Avatar - 3d - outlander - Tree's Madness

[outlander]

Hi everybody,
my name is Gianluca Venturini, I'm 19 and I'm Italian. I'm not a real artist, but I really enjoy 3d graphic. So, my concept is very simple: my avatar will be a tree fallen into madness. I will use:

Hexagon 2.5 to model the character, objects and buildings
Zbrush to add detail to the main model
Vue 7 XStream to build the landscape and texturing/ rendering
Poser, Daz Studio to add some variety in characters
Photoshop for postwork
and maybe C4d for some special effects, but I'm not shure about it


pictures will come very soon!


UPDATE: THE STORY BEHIND THE PICTURE

Hard times in Hacawry, northern land of the continent. The necromancers of the region have stopped their interest in reanimating death people, because they have found a new source of dark power.
Coming from the south, a priest gets lost in the "Grace Forest", where the necromancers have their cove. They catch him, and steal his book. In its pages, they find this inscription:

"for thou who have the power
there is no difference between
being, living and comprehending;
there is a secret wispered by the trees
about a relic hidden in the forest.
Thou, who are reading this pages,
search in the forest!
There you will find its Heart,
capable of conferring true life to plants and animals."

The relic is "the Dark Heart of the Forest", which is said to be the heart of a goddess fallen into madness due to the poisoning caused by a plant.
The necromancers start to search it, and finally they find it. They graft a fragment of it in a secular tree, hoping to use its force to conquer the region.
But the powerful force of nature that was instilled in the tree doesn't allow any control. The tree rebels and destroys everything on his path.
But the necromancers don't stop experimenting: fragments of the Heart are inserted in birds and eagles, turning them into terrible harpies, and in lizards, transormed into dragons.
Civilization begin to fall in Hacawri. The cities are destroyed by the fireballs of the dragons, the forests come to life and kill every living being, and the ancient pagan temples become the cove of nameless and obscure creatures. Chaos dominates.

[outlander]

I'm not a great modeler, unfortunately I'm new with Hexagon

[outlander]

some texturing experiments in Vue. I added some trunks in Vue to the original model

[AndrewQ]

I have to say, pretty cool looking! The texture seems a little harsh, but other than that, this is looking kinda awesome. I'm not familiar with hexagon, but keep up the good work!

[outlander]

this is the textured bridge, its textures aren't what I expected but in the final image it won't be so visible

[outlander]

these days I'm working on the landscape and on the atmosphere of the image in Vue 7. The first image is an opengl render, only to show you how many terrains I will use to give the image a sense of depth. The second is a texturized version, and the third is the second plus an atmosphere, really intriguing (I don't know why there are those strange circles, an error in the textures maybe?). More to come

[outlander]

I decided that in the final image I will use some poser characters just to give more variety. I think I will use this ogre. I found it in a dvd in the italian edition of '3d World' magazine.

[outlander]

I'm trying to give more detail and personality to the main character in zbrush. And I think I will add an harpy and a dragon... (daz 3d)

[outlander]

This is a tower I modelled in hexagon. It's very simple, I want to put it in the distance, far away from the main camera

[outlander]

little houses modelled in hexagon to create a little village in the distance

[outlander]

a temple

[outlander]

the texturized temple

[outlander]

now I'm building the landscape. I made extensive use of echosystems. I'm using the low-poly version of the main character to do test renders because I don't want to stress my pc too much

[outlander]

trying to make the tree more dynamic

[outlander]

Now I'm focusing on the right part of the image... the textures of the terrain under the temple and of the terrain behind the trees don't satisfy me... I will work on them

[mr_carl]

There´s really a lot of detale in this image, textures are looking good and the tree dude is really nicely done.

[outlander]

thank you mr_carl!
now I'm working on a brazier to put in front of the temple

[outlander]

and here it is the texturized version plus an alpha plane

[mr_carl]

WOW man you work really fast, I wonder is the material handling in Vue good, you make it seem so easy.
Materials is one of the things I have to struggle allot with, haven't really found something I really like to work with yet.

[decosouza]

Man... you made a lot of thing in a short time!!! Very nice concept and cool models. Waiting for updates.

[outlander]

thanks for the positive feedback mr_carl and decosouza.

mr_carl, what I can tell you about Vue's material system is that it is very good if you want to create natural, organic textures (things where you don't need to be precise, for instance textures for terrains and so on). But for instance, don't try to texturize a book from scratch or you will go crazy! I suggest you to try the free Vue 7 Personal Learning Edition to have an idea of Vue's capabilities.

this is a knight that will be fighting against the harpy on the bridge (michael 3)

[outlander]

always the right part of the image, you can see the fighting of the knight against the harpy,
i put the two braziers in front of the temple (although they aren't recognizable at all, misteries of the vue render engine...)

there would be many things to improve here, but it's time to move in the upper part of the image

[Creator]

You're progressing very well.
But you should work on the lighting and on the shading, espacially the bump intensity.

