Gate to the Northern Kingdom (CLOSED) (CLOSED)

I'm cutting it a bit close!

The contest prompt for a winter fantasy allows for many different interpretations. So for my entry I wanted to do something that I haven't really done before... SCALE! I primarily do only portrait shots maybe in a room. Nothing vast, or expansive, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to try it out.

Since work took priority, I really didn't have much time for this one(again). Its been another couple day rush to get this done! After finishing work on Wednesday, I wanted to try using an AI for concept art. Tried a couple prompts like: "Winter Fantasy Castle Vast" eventually I got this. It's got some funky tree things going on.

I started with blocking out the scene. I also decided to build everything in the camera. So I had to make sure the camera is exactly where I wanted it. The Pink box is a place holder for the wall sitting at about 100'. The purple plane I built from the camera view so that I knew my workspace.


Using arrays and Mirrors I started just building shapes for the wall, nothing too complex.

The first image didn't show the camera's perspective, so here it is. I added some guard towers and a cube to hold the spot for the main building.

More array modifiers for the supporting pieces. Still many basic shapes.

and the bridge was built. I have a tower next to the bridge with a little door at the bottom.

More array stuff the decorated the bridge, Also added some light fixtures. and that is all I got done on Wednesday. It was a good start.

So on early Thursday morning I turned the workspace plane into a river! using the Multi res modification I sculpted downward so the water plane shown through. I referenced back to the camera view many times to make sure it looked good on camera.


When I had the river in a perfect spot, I started throwing on some textures and to get a feel for the colors. When I had the textures at an okay place, I then played with the atmosphere to try and replicate the colors of the Ai concept art. I probably spent an hour on the lighting till it got to something nice.


I added some more lanterns onto the wall next to the guard posts.


Made some flags! These are just some flat planes with some displacement modifiers to make it look like they are waving in the breeze. Also since the modifiers use global coordinates. The each flag is different in how they look! This was the first time that I used the displacement modifier. Quite nice!


Banner added. Looking real royal now!


Texturing the banner! Flags were also textured here but aren't shown. Unicorn Kingdom!


Here I stared modeling a rowboat. I looked up dimensions and scaled it properly


Sculpting the shape to match a reference image. Still was probably really off.


I retopologized the boat and got it ready for texturing.


Added seats.


Made some oars. real basic shapes. They are gonna be small in frame so it doesn't need to be super detailed.

Now everthing was ready for texturing! Also added a lantern.


Spent maybe 20min making it look decent in substance painter.

What it looks like on the water:

Took the wall from the midground, edited it and moved it really far back behind the main building. This is to add more to the SCALE idea.


With the far wall now up, I added vegetation and rocks from the Botaniq addon(A really nice addon to have.) Look the trees come with snow already!!


Started working on the foreground a bit. Made a wall, and a pathway for people to use! Moved the boat down the river a bit aswell. It also sits on the Third composition line, neat.


Using a curve, and the follow curve modifier the wall now snakes along the path!


People have to see, so I added more lanterns. Made them follow the curve as well.


I moved the rock that was behind the boat for clarity reasons.


I did a test render to see how everything was coming together.


Next I started making a bird. Used polygon editing with a subdivision modifier for this.


The plane under the bird was a wingspan reference while I was modeling.  The shape is kinda getting there.


Lopoly:


Hi poly:


Uv unrapped the ugly thing.


I know. It looks so realistic. Too bad its gonna be so far away.


Derp


I distributed the nightmare fuel into the skies! The wings are just shapekeys.


A test render with the birds

It's now early Friday morning(or earlier today).

I woke up.. and added a volume cube into the scene.


The volume really adds depth to the scene.


I wasn't using a human scale object to verify everything while I was working. That guard has alot of space.


I adjusted the guard post, to be more realistic in scale. Lanterns adjusted also.


What it looks like now! I think it makes the building look bigger.


I added some more defined volume into the scene. Couldn't get the volume density settings right. There was alot of trial and error here.


Now its time to make this scene an actual winter scene. Snow sculpting! Tried to build it up more in the corners.


Making snow that covers objects is quite simple. In the editing mode. I selected the faces that were facing the sky and duplicated them. Made them there own object, then used a solidify modifier to give the snow some depth. The snow will be using a material with a displacement map to add bumps to the mesh at render time!


What the snow looks like without the objects they were sitting on.

Now starts what I feel was a massive misuse of the little amount of time that I had.

I had decided that building a whole new character from scratch was going to be way too slow. So I went with sculpting the dude out of the starting cube.

Its starts with the blocking of the character. He looks a bit bulky because I have to account for the winter clothing.


In the sculpt mode I separate the main pieces. Head, jacket, belt, gloves, pants, and boots.


Defined the boots and pants.


With one more subdivision, I start sculpting out the wrinkles.


Decided in the cold he needs a head wrap, defined his face more.


Thought the head wrap wasn't enough, so I started on a hood.


Used polygon editing and the Subdivide modifier to make the hood.


Uv unwrapped the man for texture editing.


It was at this point that I realized all this sculpting you can't even see it in camera! This is a bad time spent to render image area ratio!


In Substance Painter now. I started with his face first. I didn't want to texture fake eyes onto the model so I just kept them closed.


I then proceeded to Head wrap, and hood.


I painted on some more wrinkles, added buttons, and snow. Doesn't look too bad right?


Look at that waste of time. 2 hours of work. Less than a percent of screen space. Oh well.


At this point I pretty much have everything asset wise built. I'm not going to show a test render, so here's a bird's eye view of the map.


Thank you so much for reading through the breakdown of my project! Its a lot of work putting this together, so thanks, thanks, thanks.

The final render is currently running and will through the rest of the night. Its 1:30am where I'm at so, I'm going to bed.

I was watching the render go, and thought the scene needed a bit more detail. Just a little bit more. More flags, windows and benches!


Okay, now I'm finally heading to bed. The render is started up again.

The final render and my entry into the contest!


Its been a crazy couple days of work, but I think I work well under pressure. There is always something that I think could be done better but I'm extremely happy with what I put out. Thank you Renderhub and Foxy 3D for hosting another great contest!

Very nice scene and alot of work and effort put into it.  Awesome.

Nice read for someone who doesn't know how to create this stuff but would like to. Thanks for sharing the process

Best of luck with your entry.
Happy New year!!

I had noticed an mistake that I made in the final render.



So this is the actual final render!


I was going to delete the other render, but I thought it'd be better for showing that sometimes fresh eyes are needed to spot errors!

such a beautiful render... 
and thank you for sharing your methodology, I learned some new tricks!

The results from the judges are in, and your entry has been chosen for SECOND PLACE!

Congratulations! Thank you for participating in the contest with this awesome entry.
The owner of RenderHub will be in contact with you to send your prize.

congrats! was confused when thumbnail was AI, least that was cleared up xD

Congrats on coming second, awesome work, alot of effort was put into it

Congratulations Olisoda for winning. 

Congratulations!!! You put a lot of work into creating this image!

Absolutly amazing work.

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