Making of "Kalmar Konstmuseum" by Strahinja Drazic

As always, I am trying to create unique story for my images, something you usually don’t see on most of renders. This time, the action behind the scene. Public workers cutting grass and museum staff setting up new exhibition wrapped up in early spring mood.

First, I analyzed the project and gathered building images and plans:

Quick sketch and couple of references is always helpful as a starting point before starting with the model:

The modeling part was straight forward. I align the plans (photos of them) in 3ds Max and used the photos as a guide to make sure everything was correctly modeled. As for the panels, I did a section of 2x2 which I copied on all over the basic facade and modify them to fit the sections:

Screenshot of finished model and coposition:

After finishing with the modeling and placing the camera angle I played with the lighting until I got what I was looking for. For the lighting I used CoronaSun, CoronaSky:

I wanted to place 2d pines (Pinus Sylvestris) and people in post so I played little bit with simple boxes in 3d to check how it would look and get approximate shadows:

The facade material was little more complex, maybe unnecessary too complex, but still, it was fun making it because I did not use any image textures. I used combination of Noise, CoronaAO, Gradients, CoronaRoundEdges and CoronaLayerdMtl to create painted wood material and dust dirt on it. With this method, I created easily manipulated procedural texture. Also I did random UV movement on each of the panels to get as more variations as possible:

Wood material screenshot. The actual settings of each material element are nothing more than playing with it until you got it right:

Since I could not find a good 3d model of a birch tree with buds, I’ve decided to model and texture one. I used my own textures I have gathered over the years photographing plants, backplates and other tetures to create diffuse, normal, displacement and bump maps for the bark and leaves:

Birch reference:

Grass modeling and material. Also there is nothing fancy here. Simple grass groups with variations (larger bended grass, lawn grass and cutted grass):

Forest Pack was used for distributing the grass, gravel and the bushes for the scene. I used five seperate ones. For bushes, gravel, large grass, mix of cutted with lawn grass and the cutted grass:

Final clay render after the trees are placed:

At the end, I did go little cinematic on this image, 1.85:1. Also I blended some images of cutted grass into the final image because I was too lazy to tweak the grass in 3d and re-render it. Used 360 sky for the background and reflections in 3d. Worflow, render passes and post production stages:

Final Spring image:

Spring image close-ups:

Winter image was quite simple after I finished the spring image. Snowball fight. All images for the winter background, bushes and snow, I shot two winters ago. Work process below.

Raw render with background

Snow, bushes and background blend

Final snow image with people:

It was enjoyable to work on this project in my spare time.