Bus Stop: set dressing revisions

Dragon Warrior, still more revisions

Dragon Warrior, modeling revisions

I made numerous revisions to the piece today including dramatic proportional changes.

Dragon Warrior, modeling in progess

Dragon Warrior, WIP

Got this far today. Hoping to finish the base mesh and UVs by tomorrow night and start sculpting on monday.

New Character

starting a new character today

Lighting Revisions, Full Composites

Did a lot of work revising a few elements today. VERY happy with the outcome.

Bus Stop Lighting

I also wanted to share, that since I have a gradually shifting sun position throughout my shots as twilight hits, I wanted consistency in my base lighting. I will surely be adjusting this shot-per-shot by adding additional light, but I made a lighting control rig that allows me to blend the position, intensity and color of natural lights in the world, procedurally change the sky dome through blends on the ramp shaders, and also turn on the incandescence of my few lightbulbs... all with one switch. Its all Set Driven Key in Maya, so super easy to set up, and its how I was able to test render so many shots so easily. 

Here is the switch set to day: 

And here it is set to dusk: 

Which, through a Blend Colors node, controls my sky. 

More Render Tests-- Bus Stop: Complete

Did 14 more render tests. Bus Stop: Complete

Bus Stop: First Render Test

Many, Many, Many, Many more to follow. But, I think I'm close now. Should post some more late day tomorrow.

Bus Stop Texturing, FINALLY DONE! (terrain)

Terrain! Awesome!

Keep in mind this terrain will be covered with alpha-grasses close up in the area immediately around the bus stop, but I am really happy about the scalability of this shader network. It uses 5 tiling textures (4x512, 1x256, not including 4x512 more for normals) blended with a combination of vertex color and 3d procedurals. I think it looks good close up, medium out, and from the airplane overhead. Here's a look at some default-light (for now) renders, and the shader network:

Top shot shows the terrain with small, blurred 256 "geometric farm pattern" controlling the diffuse channel.
Second shot show the dry-grass to gravel vertex blend.
Third shot shows the blend close up.

So much texturing!!!

I keep making myself promises: "Texturing will be done tomorrow"... and then I keep finding ways to add more elements, and making existing textures more complicated, which keeps pushing back my promise. But seriously, this time, Textures WILL be done tomorrow (excluding tall grass which will come in last). 58 out of 67 textures are now done (see that... the math keeps changing).

Once the textures are done I have to:
-Set up the full shading networks with spec and normals and tweak the sliders
-Set up shadow shaders for the leaves
-Create my glass shaders and emissives
-Establish the lighting and optimize
-Create and separate the render passes, creating overrides and holdouts
-Create the tall grasses and add to render layers
-Clean out scene file of temporary display layer elements and lock the geo
-Render tests from each relevant camera angle
-Perform compositing tests
-Create individual asset renders and wireframes for portfolio.

...soooo, theres a long way to go. But it's getting closer.

Here is a sample of textures. These are just the more interesting ones, there are a lot more than these.