Whitechapel 1888

[Hannes]

On Sketchfab I found a nice (free) model of a street scene named Whitechapel. It took a long time to edit the model and its textures. All other models in this scene are free ones as well. I combined old models with new ones. The carriage for example is actually an american one and had two static horses. I replaced them by previously used trotting ones. I also used different hats and beards to get more variety in the male characters.
The sky is a backdrop, and the background shader is slightly selfilluminating. The sun is on, but at a very low level. One of the most tedious tasks was to place lightsources exactly into the street lamps. The lamps' glass parts are separate models with a glass shader assigned to them and set to not cast shadows. Otherwise, even with a glass shader, the lightsources didn't cast light on the scene outside of the glass parts.
Postwork is rescaling, increasing contrast, chromatic aberration and a little sharpening.
Rendertime was about two hours with the path tracer at a 3K resolution.

[Hannes]

Just took a closer look and found, that the characters are a bit too large compared to the buildings' stories. So I reduced the scale of all characters to 80%, and I think, this looks better.

[digitalguru]

Very nice, lovely moody light, and great work on the practical lights
Reminds me of my favourite Sherlock Holmes movie "Murder by Decree"

The only crit would be - would the lamps illuminate the street more? - they don't seem to be very effective? Or were Victorian lamps not that powerful?

[Hannes]

The only crit would be - would the lamps illuminate the street more? - they don't seem to be very effective? Or were Victorian lamps not that powerful?

Actually I don't know. As far as I know, they were gas lamps. No idea, how effective they were. Anyway, increasing the light sources' multiplier might look a little unnatural.
It may be due to the construction of the lamps in the scene. They are conical, but closed at the bottom.
I trust TG's lighting, so hopefully, it's more or less correct...
Anyway, thanks for your comment!!!

By the way, I also noticed, that the driver of the carriage is too large as well, so at the moment the carriage and the horses seem too small compared to the other people. Have to take care of that.

[digitalguru]

Any Hollywood movie of that era is usually dark and moody, so you're probably spot on

[Dune]

Terrific! The mood is great, and gloomy, which would be typical indeed.

[Hannes]

Thanks, guys!!
Here is the (hopefully) last iteration. The proportions should be correct now.

[KlausK]

Where is Jack?

Great Scenery!

CHeers, Klaus

[Hannes]

  Thanks, Klaus!

[WAS]

Wow great work! Love them lighting from lamps. Very much a brooding mood. 

[Hannes]

Thanks Jordan!!

[WAS]

No problem. One thing I notice is you cans see the repeating patterns in the cloud volume. Other than it's film ready. :O

[sboerner]

Holy smokes, this is terrific. You have such a great eye for detail. Love the cobblestone street and fine details in the people, buildings, streetlights.

We have a village in our area that still uses gas lighting on its public streets (yes, seriously) so I can confirm that they are not very bright. Yours look about right, though perhaps the light could be a bit warmer.

The only tiny criticisms I might offer concern the sky. I think Jordan may be right about the tiling -- I can see where the seams (or something) form a cross near the upper right. And there's some low-level mottling across the top quarter or so of the sky. Original background or caused by something in post?

[Dune]

Indeed, but why use a backdrop while TG is so good in clouds? Even the shadow function of the atmo can be use to create some basic clouds.

[Hannes]

Thanks again, guys. Well, the reason I used a backdrop is, I had the scene completely lit by the background shader and the sun at a low level. The background looked evenly grey at the time, and I only wanted some visible clouds without having to change the lighting. I used a hollow hemisphere with shadows off for that.
I have to say, that I was so focused on the street scene, that I didn't realize the bad quality of the cloud image. I'll see, if I can improve the background clouds, or if I might use real ones.