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I made this image without any references. There wasn't anything specific that inspired the image; I just had this place I saw in my head and I wanted to recreate it. That’s the way it is with most of my images. I just see places in my head I’ll want to recreate or there will be a certain mood I want to capture. Since there was no specific meaning behind this piece, I’ll explain a little about the creative process that I used to plan out my image. I usually just start out by sitting down and writing all the details and then try to sketch it out. I have high respect for those that can draw well, because I can hardly draw a straight line. So, for the sake of all those who will read this, I have refrained from including my sketches.
Firstly, I brainstorm by just writing out tons of ideas for all the details in the image. An example of this brainstorming might go something like, “put a barrel on the left side, a chair next to it, the sun shines from a northwest direction, etc…” When I run out of ideas for one image, I’ll start writing out ideas for other images, or take a break and come back to brainstorming later. It’s amazing how ideas can just flow effortlessly after a good break. |  |  | Once I am satisfied with most of the details, I started with the modeling. I start with the main parts, like the buildings and then work my way down to the smaller details like the plants, barrels, shutters, and flower pots. Using the loft function for the arch, lathe for the top and bottom of the lamps, the pottery, and the barrel, it was rather basic. I modeled everything except the plants and trees that are from Xfrog. |
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Most of my time for this image was spent on texturing. I started out by thinking of what colors and patterns would look good and then went through my texture library to see what would work best. Most of the textures came from various texture websites. Even when I had an idea of what might look good, it usually takes a few tries to find textures that actually look good in the scene.
A texture that looked like it might work out in the preview window might have actually thrown the whole scene off and one that might have looked boring might have actually fit the scene perfectly making it more interesting. Once I had the main textures I wanted to use, I used the blend function with dirt maps to make them more interesting.
All of the objects had a UVW mapping modifier on them and some also had a map scalar modifier as well. Most of the textures in this scene had bump maps or displacement modifiers on them. The displacement usually doesn’t make smooth transitions around the corners of an object so the way I fixed it was to add a Meshsmooth modifier on top of the stack with iterations set to 0. There were probably other ways to fix it, but that’s one quick and easy way to do it. |  | |  | | | |  |
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