Behind the Scenes: Agony Floats Airship

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

My title is Pham Nguyen Anh Khoi, I name myself Gebalt, and I’m a 24-year-old 3D artist from Ho Chi Minh Metropolis, Vietnam. I used to be previously a graphic designer, however I now get pleasure from expressing my inventive freedom as a 3D artist as an alternative of being caught to solely 2 dimensions.

With the ability to increase my portfolio with distinctive initiatives is really one in every of my biggest passions, and I plan to proceed doing so sooner or later. I’m additionally obsessed with discovering my very own artwork fashion and transitioning regularly till I discover the one which resonates with me probably the most, the one which I really love. With each new mission, I’m one step nearer to reaching this objective.

INSPIRATION

This piece is part of my “Vile Steel” collection, which explores a mode and theme that I’ve needed to do for a very long time. The collection depicts a world through which machines have taken over people and feed on their anguish, rage, and desperation. These struggle machines have taken on the looks of these they’ve devoured, and the world they’ve created is now shrouded in a dreadful cloud.

Most of my inspiration for this collection got here from the Half Life 2 Beta idea artwork, and the lighting and composition have been additionally influenced by Piotr Jabłoński’s work.

PROCESS

The whole piece was created and rendered in Blender, with a number of layers of paint-over added later in Photoshop. The feel was made in Quixel Mixer and closely painted over in Photoshop for added passes and changes. The paint-over course of is likely one of the most vital steps in making these items stand out and outline the fashion as a result of the first render lacks enough grime, grit, and ambiance to differentiate it from earlier artworks I’ve created.

MODELING & SETTING THE COMPOSITION

I like to start out my course of by establishing the temper for the scene, which is well completed by together with a sky, HDRI, needed lighting, and volumetric parts within the scene to boost depth, vibe, and artwork path.

For this piece, I needed to render the airship from a dramatic angle from the bottom, and the gang within the foreground provides to that impact. Any adjustments made to the scene could be simply edited later.

The modeling course of for the principle objects within the Vile Steel collection all the time begins with human figures in numerous emotional states corresponding to anger, disappointment, desperation, and so forth. These feelings are very important to the principle scene.

The hard-surface fashion I exploit for this stuff is impressed by the equipment in Half Life video games, particularly Half Life: Alyx. I attempt to observe the concord of the B.M.S order of Huge, Medium, Small shapes. This creates a way of complexity whereas additionally permitting the principle form and type of the mannequin to be observable, avoiding confusion and chaoticness in overly detailed fashions.

TEXTURING

The textures used for the entire ship are fairly minimal. I solely reuse a single rusty and gritty texture that I made and put it by means of totally different nodes to switch its search for any space the place secondary and tertiary materials is utilized. That is to maintain it near the idea of a full steel military.

Since I don’t plan to completely UV unwrap this monstrosity, I made a decision to make use of an AO node to create mud and grime across the corners of the mannequin.

LIGHTING

I needed to attain that unreal painterly impact for the mission, so what I wanted wasn’t lifelike lighting, however cinematic and dramatic lighting. So, I used an space gentle with a beam form diminished sufficient to concentrate on vital areas of the composition, such because the face and the arm. Another smaller lights additionally concentrate on the small print of the scene, corresponding to the gang from far-off.

RENDERING AND PAINT-OVER

I rendered the scene with all attainable render passes exported in order that I might use them to assist with the paint-over course of.

Some results, corresponding to smoke, fog, and mud/grime particles, are higher to do within the paint-over stage as an alternative of solely in Blender.