The Making of Slow Decay

INTRODUCTION

Hi, and welcome to the beginning of my tutorial in which I will talk about the process of making my latest picture named Slow Decay. My name is Toni Bratincevic, I am the 3d artist from one small country in Europe named Croatia. I am 27-year-old male whose passion is to create 3d pictures and animations for which I use Alias Maya software. I have been using it for several years. My first contact with Maya was at my first job at local TV station in Varazdin where I gained a wide range of knowledge about Maya. At the moment I am working in company called Vizije in which we use Maya as primary 3D software. I just want to thank my boss Tom at Vizije for letting me use Maya to create my own art. If you are interested in my art please be free to visit my web page http://www.interstation3d.com/. Except of images, you will also find there some tutorials about global illumination, caustics, making of other pictures..., which are also published on Alias site. Well enough of this, let's move to more interesting stuff...

DOWNLOADS

Download 2map.mel [Script Files] [660Bytes]

Download slowdecay.zip [Scene Files][15.7MB]

INSPIRATION AND IDEA

The idea for the Slow Decay picture was not my own creation. It is the reconstruction of one scene from the animated movie named Ghost In The Shell, the Japanese animated SF movie which, if you didn't saw till now, I recommend you to do it. There is also the Ghost in The Shell 2 movie, which I didn't see but I can't hardly wait to see it... maybe it will inspire me to create another image on this topic. ;) Well, let's go back to the scene. Here is the snapshot of the image from the movie which I have used, at the start, to create my picture which is also below:

[The snapshot from the Ghost In The Shell animated movie]

[My picture based on the snapshot named "Slow Decay"]

As you can see, the pictures are very similar when it comes to position of the elements in the scene. But since the picture from movie is the only reference that I had, I didn't have enough information of how things should look in details so I modeled everything from scratch. Also, a lot of new elements were added as the picture progressed. For example the structure on the left in the original picture was all in black, but in my picture that is one of the most detailed part of the scene. This also goes for the pillars on the right, which hold the road. One thing that also changed from the roots is the lighting ... I will tell you later why. ;)

I didn't have a clue at the start of this process what I wanted to show with it. It just started as the reconstruction of the image from the movie. But as the time passed by, and the picture evolved, I made a really clear vision of what I wanted to show with it. Somewhere at that stage I wrote a few sentences, which gave me additional inspiration to finish it. Here is how the story goes:

There is an old man who was born at the time when the earth was unpolluted, clean, with sun shinning in the middle of the blue sky. Nowadays he lives in completely different world, polluted, dark, and dirty with everlasting fog. A glimpse of his thoughts: "I didn't see the sun since the time I was young. The blue sky. Where is it now? Does it still shine above this eternal fog? I hope to see it on my last day. I hope that my spirit would have eyes once I fly away, so I can feel it once again. My blue sky, I dream of you every day."

Work In Progress - From The First Render To Final picture

Every time when I start to create a new picture, the first step that I do is to block the position and the size of the elements in the scene including camera and the basic setup of the light. For this, I use the standard primitive objects like box, spheres or some extruded elements, which can be easily created. The blocking of the scene is one of the crucial parts since it shows you where the main objects will be, and how exposed - visible will they be to the viewer. From that you can make decisions of what will be more or less detailed parts of the scene. Also, at this moment you can experiment a little bit with the basic light setup just to see what kind of light colors would be appropriate, or maybe test intensity of the lights to check the balance of the colors and lighting. This is that first picture that I am talking about, the start of the Slow Decay:

[Blocking the scene with simple lights]

As you can see from the picture above, there are three basic divisions of the scene. The first one is the middle object, the ship for transporting people over the river. The second division are the elements in the background ... the buildings and partially the highway. The third one is the building on the left, in the shadow. After a few examinations of this basic scene, I saw that the highway could be a great element to blend the background (buildings) with the front - near details (transport vehicle and the building on the right). This is because the top part of the highway that is directly lighted with yellow light can gradually fade away to the dark part of the highway and blends the brightly lighted background with the shadowed elements on the left side of the picture.

Also, at the beginning I have planned to use the variations of blue light at the shadowed parts of the scene. But after a few thoughts of what is the best way to show the polluted future and the process of slow decay of the life itself, I decided to give a try to the green color instead of the blue, since green enhances the feeling of more dark-toxic atmosphere. It is much harder to play with green color than with blue, but why not, let's give it a shot. ;)

The next picture is, I think third one that I rendered. It is still deep start. The buildings in the back have some basic textures that I found in my collection. I also put some textures on the right building just to see what will be the size of it. There is also the simple model of the sign above the ground. I also started to model the transport vehicle. This is one of the first versions of it ... after the few hours of modeling. As you can see, the lighting is different (green) which is more suitable than the blue version from the beginning. Camera was also rotated a little bit.

[Different colors of light and modeling start]

As you can probably see I don't do full modeling and then go to texturing lighting. I tend to mix all of those three steps together. For me it is more fun to do it this way, but it is really up to you to decide how will you do it. Ok, now the next picture was one test that I did to see how the scene would react to the final gather pass. That's the reason why some parts are brighter compared to the picture from step above. Final gather and Global Illumination can be of great help when you need to light up your scenes quickly and realistically, but as the name says it is global and it can not be controlled locally. For example if I want to light up that tiny part of the scene a little bit more, and I use spotlight for that, the effect of it when using FG will be more global because light reflects and bounces around the scene, compared to the version without FG where the effect of the light is local and directional. The other reason why I didn't use FG and GI was the time it takes to render your scene. For example, the render time for Slow Decay is around 3 hours. If I have used FG and GI it would take around 10 hours, maybe more. But don't get me wrong ... FG and GI are great, and I am using them in two new pictures that I am working on right now. Yes, I forgot ... you could also see that I also worked on signs, textures and new lights. I also moved the vehicle a little bit back so that it blends better with the scene. Now the picture ;)

[More texturing, modeling and a test with Final Gather]

The next thing that I have tested is the fog. Now, the Maya has its own fog shader but once the fog is created it cannot be changed without rerendering. That's why I tell MentalRay to render the Z Depth Map with which you can easily add fog in post processing program like Digital Fusion, Combustion or some other. It's easy to get the z depth map from Maya, but I will explain that in the rendering part of the tutorial. One thing that I have worked on is the two monitors and the platform at the pillars on the right. The picture:

[Test with the fog + new models]

Once I tested the picture with the fog I decided to stick with it ... maybe I will change it a little bit later but I will concentrate on adding details right now. In the picture below I refined the transport vehicle and added the first textures to it. It looks much better now but it still needs more details. I have also played with the intensity of the lights with which signs are lit, but in this test they stick out too much, so I will probably correct this in the next test. I think that intensity, which is somewhere in the middle, is the one I am looking for.

[Texturing of the transport vehicle + few new details on it]

That was the first thing that I have done in next picture (below). I have also created 5 new textures for the signs ... that was done in Photoshop. And there is also the new sign at the second row of the signs in the back. This one is oriented vertically to break up the repetition a little bit. I have also added the sign on the right pillars RCCS 75 which stands for Road Control Center 75. ;) There are also other new elements, be free to explore the picture below and discover them by yourself ;)

[Sign textures, details and more details]

As you progress through the creation, you will add more and more small details that are not noticeable at the first sight but they make difference. For example, compared to the picture above I have changed only the model of the building on the right. Details are added to few balconies and there are also new elements on the top of that building. As I said not too much but enough to make a difference. ;) I have also included the second picture just to show you how I quickly paint my new ideas on the picture ... what I still need to do ... details details. Some of them will be realized, other not. Since I draw with my mouse it looks crappy but it is enough to serve as reference to what I have in my brain. ;) I also tend to print the image and paint with hand on it. It's a matter of choice...

[Just a few steps from the final]

[New ideas for objects, painted with mouse :)]

After the red-brush crappy sketch I have started to work on those details. In the meantime I made a few other sketches with more elements. The picture below is just that. The new things are: dirt on back building, the details on the top of few buildings, the new mechanical elements on the top of the highway, the details below the highway on the pillars, the details on the left shadowed part, graffiti on the left wall and in the back pillars. I have also made a mistake: the white planes on the building are there because they lack the alpha channel since I converted the image to another format ... I just switched to old image texture and everything worked fine.

[Just a few steps from the final]

Just a few steps from the final image. I added more details like the wires between highway and left building. These wires gave the completely new touch to the image, it enhanced the world above and below them ... they made the cut between these two levels of the image. I was really satisfied with them, but they need a little bit more work on them. This was the moment when I decided to make image a little bit brighter because my monitor was not calibrated very good, and at some other computer the image was too dark. So I tweaked nearly all the lights in the scene. There is also one detail in the passage at the top left part of the picture for which I didn't make a good light setup.... They were too dark. The last WIP picture:

[More details, wires, changing the light intensities a little bit]

And the final image. Brighter lights, more wires, few dirt spots, desaturated front left sign. This was the end of few months that I have spent on this picture. There were times when I had time and inspiration to work few hours per day, and then there were periods of week or two when I didn't touch it, but at the end I am pretty satisfied with it. It is a big project to do by myself, but why not if it makes you happy at the end? ;) Below are also two images that I rendered. The black and white one is the occlusion pass, which I will talk about in the texturing section and the last one is the image without textures but with all the lights.

[The final Image]

[The ambient occlusion render]

[And light setup render]