Starting to put together a sci-fi city image - trying to replicate that Star Wars Corusant vibe if possible. There’s loads to do but most things are in place. This thread should document the process, give me a few months to finish the image…
3ds Max & mental ray
Very nice WIP. Is this a blockout of the final scene, or are all the models complete?
Can’t wait to see more of it! 
Most of the modelling has been completed. There are a couple of buildings that need to be refined and I haven’t even started work on the biggest structure, that just exists as a few cylindrical shapes at the moment.
It might sound weird but the texturing has been ‘blocked out’. When I’m working on a texture in Photoshop it’s hard to see how it fits into the whole scene - each diffuse map is very desaturated because I’ve no idea how colour could work (yet).
Thanks for your interest!
Well I’ve done a bit more! It lacks variation in colour, at the moment it’s quite monochromatic which is dull. The big building will require more work and the sky will have to be some kind of matte painting as I can’t find a sky image that works. Here’s where I’m at:
^ clay render
I don’t know how to go about creating atmospheric perspective though. A z-depth pass can obviously give me depth information but I can’t find a good way of compositing that into the render. Is there a standard way of doing this?
You can do the add the z depth pass in photoshop. Is that what your asking? Also this is looking really good i encourage you to keep going! Also how did you go about getting the shadow of the clouds across the buildings (it’s a really nice touch). Gadzooks
Here what I’m doing to create atmospheric perspective: I use the original z-depth image to create a layer mask on the z-depth layer thereby getting rid of the black and just leaving the white. I can then colourise the layer (to a desaturated blue colour) and adjust opacity a bit. That seems to work…
The patchy dappled lighting has been created using about 30 spot lights. It’s a nice tool as it allows me to create focus areas and areas of visual rest.
I will certainly keep going!
This looks awesome Miked, really like the mood with the dark sky. Hope you plan to keep it somewhat similiar if you do a matte painting. The city itself looks a bit blunt and repetitve, the modeling looks nice though so maybe just try to mix the textures up a bit with more contrast.
Cant wait to ser more of this!! 
Edit: By the way how many hours have you spent on this, and how do you go about making such a large scene? I never tried making anything bigger than a house so im just curios :rolleyes:
Thanks man! I’m happy with the 3D geometry. Since it’s a sci-fi city I think there needs to be a certain modular feel to things, it makes it feel like some kind of massive circuit board. Right now the textures and I suspect the lighting is letting down the image. It’s quite monochromatic and brown… I wonder if the clay render is more effective at this point.
I never really know how long these scenes take me. Between 100 and 150 hours I’d guess, spread over 6 months. I try not to think about this when I start!
I like the upper pert of the image, as it has a clear silhouette (though could be improved a bit, as it’s too blocky now). But the lower one looks to busy. I think you need to look for a better organization of the city. Some buildings could be bigger, and it could have more streets separation.
You can look up a book Francis Ching Space, Form and Order. I has very clear ideas as to make such streets.
Anyway, good work nontheless in many regards.
‘Space, form and order’ probably would be a good book to read but I’m not sure if I want to take this image so seriously… I like research as much as the next guy but studying a 450 page book is a little too much for me. However! I have a masters degree in architecture and have looked at Francis Ching’s stuff at uni - he’s good. Ching teaches some great design principals. What part of that book do you feel applies to this image?
I’m not sure there are ‘streets’ in this image. It’s more like an industrial landscape with deep channels cut into the surface filled with thousands of travelling spaceships. Anyway, I’ll think about it, thank you for your suggestion.
^ atmospheric perspective is working quite nicely now.
And finally. I was thinking of calling this image ‘Tower of Babel’. Is that lame? Am I being too “clever”. :shrug: Does anyone care about the name?
There’s nothing too complex about that book. It has lots of pictures. You could look in chapters about organizing streets and making centers.
It should be something like “configuration of passing” in the 5-th chapter. Basically it shows you can organise streets in different grids. Right now it’s chaotic and the viewer won’t get the big forms. Also it could have better organised local centers, so one main building has some axis, around which you place elements. The city should have a more clear plan. It has a main center - the biggest building, but it also needs a grid separation and local, smaller centers.
I think you should have a bigger masses on the foreground, organized by street grids. And a bit better defined silhouettes of distand buildings.
I see you experiment with lighting, feeling something is wrong, but it’s more about your masses definition.
I like your work especially the detail.
I think that name would be just fine maybe shorten it to ‘Babel’ that would leave more for the viewer to make the connection.
Will there be one or two spaceships taking of somewhere?
Since I am not that good at landscapes and big scenes. Are you really modelling each detail of the city by hand and do you have an estimate how long it took you?
cheers
Yeah I like ‘Babel’. Thank you!
I’ve never 3D modelled an environment with this kind of massive scale so I’ve little idea what to do. Hah. I started small though, made this little test piece which is mostly comprised of cubes.
It then began to grow… Everything’s modelled, complex buildings are UV unwrapped and then textured. Maybe about 75 hours so far, over 3 months. There are tiny spaceships in the scene but I won’t have any taking off, at least not like the Saturn V5 rocket, that might look a bit odd.
And mister3d, I might understand what you mean. Thank you for the paintover, I shall try to incorporate various bits.
http://miked08.cgsociety.org/art/city-photoshop-urban-painting-digital-sunny-architecture-2d-1278984
This image has some similarity to your. i first thought it’s your reworked. As you can see, he has some big masses infront, which help defining the depth.
Ha, that’s fun! I think you could closely follow it and could get an excellent result.
I just stumbled on it browsing galleries, and was sure it’s another artist. 
Stunning! not many of these big city environment projects around here, not only in sheer scale, but also insane detailing, so I’ll definitely keep an eye on this one
Thanks guys, I appreciate the comments.
It’s probably gonna be a while until I post an update as I’m relocating to a new place next month and things will be fairly busy for me. Might try and wrap up my sci-fi vehicle project before I go…
Normally I come up with way more interesting titles - ‘sci-fi vehicle’ and ‘sci-fi city’ are a new low for me. Must do better.
