Vessel Final

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Inspired by Viking vessels and Swedish archipelago.

The wood cladding of the building reminds me of viking vessels. The issue was how to show the connection between the building, which is obviously standing on shore, and the vessel. My research brought me to the Swedish archipelago, which, in my opinion, perfectly fits my idea.

The biggest challenge for me was modeling and texturing archipelago rocks. It was not easy, I learned new techniques and immediately implemented them to my workflow. I used Zbrush for modeling landscape and textured everything inside of 3dsmax through Bercon Noise.

Thanks Ronen and Tomorrow for providing such a great challenge!

Tomorrow Challenge

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From the outset I wanted to create a scene which complimented the simplicity of the building and at the same time create a natural surrounding that would contrast the geometric forms of the museum.

Seeing as the museum itself was very dark I wanted to avoid a scene that was too dull and moody. By creating something bright would make the museum stand out and I wanted sunlight to be the main focus. I felt an Autumn feel would best compliment the dark tones of the museum. My aim was to capture the morning sunlight bursting through the tress creating long shadows and sunshafts.

The process was relatively straight forward. I began with the model; this gives me time to think about possible scenarios and familiarise myself with the building. From there I played around with camera angles and rough light setups to get an idea of possible compositions. Once I had decided on the final camera angle it was then just a case of creating the necessary assets. Some of these I had existing in my library and other I had to create. All landscape items were scattered using iToo Forest Pro. This tool, combined with interactive rendering in Corona renderer, have become invaluable for experimenting with a scene. Final lighting setup was a HDRi (Peter Guthrie) combined with a Corona sun to help emphasise the direct sun.

Post process was very simple. I wanted the image to be 90% complete from the raw render. I appreciate this is not always the most efficient method but in this instance it was possible to do. I added a few colour corrections and tone adjustments in Photoshop, but nothing else.

I would have liked to create more images for this final submission but due to the nature of the competition I felt time would be better spent on the main image. I will certainly be rendering more images from this scene, so I hope you look out for them.

Thanks for the opportunity.

Beast in the Mist

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The first thought that came to my mind when I decided to participate to this challenge was the first landscape I saw when I arrived in Stockholm for my first time before some years. On our way to the house we were hosted, we had to cross a beautiful misty forest which is shown on the first of the reference images. That first impression is the basic
inspiration of the image I created. Another element I wanted to include was the Baltic Sea, which for some reason it is not shown on the pictures that I found online.
I decided to take a “boat” and make the picture coming from inside the water. My first idea was for the image to be vertical, in order to see the whole reflection of the building on the water. The problem was that the camera had to be too far and I did not want to lose all the nice details around the building. The mist reminded me old abandoned houses far from civilization so i thought that putting people around is helping the image to be more friendly and less spooky.
So, there it is! Afternoon, an exhibition is starting, the host is waiting on the door and people are on their way to enter the museum.
Last but not least I would like to mention that the canvases inside the museum are
actually my paintings.