Gift to the Gods - Timeless Belief - Uros Banjesevic

[evilllama]

Hi folks!

This is my first challenge 'round here, too bad I've catch up with the very end of the "Coming of an Ice" and didn't have time to start it, but, this time, beside heavy overload on work, hope i could finish the image...

The idea is to create epic tower in the centre of the city, that has been built from the very beginning of the humankind, throughout all centuries. Every era of human history has left the sign on it. The base is built by stone, upgraded by medieval, steampunk, modern and futuristic influences, one by one...Actually, tower is made of small buildings and construction elements from all these periods.

The tower is gigantic hand that that connects with the skies, giving Gods the gift to make them merciful...It represents that even thou science has become the leading force of mankind, humanity never lost it's connection to Gods.

Still haven't decided the angle of final camera (if it should be from human or God perspective) but this is just a rough concept of what I am planning to make.

By the way, the work will completely be done in 3d.

All critics and comments very welcome, hope I won't disappoint you with final work, just hoping that I'll find some virtual time to finish it!

Cheers
Uros

[MightyReg]

I really love that concept. I think it's one of the best concepts up to date. With a good research on architectural styles of history this could be very interesting. I'll be following this one.

[AndreasOlsen]

Nice concept! Looking forward for more!

Good job

[Turvs]

Really like the concept, love to see more of it, really original idea.

[evilllama]

Thanks for support guys! Hope I won't disappoint you! :)

Before I continue with this one, I'd like to give you just quick overview of my first idea that I've abandoned.

First idea was to have the Egyptian pyramid(s) turned upside down, to serve as Gods' saucer. On top of the pyramid should all the sacrifices be made, and all the brings brought for him to pick them up.

I made two quick collages, just to see how it feels, but in the end, still sticked to the concept from the first post.

So, these two won't be worked on anymore, just wanted to show you guys my first thoughts :)

Cheers
U

[sarN]

yeah i like the big high five statue better

[chunkymunky]

Now that's a cool concept, love the sketch and the idea will look so cool! Really looking forward to seeing this one :)

[wargrafix]

Agreed, the hand looks most badass. Its like a tower of Babel.
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[andrewhall1234]

I like the idea of the first one, the sketch is really effective. I think this is one of the better ideas and look forward to see hoe it develops and of course the final image.

Good Luck

[evilllama]

I thought these pyramids were good idea, but when I started working on them...I've just realised that there's not much to be done - crop pyramid, turn it upside down and that's about it - not so impressive. That's why I gave up on them and started with the hand tower.

Btw, when I made this sketch for pyramids, I've just realised how hard this pyramidal shape turned upside down is to fit into some composition :) it never looks good.

Anyway, enough on pyramids, and enough on talk. Let's start with some 3d :)

Once again, thank you very much for your support!

[evilllama]

Aaaand as I've just said...from words to deeds :)

Here is first WIP picture, and again, it has no hand at all :) I've started out with blocking out the environment. As we're in the futuristic sci fi city, this is what I am aiming for. Dunno if I'll skip right to the tower now or continue with finishing the city, but the things I'll certainly do around the city are: put the textures on of course, some new special buildings modelled, lots of bridges, lots of wires and antennas, and even some flying buildings.

So, that's the first shot :)

[Crevasse]

looking awesome.
Greeble is crazy useful eh

[evilllama]

Yeah, actually I've started with greeble, than continued manually to add details. It's just the best way to skip the physical part of boxing it, and get right onto fine tuning.

[evilllama]

There it is! Done with the city for today, got enough of it :)

So..whole city will be at the edge of the sky, as a floating futuristic mechanical island. On the right you can see docks where many small spaceships should be arriving. I have just quickly sketched onto viewport screenshot bit of skybox.

At the centre circle of the city will be the tower. So, it's all just environment. :)

[MightyReg]

Wow that's just epic. Excellent work so far.

[Geri0n]

Hey man your progress is awesome and your concept is very interesting. I cant wait to see this finalized.

I happen to see this thread and it made me think of an image i saw not to long ago. Here:
http://holocaustproject.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/432px-holocaust_memorial_miami_florida.jpg

Enjoy

[sarN]

love the city progress, looks great. are the people angry at the god? maybe they would like to have a big middle finger sticking up towards the sky

[Turvs]

Wow city looks amazing cant wait to see what the hand will look like.

