First you have to make sure what you want to do. If your plan is an existing thing, look arround on the internet to see if there might be some picture about that topic. (I think it's very important).
As you can see, this picture is quite empty. After a little thinking, you can develop the whole picture on paper or in your mind.
1. MODELING After all, my first step was creating the houses. Starting with a simple box, of course. After this, I made the house. It's not worth dealing with economizing on polygons, because the more detailed a cracking or a dent is, the nicer the picture is. It's worth making the uvw mapping right when you're modelling bechause a big scene like this, it could be more difficult subsequently.
Going on, I started to create the complementery objects (like windows, the eaves gutter, and so on...) Of course for these I made the UVW right after I was ready, or meanwhile.
The main idea is ready with this, now can come the things to fill the emptiness. 3th step, is creating these things, as I sad. I mean the street lamp, the cords, and the billboard. I used the reactor and the clothFX for making these dynamic movements in the 3Dsmax, bechause very spectacular things can be made with these plugins.
Finishing these steps, the picture is becoming good, but it's still empty.
Let's Jazz it!
Make some leaves, posters on the wall, barrels, chests, and a cart. It's very important to make sure when the original picture was taken, bechause this is from the 19th century a cart , the chests, and the other things suit the period. Well let's do it, and the picture is almost done.
Poser is perfect for making a man, or an animal which can be seen from the back. I added some more things to make the picture more complete.
Arranging these, we are ready with the modelling.
2. LIGHTING Well it's a very delicate question. Baisically good lighting can make a picture very spectacularly, but for me this wasn't important because I started the whole thing with an idea in my mind that a little photoshop at the end would make the picture lighter.
I used only one light source, the Vray light. The smooth Surface shadow, and the skylight is selected (which is for outdoor stuffs).
3. TEXTURES Commonly I used dirty textures, bechause It's a getto, then be like a getto. Thanks for the UVW mapping, my work was easy. I chose the objekt I wanted to texture-> Isolate selection->material editor, and a lot of pain:)
I saw a good method how to make a dirty material, and if someone doesn't know: put a mix on a diffuse map.
1. Mix: Put the original texture in the first box, and the second box is for the dirty color, and the third one is for another mix map.
2. mix: The same method as the firtst, and it's ready.
Illustrated with pictures:
4. RENDERING AND POSTPRODUCTION I used the Vray 1,0,9,03 version. Well it's the other delicate thing that could make a picture better, It calls for a lot of options and variations. I used my own options that I'm not telling you about now:)
After my picture was ready, I didn't like it with so many colours, but I expected this, that's why I didn't detail the textures so much, to be realistic. I found a picture which has an "old colour".
I put it on the picture with an option overlay, and that has been the end result:
Best Regards
Sandor Tar
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