“Don’t mess with EXAs” -Anonymous
Background
This is a little fan art project for the Zachtronics game EXAPUNKS. In the game “EXA” is a visual representation a small program capable of moving between computers using networks.
Modeling and materials
I got inspired by the game art and decided to practice some boolean modeling for quick results. The modeling didn’t take long and simple un-textured principled materials were fine. After that hit a dilemma how to present the model as the basic setup looked dull.
Composition and post processing
I’m usually doing everything using Blender compositor nodes but they can get tedious with more complex setups and I wanted to try bit different workflow this time.
I decided to try Krita for the task as it supports “file layers” which are directly uneditable layers which are loaded from a external file and automatically updated. Rendering layers separately from Blender works really well and Krita is quite fast even at near 4k resolutions.
Layers can be also rendered at partial resolution as the “file layers” have scaling options and can be updated to full resolution later on.
Artwork
Here’s a croppable version for mobile phone wallpaper use: Mobile Wallpaper Version
Misc
Samples of the background layers as bare renders:
Interesting background layer to make was the shining planet as it was done using volumetric materials using textures with volumetric mapping:
And this is how it came together in Krita:
