This is most probably my last update before final submission. I am really enjoying the process. Being the only visual artist in a quite big architecture firm usually leaves no time for refinement, detailing and even desired composition. I really enjoyed the opportunity of fine-tuning composition, details, coming back to it after several days to realize what else can be improved. In short, this is my first time entering a challenge, big thanks to Ronen & Tomorrow for this exciting event, it was like a Christmas holidays for my brain and eyes 😀 !

Here is what I have done:
^^ I had hard times finding the lighting conditions – dark enough to clearly see illuminated interiors, but light enough to read all materials and surrounding details, also to catch a color balance between sky and interior illumination. For this reason, I decided to tonemap the HDRI, I show it in the image below (or above :))

^^I did several tests with people. I don’t have 3d people in the poses I need. So I collected photos and cut and draw them as I need, I always create what I need even if I dont have ready material for it. I decided to map poeple on planes and create billboards, and render with the scene. Since it is eye level, I had no problems with perspective. I also did a test placing them in Photoshop as in usual workflow, but I decided they are blending in scene better this way

^^I made some schemes of composition and toning, based on my view. I will use them to enhance the composition in post-production. One scheme is showing tonal depth planes and another is showing leading areas.

^^I placed trees with very few leaves, as in late autumn and created falling leaves caught in motion blur. I like how blurred yellow-orange leaves are seen on dark facade reflecting blue skies. Also using tree with crowded leaves would disbalance my composition by creating equally dark areas as facade.

^^Please check the sequence of images, to see how my image has emerged.

Cheers!

Following last update I have proceed to modeling stage. Attached white model with a simple sky dome. I have sketch a dozen of different composition before I was satisfied.

I have made a variety of candle light container and render in simple white. I used multi scatter the vray proxy to save some memory. After several test I am sure my machine just couldn’t scatter too many at one. Therefore I have separate them into different pieces.

There will be quite a bit of back and forth when I do texturing and lighting next.

Cheers.

I know I’m a little late to be posting the basic model while people are posting test images. But better late than never right? So I had completed this model a week or so ago. I started out the project by first studying some of the images as the blueprints were a little baffling to me. By baffling i don’t mean i don’t understand them, it means i was trying to understand the concept and flow of the building. At first glance it appears a simple enough structure, but when getting into the details it was a whole lot more interesting. So after basic understanding i was able to make the DWG plan of the building a lot faster as i knew the composition of the structure and knew which interior elements were to be plotted. Making the drawings only challenge was matching the scale of the blue print to the actual plotting. I saw the (very small and invisible scale after much googling) and then scaled the image to a simple line of actual length to that of the image’s scale. Another annoying thing was that the elevation prints were not all the same size and i had to scale every one of them to the real world measurements. After that I imported the structure to max and after a simple spline extrude, Lo and behold the walls were up!
After that a simple process of cross checking the windows, i added in the above-below. After that came the real time cruncher, those pesky panels. Constant referencing to the images was required as the blueprints didn’t have the layout of the panels. So, needless to say opening the photo viewer and then max and then again the images was irritating. I eye balled the measurements from the images in reference to the window placements and the adjoining panel heights. This done my model was basically done. I decided this angle for ease of modelling( i know, i know) but it made for an interesting angle and the reflections were not to be thrown away. A simple forest pack grass prefab ( first time using Itoo softare) and my basics were done.
After a few lighting trials in HDRi, i got one i sort of liked, maybe i’ll change it later on if i don’t like it much. Synced the vray sun with the HDRi for accurate shadows, after a while the right hand side was given a meadow, this time using a more detailed and finer hand picked models to fill in and a good amount of time tweaking, i was getting the hang of forest pack and it was amazing, after the scene was set, i present to you some of the test renders over the time period.
I don’t have a concept image as yet and ill be making one by tomorrow i hope. The test images are far from final and i need to buck up,
That’s all for now, stay tuned for more! ( I hope!)