Sydney Tribute Project

[Falango]

Kudos to the modeling details, but man is that excessive for background models. Your computer probably wants to shoot itself. Do yourself a favor and take chunks of background buildings, and turn them into proxy models. If you make 8-10 proxy models of your background, you'll be able to navigate your scene easier, since the models will only load at render time. Otherwise, you'll just bog down your box, and waste time waiting for it to respond when you're trying to work.

[advan]

New stuff. Just graduated high school, and I've been working on it for a bit now. Damn, I've been on this forum for too long. Texturing the far buildings tomorrow It's almost done guys.

[Rsenal]

Congrats bro scene looks perfect, can't wait to see render with all your Japan cars in it! Keep it on and good luck!

[exidge]

Any updates??

Cheers,
exidge

[advan]

Spent a few weeks working on the lighting and far buildings, below render is straight from the renderer so I'm pretty pleased since I don't need to do any fiddling around in Photoshop as much. I have textured the far buildings up to that tall orange one. Would be cool to hear some suggestions. It doesn't give me that sense of WOW yet - I'm adding more buildings and diversifying the trees at the moment. I'll also try adding vrayfog to simulate some turbidity, which I think should give it more realism. Sorry for the delays, my free time is getting shorter every day!

[Falango]

I think it's your lighting that is too white, it needs some more color, as do some of those buildings. Though they are likely concrete, and seem to be very white, they could use a cooler hue to them, a bit of blue. Are you just lighting with direct lights? It doesn't look like you really have any indirect lighting, which will give you more volume and shape to everything, particularly the buildings that are close together.

I'm not really getting a sense of atmosphere either. The more distant elements should be more desaturated than the foreground ones. A depth pass will give you maximum control over this in Photoshop.

Once you get the water in there, and you get some killer reflections and refractions, the sense of life will be improved dramatically.

I think your hue range on your foliage could be widened just a bit. It looks close, but I think it might be a bit too saturated as well.

Your texture on the side of the seawall is too large in scale as well. Compared to your ref image, and scale of the buildings, the imperfections in the concrete and very large. Shrink that texture down to about 25%-40% and I think you'll be good. The texture for the water line is good though, keep that as is.

Keep up the awesome work! You've been at this project for a long time, and the attention to detail is ridiculous, a bit overkill I think, lol. What's your poly count at per building for the ones way in the background?

[advan]

Thanks Falango, I took your advice and made changes below. Seawall texture will most likely be covered up by the water anyway, so it's kinda just there as a placeholder. I'm not too worried about it so I left it as is.

Also added a few more trees and buildings. Still lots of tweaking to do, but it's coming together

[Falango]

That's definitely coming together. I think the foreground elements could still be desaturated a bit as well. On top of the desaturation, a bit of haze in the background would make it more believable as well, from the pollution. I know the ref pic doesn't have much in it, but it only needs a tiny bit!

[advan]

Thanks Falango, I think I'm going light on the zdepth map at the moment because i can't get a feel for the scene without the water and bridge. I'll keep working on it.

Textured some more buildings! And photoshopped a bluer sky in. I'll see what I can do with VraySky later.

[Falango]

Definitely feeling more alive, good work on the buildings. Keep it up

[advan]

Forgot the zdepth map on this one, d'oh. Working on a new sky at the moment, I'm thinking it's way too bright on the right side... should probably keep the brightness closer together. Also going to add another row of trees in the back for additional depth.

[Prykie]

This is freaking amazing Advan, the amount of work you have put into this is crazy. I'm sure Kevin would be super proud of it.

As you said the right hand side seems too bright, and I dont think the sky would gradient from blue to white horizontally anyway.

[PBenjamim]

Yeh just make the sky gradient vertically so you have that nice atmospheric effect. Everything looks great, I would call the background a photo, so that's how good it is, and with some post will look even better. Can't wait to see more!

[patient1]

Amazing, just amzing!

[advan]

Thanks guys! Lately, I've been redoing some buildings and adding more detail. May be unseen in renders but it's also for my own sanity hah. Still working on the AGL one as you can see.

[OldDog]

so when will you start doing interiors of all the buildings
Man this is really ... some crazy stuff! absolutely amazing ! I have never seen anyone go this much in to details! Yes, people do model cars whit engines, and all possible parts that the cars have, but this is just another level!
As I already said, when i see this thread updated my hart stops for a while, and I am just afraid to open it, because I feel unworthy of seeing it.

I get great inspiration from this thread. Keep it up

[advan]

Thanks OldDog, I'm glad you're enjoying it.

Redoing more buildings!

[SamIAm1]

I guess... once this project is complete, the next one should be post-apocalyptic view of Sydney shores...! with your quality of work so far, it should be really easy with those many detailed geometries at hand!

Just redo on texture maps, a couple of monuments destroyed ... a big explosion crater perhaps? and hit the render button!

Really nice work man!!

Cheers,
SamIAm

[rieljames]

w0w.. it seems like that u have sydney's blueprint

[Falango]

In that render you have with the cars, things are getting very blown out in the foreground. You can't see too many contours on the cars because they are so white. The railing behind them is even very white.