[NeoGeo]

nice but could use more greeble :P nah just kidding looks good

[evilllama]

@ Gerion

Thanks for the input man, haven't knew about this pic! And it basically looks very similar to what I am aiming for (just with the different hand position), but if I just imagine buildings instead of small people down there - there it is! :)

@ sarN

Haha, yeah...well, guess this town would be hit with the apocalypse right after :D

@ NeoGeo

Yea, I also think i didn't use it enough :D Anyway, there is more than greeble right now and there will be much more in the end.

@ Turvs, MightyReg and all above

Thank you very much guys, really appreciate it! ;)

[Stoneking]

Wow, great work Evil, congrats!

How many polys are in this scene, i'm really curious

Cannot whait to see this finished

Cheers

[xxxcubanxxx]

impressive work dude, thumbs up.

[evilllama]

Thanks Stoneking and Cuban!

@ Stoneking (city is having around 1 million triangles). I am about to bake the normal maps onto boxes in the end probably, and save much of a memory, this is gonna be hi poly model that I'll take the normals from. At the end, it\ll probably have around 1.5 millions, when I model and insert all that stuff that I am planning to do for this environmental part.


And now, to the Tower of all Towers! :)

[nihilicon]

I can't even contemplate how you'd create something this complex in such a short time, but it looks amazing already. Well done.

[evilllama]

Me neither :)

But, I'll certainly do my best, I just hope that i won't be ovrewhelmed with work so I can make a bit of pic every day.

[evilllama]

Hey guys, let's make this topic a bit more poetic! (yeah right :) )

So, as you've seen from the concept, this tower has been started at the dawn of a mankind. At every period of time, people have had different vision on how it should look like, and every epoch have been upgraded onto the base of the previous one. I will draw quick sketches of each plan, with the ideas of each period, and let's see how the tower changed throughout history.

Chapter I - Ancient times

The first stone of the Tower of all towers have been brought to the highest mountain by the monks somewhere between 3000 and 5000 years BC. They wanted to make this great monument for that time, about 30 meters high, with the Hand of Creed on top of it, to establish the connection to their Gods. On the surface of the hand, all the prayers were carved, and read everyday, until the tooth of time destroyed the weak monument and prepared a place for a new era.

[evilllama]

And here it is what's left of this temple nowdays.....ruined, without a hand...but still a base for the Tower of all Towers....

First 3d WIP of tower itself :)

[evilllama]

Ok, you obviously didn't like the ancient part, judgeing by the lack of comments :D

So, to stage two - Medieval part

Monumental Hand of Creed suffered heavy natural damage during 4000 years and finally vanished. Monks haven't had any funding to build another one, so have left medieval leaders to finally upgrade building in their own ways. Along with the blessing of the monks, it took 800 years to build Castle of Gods and Men on top of the ancient temple.
God has never been closer to the people.

[MightyReg]

That's coming out great! The medieval sketch looks nice, I think you should put your towers more on the borders because like that it seems it would be difficult for the future generation to build on top of it.

[chris_solo]

great concept and progress!

[Tarik2d]

Luv the scale of this. Its like a lord of the rings epic scene

[TNTxGRAVE]

lol thats funny. I planned on having a city in the background of mine and was planning on using Greeble.

[evilllama]

Huh, I sooo overwhelmed with work that have barely time to checkout other works....so sorry that there are no updates from me...

[wargrafix]

I liking the castle better. Alot of ancient structures around, so this really helps it to stand out.
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[JayRow]

This looks to turn out to be very special, awesome work so far!!

[evilllama]

Hey guys!

Sorry for this huge delay, but I was overwhelmed with work, and literally, barely had time to breathe. I haven't touched anything since the beginning of the month, and here, two days before the very end, i have some time (after the work) again.
So...this project was quite big even for one month period, guess there is no chance to finish it this way in such a short time.
So, I've decided to make some changes, and to give my best to finish it anyhow.

The general idea haven't changed much from the last one, I've just removed the ancient structures. The story goes like this:

Eons have passed until the greatest structure has been finished, the Tower to Heaven. It was a human arm, stretched to give it's gifts to the Gods. In the hand, there is a gigantic light, energy ball of plasmatic deutherium, that used to spread light and provide energy to all nearby human colonies.

The greatest monument in the known part of the universe is now visited by many spaceships everyday, bringing their gifts to their Gods, leaving it on the humble hand of the mankind.

[hulahuga]

And thus a city was created ;)



Nice story but what is even better is the enormous size of the city! I really have to check out that Greeble thing (thanks for the hint ;) ). I really look forward to how this will develop.

One thing you could try is doing some mattelike painting to your model. Do a render and then use stuff like multiply and softlight =).


Now off to look into Greeble ;).

[evilllama]

And here is the next WIP.

