Making of The Mosque (Cordoba Spain)

The following are several modeled objects used in this scene along with their respective materials.

The arches are composed of a multi sub-object material of which I only show the concrete I used. The red concrete and borders have the exact same settings but with different textures.

The settings for the concrete are:
Hilight Glossiness 0.9
Refl. Glossiness 0.6
BRDF - Ward
Bump channel 5.0 units using a normal map of corrugated concrete texture

 

Front Arch, textured using the unwraping tecnique with the following settings:
Refl. Glossiness 0.79
BRDF - Ward
Bump channel 15.0 units using the same texture from the diffuse map.

 

This is the map along with the material I used for the arch, the settings are:
Refl. Glossiness 0.79
BRDF - Ward
Bump channel 15.0 units using the same texture from the diffuse map.

 

Capital, in which I used a displacement map, the settings are:
Refl. Glossiness 0.75
BRDF - Ward
Bump channel 55.0 units using the same texture from the diffuse map.
Applied a displacement map suing the same texture from the diffuse map but in black & white and high contrast.

One common uncertainty is when to use bump maps, a regular bump map, normal maps or displacement maps. In this case I wanted to show the column capital as if it was modeled in 3d so I decided to use displacement.

 

No big mistery for the floor, the settings are:
Refl. Glossiness 0.89
BRDF - Blinn

The displacement map was done with imperfect white lines for the grout. I erased them a little to make them look worn.

 

The colums have this map that you see in black & white inside the reflection channel with a value of 20.0 units, the other settings are:
Refl. Glossiness 0.79
BRDF - Blinn
No Bump

 

I didn't use any HDRI for the illumination of this scene. Basically, I have a vraysun light which enters from the roof with these settings:

• Turbidity 3.0
• Ozone 0.35
• Intensity multiplier 8.0
• Size multiplier 1.0

There is an aiding light at the roof (vray light plane), with an intensity of 2000 units, color (RGB 0,0,255), casting shadows, invisible, ignoring light normals and having checked affect diffuse, specular and reflections.

Two more lights on the sides of the scene with different intensities (1500 units on the right and 1000 units on the left). I think not having the same light intensity on both sides gives the scene more interest.

Lastly there's a frontal light behind the camera with 150 units offering little illumination to the scene but using it to be able to obtain a few reflection and reflaction passes at the end and thus giving the objects and the floor much more intensity in post production.

 

The final settings are simple, practically the ones by default when we turn on the GI.

 

For this particular image, these were the passes I made:
- Occlusion- Gives more life to your image defining corners and objects with bump maps and displacement.
- Render ID- Great help for post production. You can select individual objects to enhance levels, color balance, etc.
- Shadows- Gives you more control over the shadows in the scene. You can play around with different channels and opacities in Photoshop.
- Object ID- You are able to assign different IDs to separate objects. In this case I singled out the capitals.
- Reflection & Specular- You can normally use these channels in "Screen" mode in Photoshop to add realism to highlights.
- Z-depth- You can achieve depth of field in your images with this channel.

This is an animation of the Post Production done in Photoshop starting from the raw rendering until the final result.
Thank you and I hope you find some use in this mini tutorial.


Cheers,
Luis Tejeda (3dluis)