Environment

Separating this scene in render layers was a must. I had two main render layers, one of the background and foreground. I needed as much optimization in the scene as possible as this project needed to be done on a tight deadline. I knew I wanted the background to be misty and really sell scale so I ended up modeling 5 different buildings to scatter with MASH. I then painted a custom map to dictate the layout of the city, later adding in three larger buildings to give the city more of a personality.

To further sell scale I added in little lights with cards and put it on a separate render layer along with a self illumination pass.

Using Vray aerial perspective I was able to get more depth into the scene. Each cloud you see was done on a card with a diffuse, opacity and normal texture map. Hand placing them gave me a lot of artistic control and it rendered very quickly.

I decided to create the smoke using Embergen, seeing the sim in real time was a huge help and I quickly created multiple variations, which I would later use as a vdb in Maya using Vray. Lastly, I set this on its own render layer which was the fastest sequence to render.

I animated the wires using a bend deformer in maya, it was a subtle effect but one that really added to bring this scene to life. During my time at Gnomon I quickly learned that subtlety is key, it’s worth spending time on things most viewers won't notice initially.