Since young, I’ve always loved the wuxia and martial arts genre of films and TV. Sure, I liked Batman and Marvel and other action films as well, but there was something special about the wuxia genre for me, especially the use of wirework. It gave the fights a dance-like quality and the characters a certain elegance when they floated through forests and over rivers. Needless to say, when I saw the film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, I was in awe - I’ve watched it multiple times over the years, the last time a few months ago.
When it was announced that Megascans would be free till the end of the year, I decided to download a few scenery assets and make a scene around them. The rock walls, the rocks and fallen tree trunks are all from Megascans. So is the boat oar, the rope coil in the boat and the branch holding up the lantern. The vegetation is from Botaniq.
I used Blender’s ocean modifier to create the water and foam. I also mixed in a noise texture (with high lacunarity and distortion) with an ambient occlusion mask to generate more foam around the rock walls and rocks.
For the character, I used the free Reallusion asset that was given out a while back as the base. I didn’t bother retexturing/ changing the face because I knew it would be hidden in the final render. The robes are done using a cloth simulation and the boots are cannabilised from a Mixamo character. For the belt, I used a curve deform modifier to deform the mesh into shape. All the cloth and leather textures are from BlenderKit. The hat does look a bit funny but I think it holds up at a distance.
I had modelled the boat for a previous render, so I made just a few modifications to make it look better. The textures are all from BlenderKit. I used a cloth simulation for the rattan “hood”(?) thing. To simulate wet patches, I used a noise texture to drive a principled BSDF coat with water IOR (1.33) and used the base colour as the tint. The character on the lantern means lamp - which I typed into a Powerpoint slide and converted to a jpeg.
The sword is an old model of mine that I modelled when following BlenderGuru’s anvil tutorial (by that I mean, I modelled it in 2019-2020). I used a bump node and more Powerpoint jpegs to inscribe the characters on the blade, which unfortunately can barely be seen on the final render. They are “宝剑盲目/侠客知义”, which is just something I coined myself meaning “the sword is blind, but the martial artist knows justice” (if you’re more fluent than I am, feel free to correct my grammar/ diction).
This has certainly been one of the most fun projects I’ve done, in no small part because of all the Megascans I could access. I’m really happy that I could bring a childhood fantasy to life here. Hope you enjoy this!
