a version with a bright beam in the middle and a creature holding a fire towards the giant dragon to finally a version with the Fennec dragon cautiously stepping on a low-poly stone.2048×580 234 KB

On the creatures
The Creatures are both actually pretty low-poly and use a clever UV-based texturing method, that basically let’s you bypass any texture painting by just placing your UV-coordinates on the appropriate spot on a flat gradient texture.

A breakdown of the large dragon. on the left, there is a mostly grey version, that has thin lines running over half of it, on the left a colored version with the same lines. running over it.690x485
A breakdown of the large dragon. on the left, there is a mostly grey version, that has thin lines running over half of it, on the left a colored version with the same lines. running over it.690x4851920×1351 310 KB

And yes, I deliberately did not spend too much effort on the things, that were just going to be blurry in the foreground anyways :wink:

a small Fennec Dragon with blue wings steps on a very rough looking stone
a small Fennec Dragon with blue wings steps on a very rough looking stone960×778 109 KB

That’s why when all scene lights are on, my project admittedly looks a lot less spectacular.

the artwork, but everything is a lot brighter and you can see all the mistakes I made in the front
the artwork, but everything is a lot brighter and you can see all the mistakes I made in the front758×1080 1.05 MB

But I like it this way. I don’t want to get things perfect, I want them to be as good as they need so I can get more projects done!

Licenses:
When I don’t upload it to blenderartists, this project uses a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License. Have a look at my twitter to get the original artwork without the silly disclaimer.

I also use Sunset Mountain (model) and a “tree” (model and textzre) by Enrico Labarile as well as a lantern and small fungi creatures from “tt” by luyssport (each CC-BY-4.0)

If you’re curious about the silly disclaimer I have put here, feel free to read this Thread on blenderartists and creative Commons Licenses. I have high hopes this will get resolved soon :slight_smile:

Edit: sorry, I accidentally hit the post button to early.

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This is super cool, I love how much of this was procedural! (I would be very interested in seeing some node setups for those three shaders!) Nice job on the lighting and composition as well. Great work :smiley:

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The tree textures were actually one of the few, that was using an image :stuck_out_tongue:

Altough now you made me want to attemt to replicate that effect with nodes :wink:

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Sorry to blow my own horn, but the longer I look at this the more excited I am about it. I should probably do an animation with it.

It’s just … it has been a pretty short project. And a really creative one. It really reminded me of the olden days, when I did much more creative and spontaneous projects, that were done in a weekend and not in multiple months.

And this one not only was pretty low effort, it is genuinely looking stunning if I do say so myself.

Plus the name is just … peak :3
I mean usually my names are kind of … practical … but this one is not only a neat play on words, but I also think it adds to the story.

Okay enough of self excitement, I should go sleep now. ^^

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