Lots of waiting

 

Lots of waiting

A 2D image for a change.  Wanted to get back to just creting compositions.  I didnt want to spend ages rendering to get an effect so I kept things loose.  Originally the composition was not going to have too much detail on the left hand side but as It got worked up the plan changed and in the end it feels the more successful part of the painting.  I did smuggle in a little 3D.  

    I have painted rain before and never got a a satisfying result. This time I did a particle simultation using a few different objects and lit it to get the drops to show up. I rendered it as a Quicktime movie to preserve the alpha channel.  I used a single frame of the render and added it as a layer to the PSD file.

As I had kept the layers during painting I was able to drop the completed layers, onto the animation in Blender. I rendered it again then imported the layers into Photoshop to create the Gif (cant do this in Blender, sigh).  

Most of the Photoshop work I streamed on Twitch and the videos are there

Waiting

Waiting

Waiting - video  Youtube link

This was playing around with Photoshop layers and using Blender lighting and effects.  I did something like this going the reverese - 3D models and Photoshop layers before for Turbine.  

Layers

I was able to quickly create the layers and then import them as image to plane in Blender.  

Photoshop layers

I seperated the layers based on effects. For this I turned off shadows for lights and layers.  

Layers in Blender

The stars(particles) were the most  fiddly.  I had to set up a cube and collision to contain them and stop them leaking into the foreground. 

Layers with effects in Blender

 The rest was balancing the lighting to keep the effects visible.

Everything was rendered in Eevee.

Tough times

Cop Sketch

Went back to where I started with some people studies.  Havent done anything like this in a while so it was nice just to concentrate on some basic stuff.   I did a line drawing and then just concentrated on shapes.  

The virus has stoped us from taken things for granted.  Its making us question presumptions about how stable society is.  The police have been one of the funadamental parts of that stability and they are now being asked to enforce restrictions of the civil society that in the Western world havent been imposed since the second world war.  

Salvage

Data Mining

Vimeo link

This started out as a commission but the client wanted to go in a different direction after the initial sketches. I think the fact I did the concepts in 2D threw them.  

For me if the final image is a still 2D image then the approach of using the photoshop sketches is stronger but I should have thought of the client who was invested in a 3D image wanted to see that format in drafts.  

Anyway I was left with a partially developed concept that I did want to finish.  

I had developed 2 colour schemes based on what I could see of their branding.  As the choice was now mine alone I went with the lighter one. 

I used a toon shader to keep the detail low for the data centre.  There is a toon shader built in for Blender but it only works with cycles.  To keep the lighting effects I wanted to stay with the Eevee renderer.  You can cheat a toon shader using ramps so I used a variant of MrTriPies method here 

I added some animations.  I added ripples following the tutorial by Gleb Alexandrov here .  This method uses the wave modifier, dyanmic paint and a particle system.  The major time investment here was in getting a material and lighting set up that would leave the data lake emissions  visible but still being able to see the ripples by reflection.  

The figures are on the basic metarig.  You can see the lighting ended up a little complicated but that is why I wanted to do the lighter scene as it is harder to control.  

Lighting set up