Actually, hand (and whole arm tower) is currently only the placeholder, wanted to choose some final angle and to tryout render to see what can I come up with. The next thing is to refine the tower and add incoming visitor ships to the composition.


What do you think?

[chris_solo]

oO! really goOd!!!! finish it man!

[chunkymunky]

Looking so so good, just hope you can finsih it before tommorow's deadline :)

[Stoneking]

Awesome work man, best of luck to you!
Cheers

[evilllama]

Thank you guys, hope I'll finish this one on time...

Here is 1 minute concept for spaceships coming, bringing the gifts to the hand.
I'll just try to make them look more like cargoships than fighterships in final version...

[gauravcg]

nice stuff ...can be a winning recipe ...

[hulahuga]

Make sure to get those ships right, perhaps show a bit more of the enormous city and it will be ace =)

[evilllama]

Thank you very much guys, really appreciate it!

I am so glad that I am even on the road of winning recipe! :)

Here are the quick models of ships - I shall paint over them so it's not quite a matter of topology or mapping, it's just to get some silhouettes right. First two shall be huge carriers and cargo ships and the smallest ones will be individual riders who wanted to bring their small gifts to the hand.

[NeoGeo]

Wait! "sniff "sniff" i smell something is it.... is it the smell of EPIC!!! this needs to be finished

[evilllama]

thank you so much guys! hope i could finish this on time, the bet I could in such a short period, huh...

So, here are the ships implemented into the scene...and the hand shape is final, now to finalizing the tower, than to background and final touches, and guess this should be all I can do in next few hours that I have...

[evilllama]

Actually, I've skipped the tower and got right onto the background, to get more full vision of final image (as I don't have much time)

So, the background introduced....

[MightyReg]

Coming out great! I would straigthen the lines of light climbing the tower, it seems pretty much handrawed now. But evrything else is top notch, good job!

[evilllama]

hah, I'haven't worked on the tower itself, it's the next task, so these lines won't exist anymore very soon :)

[Tarik2d]

arh cool, this came out of nowhere, well done

[evilllama]

yeah, I was actually among the first ones to start...and made a 25 day pause because of some huge project on work...and got back two days before the very end....huh...I think this could come up much better if I've had more time, but I am trying to do my best no matter what time is given...

[Tarik2d]

I like it, its got a nice feel to it, well done

[hulahuga]

Get to it then ;).

Hooah!

[evilllama]

:)

New update...small fixes on colour correction, added deutherium balls to the cargo ships as a gift to the greatest ball of energy inside of hand, some motion blurs, trail fixes and stuff like that...think now it's time to get to the hand :)

[hulahuga]

Hurry, hurry hurry ;)

[chris_solo]

oO! really nice picture, I love it! ambience, atmosphere is really successful

[BADDOOM]

Looks really good.

[evilllama]

Almost done!

Just few more tweaks and to see what to do to the ball on final image and that shoud be it....
We have one more hour right?

[Dann-O]

Get it up there great work. I like this a lot. Good luck

[evilllama]

Thank you all guys for the support...I guess this was last second save...I've uploaded my final image :)

Here it is..and you, as the visitors of my thread, have the exclusive version with the story underneath :D

[JayRow]

So happy to see get this in, well done

[evilllama]

And the fuuuullllll resolution thing....2500px high :)

[hulahuga]

NEAT :).

Just a quick question... Don't the balls fall off the cargo ships? ;)

[evilllama]

hah, they load three times more balls then the amount that comes to the hand :)

You see on the closest one that all balls are connected, it's more like a necklace of deutherium balls then just the balls themselves. The end of the fibre is connected to spaceship, giving it an energy to fly on the one side, and making sure that all the cargo doesn't fall off the ship on the other hand. :)

[chris_solo]

very impressive work here!!!! one of my favorite pictures!

[BADDOOM]

nice perspective...some texture issues in the lower part...but impressive image.

[evilllama]

thank you all!...here is the WIP sheet

[evilllama]

I've realized that I didn't post the progress on creating the background on the wip sheet..maybe because it took less then an hour to finish it :)

so, here it is, if you're interested what were the steps :)

[hulahuga]

Nice progress shots :).

You should have had some more on that greeble thing though, just to show how you do it. ;)

[evilllama]

thank you hulahuga!

certainly, if i get any request for tutorial from 3dtotal staff, I shall go in-depth in every aspect of image creation (concept, modeling, lighting, rendering, painting over, final corrections)...so all of you guys could be able to reproduce something like this :)

However, maybe soon I'll post some more progress shots over here!