ALIENWARE Challenge Entry: Neil McBean

[neilm]

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074639394_medium.jpg (http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074639394_large.jpg)

I'm attempting to create something that's organic, but not necessarily alive. I wanted it to be unclear whether or not we ar elooking at fossils, crystal structures, plant life etc....

[neilm]

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074639472_medium.jpg (http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074639472_large.jpg)

Background environment for the pods. It's a simple canyon sketch in photoshop.

[neilm]

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074639852_medium.jpg (http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074639852_large.jpg)

A very simple model. Almost entirely NURBS with some smoothed polys. Not much to say....

[neilm]

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074640179_medium.jpg (http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074640179_large.jpg)

The textures were the tricky part for me. I wanted to have translucent surfaces with SSS. The hard part was that Maya doesn't really do that, so I had to figure out some tricks. My solution used info nodes to control refraction, trans, and lumin chanels. If anyone has a better way please let me know...

[neilm]

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074640403_medium.jpg (http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074640403_large.jpg)

Lighting was mostly used to enhance the surface look that I was going for. Everything here is ramplights (about 20 of them), with key directional light.

[neilm]

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074640859_medium.jpg (http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074640859_large.jpg)

I rendered in two sections, one for the rocks, one for the pods. Trying to keep things simple (rendering entry two is essentially what's in my lighting image)

[neilm]

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074640995_medium.jpg (http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074640995_large.jpg)

This is the final image, so I'm putting it in twice just to be certain. Post effects were adding a background (which is a combination of painted stuff and photographs), colour correcting the rocks to match the ambient light, and adding some spill from the new bg image.

[neilm]

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074641101_medium.jpg (http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074641101_large.jpg)

And here it is...maybe I should have added some glow...and a lens flare....

[eska]

This is realy beautifu. A micro in macro-cosmos together.
And beautiful color choices.
Best luck:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :wavey:

I would be honored if you have time to visit also my thread

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?postid=1090320#post1090320

[neilm]

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074641860_medium.jpg (http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/3/1533/1533_1074641860_large.jpg)

OK, I was joking about the glow, but then somehow I couldn't resist....

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