Hi guys, I’m finally back.
Here are a few details of the scene and a few steps I took in order to create it:
First the wire:
As you can see I haven’t get rid of those stupid groups… I know 3dsmax handles groups pretty badly… I’ll get rid of’ em I’ll do it, I promise. I’ll make an exercise of self discipline and I’ll use layers instead. I swear ;).
Second: a few notes about the architecture.
This architecture built onto the pillars of the bridge is modeled reversed to any “real counterpart”, where the noble floor would be the lowest and the servitude would live in the upper (and most distant from the street), In this case it’s the opposite, since the closest floor to the street is obviously the highest. Decoration obviously follows the importance of the floor, the noble being the richest and the least important being the most sober. Style is a mixture between indian, liberty, decò, eclectic, venetian gothic, all mixed together.
Now a first image explaining the buildup process.
I begun modeling some untextured, simple pieces. I created two main styles (one rounded and one more geometrical) with different grades of complexity and one “door variation”. Once the pieces where ready, I build some very simple volumes in order to get an idea about the overall proprortions and lighting. Then simply multiplied, stretched, reversed, combined, detached… everything I could and couldn’t do. The process was pretty quick because I basically used the same pieces over and over again. The fact that I didn’t have an exact idea but merely a loose track to follow, helped the overall process and made it pretty quick. I simply played around with my construction blocks. I then begun adding some textures, using sets of layered materials I already used in other scenes and adapted for the occasion. Sometimes I made a render and sketched some other volumes in photoshop, just to make sure of the general direction I was going towards to.
Once everything was in place, I made a final render and begun tweaking lights and colors. Once I was satisfied, I subdivided the scene onto 3 main layers (background middle and foreground) and begun the high resolution rendering:
I also rendered a zbuffer image (actually a white material + black fog scene) in order to be able to better tweak all the things in Photoshop.
Compositing, final color balance and lighting has been done in Photoshop.
Here are a few details of the original 4096x2560.
The heads (female and male) in front of the bridge, as well as the inhabited pillars. Notice some imprecisions here and there,
The main gate over the bridge and the male head.
One of the inhabited pillars.
One of the wheels used as a mean to move merchandise and stuff from the different layers of the structure.
In a following post I’ll talk about the shortcomings, the composition and those damned clouds 
