Blenheim Bridge

Started by sboerner, December 02, 2021, 04:42:31 PM

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sboerner

Started on the picture for our holiday card earlier this year but have been dragging my feet and it will probably turn out to be last-minute as usual. :D

This horse-drawn dray will be a small detail. The model's been sitting around for a couple of years but I haven't used it for anything yet.

I'm testing Mixer to see if it might be a substitute for Substance. Mixer is not as powerful or full-featured. The painting tools in particular are a little rudimentary. It won't bake any base maps, like normals or curvature, but you can use third-party tools to do that (I use xNormal). It will probably work fine for what I need. The interface is clean and it has a very easy learning curve, and the textures that it produces are beautiful. Its ability to easily blend and export custom masks is a nice way to integrate work done in Mixer with procedural texturing in Terragen. I see many possibilities here.

The horses and human skin textures were done in Substance, everything else in Mixer.

WAS

Already getting a holiday vibe from this alone. Getting excited to see where this goes.

sboerner


Dune

That's a great model (again), and I'm also looking forward to see your card. If you are going to work on the model, I'd change the stance of one of the horses, as they're exact copies. Or just flip it X- or Z-wise. And perhaps roughen up the skin texture a bit, and with less even, more patchy reflection.

Hannes

Fantastc!! I totally agree with Ulco. A little more irregularity would be great.

sboerner

Thanks! Good advice on the irregularity of the horses' coats. As far as the stances, they were posed individually -- they aren't the same but are very close. They can probably be varied slightly more. 

When I checked photos and videos of horse teams in action, I was struck by how coordinated the horses' gaits were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEWu5vR0jEc

Dune

Yes, but still... it looks a bit too unvaried, especially for 3D, if you get my point (people might think...). A slight difference would probably be enough.

Hannes

This is really interesting. I never thought about that.
However, maybe their heads could have different poses. Maybe it's just an artistic freedom, but it might add to reality.

sboerner

QuoteYes, but still... it looks a bit too unvaried, especially for 3D, if you get my point (people might think...). A slight difference would probably be enough.
I agree, and actually started on the revisions earlier this afternoon. New version here. Let's just say these working fellows aren't as highly trained as those fancy parade teams.  ;)


Also fixed the horses' hair, which had somehow gotten switched. May break up the roughness a bit more later, if it's noticeable in the final image.

All this makes me realize what we've lost. We lived alongside horses for thousands of years, and then *poof* they almost disappear within a single generation. Now we struggle to remember what it was like working alongside them.

Dune

Yeah, this is it! One more thing I just noticed; their hooves. I would do a bit more about those. They look rather dull and unfinished. Lots of variety, but it probably depends on the 'brand'.

Hannes


sboerner

Once more into the breach, dear friends . . .

It turns out the horse textures still included the mud and dirt layers used for the Little Falls scene. I was just too lazy to remove them and re-export the files. Here is a new rendering without them, to show the actual shading on the hooves. Still room for improvement, but that can probably wait. (Won't be visible in the current project.) Thank you for the reference images, Ulco. Stashing those for future use.

They seemed to want blinkers, so I added those.

Dune

I sometimes have that when importing a ship or so, and forget adjusting the wet band to water level. And it's totally dark, and I can't understand why that is :-[


sboerner

Thanks, Kadri. Here is the finished scene. The setting is Blenheim, NY, just north of the Catskills. The bridge model is based on a set of plans I found on the Library of Congress website. The original bridge was built in 1855 and is said to have had one of the longest spans, 210 feet, of any wooden bridge in the world.

Cards will go to the printer this week. Happy holidays everyone!