Studio: GABRIELE RIVA

Personal / Commissioned: Personal

ARTISTIC SIDE:
IMAGE PLANNING: I’ve planned my shot keeping in my mind this points that rule our perception.
Dark foreground-the tree drives you in the focus-the pavillon is in the third-red nose of snowballman that caputure your attention and drive you into the building-the cross stops your clockwise occidental reading of image- mountains close the picture.
TECHNICAL SIDE:
The creation of winter mood has been diveded in two step: MODELING & SHADING.
For creating a belivable snow that melts on steps and cross and of course the snowman, I chose Maya with SCULPITNG TOOL, starting with box, smoothing with a high level and scuplting on mesh.
SHADING:
The shading process is focused on snow and concrete.
For snow I use a TOP/BOTTOM MATERIAL in which i plug two Vray material, one with diffuse black & the other with diffuse total white, I played with BLEND & POSITION value. For the cross I use a VRAY BLEND MATERIAL in which i plug a black Vray material in base and a Vraymaterial with scratch map in opacity slot, the Vraymaterial is very reflective and it enters in Coat 1.The house material is a VRAY BLEND MATERIAL MATERIAL in which i plug a white Vray material in base and in Coat1 a Vraymaterial with a Grunge map in Diffuse, the Vray blend Material has a Gradient map in the Blend 1 value .The concrete material is a VRAY BLEND MATERIAL MATERIAL in which i plug in the base a VrayMaterial with concrete map in diffuse and in Coat 1 & Coat2 another VrayMaterial with the same concrete map in the diffuse slot but with a color correction on it.
In the Blend1 i hooked a Vraydirt map with a grunge map, the Vtay dirt has a radius of 0,6
In the Blend2 i linked a Vraydirt map with a grunge map, the Vtay dirt has a radius of 10
Both of grunge map is under a color correction.
LIGHTING:
Snowy atmosfhere is supported by a soft light, I create this kind of G.I. usig a VRAY DOME with no map only white.
The snow comes from PARTICLE SISTEM_SNOW with a flake size of four and then I played with time slider to obtain the perfect frame.
ENVIRONMENT:
I create the mountain with a simple plane and then I shaped the faces
I added a VRAY ENVIRONMENT FOG for creating atmosphere with scatter gi flagged and fog height of 1000.
In the PHISICAL CAMERA I enable motion blur for the flakes and put the shutter to 1/500 sec.
I used PROGRESSIVE MODE with noise threshold of 0,03 .