CABINS entry by Christopher Lane

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So, I think I finalllllly managed to decide on a shape that I like for my cabin entry. This will be my 4th design interation… all of the iterations can be found below in the comment section.

The shape of my Cabin has very much been inspired by a cabin design called Skyli which was a concept done by Utopia Arkitekter – (http://www.utopia.se/en/projects/skyli) check it out.

The composition has changed ever so slightly from my original sketch, which showed a cabin sitting on the edge of a cliff face. When i was researching I came across a hotel in Iceland called the ION Adventure hotel… initially I loved the shape and how it kind of stuck out of the landscape with a pool underneath it (http://ionadventure.ioniceland.is/) – so i decided to try and design a cabin and mold the landscape around it to create a similar blue lagoon style pool underneath it.

The landscape was created with two methods. The foreground was quickly created with a plane and the free form tools to try and match the composition of my original sketch as closely as possible – I just pushed, pulled and relaxed areas until I was happy with the shape. The background landscape was created using a detailed height-map of Hvannadalshnúkur, which is a peak to the west of Jökulsárlón. I used the displacement modifier in Max and then used pro-optimizer to bring the face count down.

For the glacier coming down the mountain I simply selected the faces in those regions, copied them up and used the freeform tools again to conform it over the mountainous landscape.

Lighting was setup using a daylight system, Vray Sun and Vray Ariel Perspective to provide the depth that the scene needs to show off the scale.

Hope you like it so far… some of my intitial concepts in the comment section you will probably notice were inspired by some other cabin designs… one i was very close to using was actually inspired by an image Peter Guthrie did himself a few year back for a cabin called Tind (http://www.peterguthrie.net/#/tind/).

Let me know what you think.

CABINS entry by Christopher Lane

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After being to Iceland twice – I can safely say that I’m completely fascinated and addicted to the gorgeous alien like landscapes & features that Iceland has to offer…. they are literally endless with vast white plains, huge mountain ranges and crazy shifts in weather …not to mention the amazing food they can cook up over there and of course, the aurora borealis 🙂

My last visit involved a hike up a glacier called Sólheimajökull, which in case you wondered – Translates to “Glacier of the sun”… but don’t ask me to try and pronounce it. The views it offered were absolutely stunning (see the photo I took in the cover photo) – This glacier just seemed to go on forever… and it was so BLUE! Simply put, it was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.

For this reason, I’ll be basing the location for my cabin entry on a beautiful glacial lagoon known as Jökulsárlón, which is located in the southeastern area of Iceland. I have chosen this particular site as it has a wonderful mix of blue lagoony water, MASSIVE chunks of ice, black sand, grass lands, volcanic rock and great mountainous views – a perfect location for an Icey getaway… well I think so anyway.

As this will be a VR experience, if Yulio allows it, I will be showing several fixed point renders (not yet decided how many views i will do). Each view will be rendered in day and night, with the option in the interactive to switch between the two light settings using hotspots. I may also include the aurora borealis in the night time views 🙂

The sketch attached to this is a concept for the initial view with reference material i will be using. The experience will start a fair distance away, with hot spots that will allow the user to approach the cabin via a footpath.. eventually ending up inside.

I will do some more sketches with more detail on the Cabin design in another post – which i will post very soon.

Hope you like the idea (sorry for the essay) – and best of luck to all entrants!

Crowded Challenge entry by Christopher Lane

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Well that was one hell of a mission – and a fun one at that… Starting Saturday just gone, I have literally worked on this every hour i could spare until now… even working into the early hours to get it finished… and now I can finally call it FINISHED – woop woop!

This whole scene was created to try and convey the chaotic beauty and friendly atmosphere contained within the back streets of Corfu. With people shopping, drinking and enjoying the beautiful and historic architecture that Corfu has to offer….. all down a narrow street 😉.

Anyway – I hope you like the final out come. The whole scene ‘pretty much’ has been modeled, textured and rendered by myself using photos that I had taken (after a recent trip to Corfu) as reference and inspiration. I used a couple of Evermotion and Vizpeople models (clothes racks & some furniture etc) in the process – adapting some of them in places.

Anima is a great fun and easy to use piece of software – the ability to go back into Anima, reload the background model, make tweaks to character positions and then just ‘reload’ the scenes in Max made the whole workflow a joy. Also the random texture thingy on the characters is great… must have used the same character at least 6 times +….. see if you can tell 😉

The final image was rendered in Vray and then post done in Photoshop & Lightroom.

I hope you like my Final entry and I wish all other entrants the best of luck!

Chris

Crowded Challenge entry by Christopher Lane

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Well, that was one hell of a mission – and a fun one at that… Starting Saturday just gone, I have literally worked on this every hour I could spare until now… even working into the early hours to get it finished… and now I can finally call it FINISHED – woop woop 🙂

This whole scene was created to try and convey the chaotic beauty and friendly atmosphere contained within the back streets of Corfu. With people shopping, drinking and enjoying the beautiful and historic architecture that Corfu has to offer….. all down a narrow street 🙂

Anyway – I hope you like the final outcome. The whole scene ‘pretty much’ has been modeled, textured and rendered by myself using photos that I had taken (after a recent trip to Corfu) as reference and inspiration. I used a couple of Evermotion and VIZ PEOPLE models (clothes racks & some furniture etc) in the process – adapting some of them in places.

Anima is a great fun and easy to use piece of software – the ability to go back into Anima, reload the background model, make tweaks to character positions and then just ‘reload’ the scenes in Max made the whole workflow a joy. Also the random, texture thingy on the characters is great… must have used the same character at least 6 times +….. see if you can tell 😉

The final image was rendered in Vray and then post done in Photoshop & Lightroom.

I hope you like my Final entry! 🙂 and I wish all other entrants the best of luck!

Chris

Crowded Challenge entry by Christopher Lane

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Finally got to play around in Anima – what a great and fun piece of software this is to use.

I installed some new characters from the code that Ronen kindly provided and then I bought my scene into Anima and started placing characters around the scene. I felt that the street was slightly to narrow at this point – after a few house of ‘trying’ to make it work, I caved and decided to go back into max and widen the street ever so slightly as i felt i couldn’t make it as ‘Crowded’ as it needed to be.

Making this change allowed me to really bring out the vibrant and busy nature of the Corfu streets – using Anima i tried to place ‘the right’ characters into the scene… making sure that they interacted with each other as much as possible.

I will render the final image over night – with the hope to upload tomorrow night. Hope you like my progress so far.

I guess i can go to bed now…. Night night.

Crowded Challenge entry by Christopher Lane

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Its been a very long day – but i have managed to setup the scene with my components and added some extra bits and bobs. I’m really happy with it so far but it needs a lot of tweaking in parts… still more modelling to be done – but the last 48 hours of hard work are starting to show.

I will start using Anima on the scene tomorrow.

I’ve been screen capturing my whole process, so it should make for an interesting watch once this is all done.

Hope you like my current progress – any feedback would be most welcome 🙂