The textures could use a bit more detail.

keep it on

[outlander]

@Creator: you're right, bump maps sucks (especially for the characters). Not completely my fault, unfortunately Daz exporter seems to produce this unespected artifacts with Vue. I'll try to correct them as I can.
For the textures, maybe it's true, but you have to take into account that the battle on the bridge is a very small part of the composition.

Now I'm working on the sky and far away terrains and environments. Also here many things to improve. Hope to have enough time to obtain what I wanted!

(the picture looks "dirty" because of the non-optimal render settings)

[outlander]

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/7329/avatar17risoluzionedeldfr7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
There is something in the peak in the centre that doesn't satisfy me... and a lot of textures to improve...

[AndrewQ]

Wow! You modeled all those characters for this contest!?! Nice!

[DJdude]

The tree looks real cool. I don't see much backbone to any story, though.

[outlander]

@AndrewQ: as you can see in the photos, I modeled by myself only the main character, the others are from Poser or Daz Studio.

@DJdude: first post updated with the story, hoping that my english is comprehensible.

[outlander]

a very little update

[mr_carl]

coming along nicely, what will the final resolution be?

[outlander]

@mr_carl: thank you! I think that the final resolution will be about 8000*5000, if my computer doesn't die. And I will add some postwork in photoshop (like depth of field, thanks to the z-depth map that Vue can generate)

[outlander]

a little church I want to add to the village.

[outlander]

now I'm working on the dragon's fireball. I used a volumetric light that can affect clouds. The second image is the z-depth map that I will use to add a little blur effect in photoshop (3rd image). the third image shows some postwork done in phot., i played a bit with some settings.
I have to remove the church from that place and move it elsewhere.

[mr_carl]

I think the colours are a bit to colourful, especially the green in the front of the image, it´s almost looks like it´s glowing.
I like the background a lot, it has a nice fantasy feel to it.

[outlander]

@mr_carl: you're right, the colours are too much saturated due to the postworks. Next time I will pay more attention

[outlander]

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/2217/avatar19hq4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

trying to find the correct position for the church

[outlander]

a necromancer holding a fragment of the Heart. I don't know why but in Vue he looks younger than in daz!

[NeoGeo]

this scene has so many random characters in it made me laugh a little kingkong vs ent, dragon in the background some type of demon on the lower right side and the pose that kingkong has it's like he says "oh a i give up"

anyway enough laughing i do have to admit that this is the best work i've seen done useing software like vue daz and what the hell is hexagon never even heard of that good job

[outlander]

@NeoGeo: I'm trying to translate your post into a constructive criticism: if I understood what you are saying, there is "confusion" in the image (too much characters). Maybe you're right. But have you read the story on the first post? I only tried to create an image that can suggest little "stories" in all its parts (a kind of modern "horror vacui", do you know?). Moreover the softwares I used have limitations, with whom I have to fight. There is really nothing to laugh about: there's the hard work and the passion of a person behind the wip that you can see. Anyway If you have advices and suggestions, I'm hear to listen to you.

Little update

[NeoGeo]

ohw sorry no there wasn't any real criticism at all i just found the combination of characters funny
i think you have to have the same type of humor as me to understand.. anyways keep up the good work

[washka]

Wow, that's some big work, impressive. You're familiar with a lot of software.
Here is some comments:

What i like:
-The background city scene, this yellow lightning with the dragon, the mist, and the right coming light, this atmosphere is magical.
-The temple scene with the fight, it's dynamic, and an interesting composition.
-The chaotic side of the tree contrasting with the blue light of the wizard.

What I dislike:
-The posing of the ogre on the foreground, particularly its arm.
-The eye of the tree, the color is good but it looks like a traffic light, sorry for the comparison but it needs some more details/specular/reflection, i don't know...

I'll come again, bye.

[outlander]

things are going slowly due to the intense study at university... I don't know if I will reach the quality I wanted. I tried to change the tree's eyes in photoshop but the result isn't that great...http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/4130/avatar23post.jpg (http://img120.imageshack.us/my.php?image=avatar23post.jpg) http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/avatar23post.jpg/1/w1600.png (http://g.imageshack.us/img120/avatar23post.jpg/1/)

there are some flying houses in the background

[outlander]

very near to the end I think. Some things can be bettered, but I know time is not enough

[decosouza]

Good work here! I just think that the wizard's pose is very passive.. maybe he needs to be more agressive. Don't get me wrong.. is really a good work. You have done a lot of things in a very short time and this is more than I can say about the mine.

[mr_carl]

I like the little more diffused look of the last image, good work just keep going to the end :)

[outlander]

final one. good luck everybody!
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/6398/treesmadnesswip.jpg (http://img8.imageshack.us/my.php?image=treesmadnesswip.jpg)

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/6928/treesmadness.jpg (http://img8.imageshack.us/my.php?image=treesmadness.jpg)

[mr_carl]

looking great, good luck man.