Genesee River

[Stormlord]

I would like to see more renderings, that's why we're here...
But nevertheless, very impressive renderings and research.

By the way THX for visiting my site!

STORMLORD

[sboerner]

Adding people to the scene . . . these hardworking guys are operating a crab winch, used to hoist stone blocks into place.

[Stormlord]

Very very realistic!

TOP JOB !!!

STORMLORD

[Dune]

Awesome work. The chain must have been a pain to make. I know from ZBrush it's pretty hard to get a curvebased chain of objects around something. But isn't it fun to construct these scenes!

[sboerner]

Thanks! I've been checking the math on this machine (math is not my strongest suit), and it seems that they would have been able to hoist stone blocks weighing up to two tons, with some effort. So the winch is more powerful than it looks!

Modeling chains is pretty easy in Blender once you get the hang of it. You make a single link, then use modifiers to create an array and bind it to a curve. It just takes some care in setting up the curve.

If you look closely you'll see that the links bend slightly as they follow the curve around the drum. There are ways to prevent this but they involve a few more steps. Not worried about it here -- there's no way it will show in the final rendering.

[Dune]

Thanks for expaining, Steve. Maybe there's another way in ZBrush too (but there's soooo much). I happened to see a video where they dangled a chain (from a single link) in Marvelous Designer, which was interesting (and handy) too.

[pclavett]

Really nice work with the river. Flowing water is not easy in Terragen and like your work around. Great job !

[sboerner]

Apologies for the long absence here. Work on this scene was interrupted for a couple of months by other projects. I ended up using more than 50 figures, far more than any other scene I've done. They are based on a handful of basic models but with unique poses and different clothing. Adding human figures is a slow process for me but everything is almost finished.

Here are test renders of some of the figures.

[Dune]

Really cool guys! I know how much work they are, so my compliments for making 50+ of them!

Regarding your other post, I don't really know how to solve that other than maybe distributing the displacement equally between positive and negative. So using a negative offset half the displacement. There have been issues before, but that has been (partially) solved. And the tree really needs a lot of vertices.

[sboerner]

Thanks, Ulco. Here are a couple more. I'm starting a high-resolution rendering of the scene and will post a section here later.

(I'll reply to your other comments in the displacement thread.)

[Dune]

Wonderful! Will you be dirtying up their clothes (especially shoes) in TG? Some wear on the hats, shoes, e.g?

[sboerner]

Thanks, Ulco. There are dirt layers there, which for some reason show up more prominently in Substance. I'll give those a boost and will add some mud to their boots.

[sboerner]

Here is a small section of the final scene, including much of the activity involved with constructing the aqueduct. It's not quite finished - I'm still tweaking the sun angle and may add some extra grime here and there. But mostly done. Actual scene building, including modeling and shading all of the objects, took a little over a year. Lightning speed for me!

[Dune]

Wow, that looks terrific. I like the cows wandering around, nice touch. And how about that muddy ground between the houses? I would expect some grassy rough areas at least, some bushes perhaps. Not all ground is trodden evenly.

[sboerner]

Thanks, Ulco. That's a good suggestion. The village was build *very* quickly, so things would have been freshly torn up for a long time. But I'll update the masks to restore some grass and weeds around the buildings. I might also introduce some stumps along the roadway . . . many records mention how much of a nuisance they were in the early days.

I made the cows a while back for another scene, and this seemed like a good opportunity to use them again. You can't have too many cows!