MODELLING

The main element in the scene is the bridge, which is done using extruded objects; except the bottom ornament, which is a sweep nurbs object.

BRIDGE

Next, I exported ALL the splines to Illustrator, and later imported them into Cinema 4D.

Important: To do this (import all “objects”), you must check "Group" and not "Join" at  "Import/export settings> Illustrator" to obtain separate objects to extrude later using different values for each one.



Using this technique all “objects” are already placed. Then, take each spline, one at a time, and drag it into the "Extruders" (extrude nurbs objects). I used "Cap and Rounding" for all extrusions to keep the edges from appearing hard.

When all splines are placed into the corresponding extruders, move objects in the Z axis to position the construction ornaments to the outsides, and the main bodies to the insides.


To create the bottom ornament I have a shape, and the bottom ornament path.  I drag them both into a "Sweep Nurbs Object".

To finish the bridge, I duplicate the objects and elements I need, and put them in position.

WALL

REAR AREA

FIGURE

To make the cape I created bezier-splines in Cinema4D and I dragged them into a "Loft Nurbs Object"(later, we can use a bump map to give more details to the cape). I can modify splines placed into Loft Nurbs Object, and view the results in real time.

To make the arms/legs I used "Capsule Objects".  The feet are deformed cubes, the head is a sphere, and the sword is a modified capsule! This person doesn't have a body; I only created the parts that would be visible from my camera. This "pseudo-figure" looks ugly too, close-up but the camera is far enough away that this really isn't an issue.

Now, we have all elements to create the scene. (All modelling work was done in about 2 hours, including the first Freehand 8 drawing.)

TEXTURING

There are only a few textures in this scene. They are:

A.. a stonework map for all walls
B.. another stonework map for the floor
C.. my own stone map (rouged grey) for the sculpted stone
D.. plain colour textures + bump + diffusion (fractal noise) for the
clothes
E.. a bit of fresnel in colour texture with alpha channel activated
(holes) for the feather
F.. a background map

For the stonework textures I activated the diffusion channel and loaded the new plug in "DirtyNUTs" shader. This shader creates an automatic "dirt" effect where ever it is applied.

Mapping was really fast, mostly applying a cubic mapping to object groups and adjusting the number of tiles in real-time in the editor view.  I played with the tiling until I liked what I saw.

LIGHTING

-DAYLIGHT-

This stage of the work is the most time-consuming of the entire scene, because I had to do a lot of testing of the effects as I went along.

All lights are added gradually. Note that between lighting stages, the increment of change is small.

Using a big number of low lights gives better results than using a few lights with high values. The idea is to create something like a "lighting
grid" to fill the dark areas using colours

-Simulating light sources using spots and omni lights-

I used a spot placed far enough away to cover the entire scene. Light colour is warm yellow using a value of 270%, with area shadows enabled. Area shadows are more accurate than other shadows. Area shadows will show hard or soft shadows depending on the object's distance, like real shadows. This takes more render time than other shadows, but looks nice.


Using soft shadows with a big map size, "sun" shadows looks nice too, and
while this will save time, the area shadows really are better.

"Sun" spot only

MAIN BOUNCING:

To simulate the first bouncing light from sun, I used two lines of blue omni lights (8 lights each line) placed along the "street". They are instances from a "master blue light". It's easy to adjust because you need only adjust the Master to have the change propagated to the 'cloned' lights.



The first 'light-string" is placed near the floor and second "light-string" about the middle of the maximum height of the scene. These strings of lights fill all areas softly with a uniform lighting. (Using more lights with a lower value results are nice but that takes more render time and tests.)



At this point, the top area still is too dark, but we can solve this later using only a few lights.



The Master blue light (and consequently all 16 instances) uses a 10% value, the colour is blue and soft shadow is enabled (125 kb size map); this produces soft-shadows and lighting, which emulating a radiosity effect, but isn't as render intensive.

For the main skylight I used three instances from a couple of blue spotlights targeting the walls and the floor for a total of 8 lights along
the scene. The parameters used are: blue colour, soft shadows (sample size to 6 to create a more diffuse shadow) and a 20% value. -This produces more "filled scene" and visible shadows under the Bridge, on floors, and walls.

At this point, some areas are still too dark, so we need to fill them with light.

Note that the bottom area of our bridge doesn't show enough bounced-light while sunlight looks high on the floor. To remedy this, a simple light without shadows is placed under the scene to fill bottom areas with "reflected" light. This simple light uses a 15% value.

Now is when I apply the overhead "Skylight":

In total three omni lights with falloff are placed in a medium-top area of the overall scene. Two omni lights with a 20% value are placed at front and back of the bridge, at a medium-top position.  The third light, with a 35% value, is placed at the top, higher up, but toward the front since only this area is visible to the camera.

Finally small details to improve believability:

Because the walls at the back of the bridge fade to open space, more Skylight must appear on it.  To "overexpose" the open area I used a pair of blue spots with a 30% value, targeting the walls at top, and an omni yellow at 25% value with falloff on the open space between the end and rear wall.

THE IMAGE IS FINISHED

Rendering time:

5 minutes: 42 seconds (600x600 píxels) on a Pentium4 1.5GHz/650RAM.

Carles Piles 2002.

NOTE: You can see the Final image at 600x600 pixels in the Gallery.