The recent system upgrade has finally allowed me to start putting 3D Coat through its paces in an integrated visualisation workflow. I’ve owned a copy for quite a few years however my previous system seriously limited its utility. Any moderately detailed voxel or surface sculpt would leave my old system dead in a ditch.

After an initial thumbnail establishing the overall composition a brief exploration of the visual language of the architectural forms, I dove into 3D Coat to create a collection of assets from which I could construct the interior. Through a heavy use of the symmetry tool and of Stencils (both my own and those created by others) using the Extrude tool I created the secondary and tertiary details, as well as the damage and weathering.

These assets were then individually exported as obj’s, reducing the polys in the conversion from voxel objects by 80 to 90 percent (depending on the level of detail).

Additionally, I created a rough and ready sculpt for the head and torso of ‘Cthulhu’ who will be seen emerging through a doorway. I didn’t need to invest too much time in the detail or fidelity of this sculpt as he would be quite distant and shrouded in mist.

These assets were then imported into Blender with the positioning and POV of the camera referencing my initial thumbnail.

To reduce the file size, system load, and render-times (as these are very poly heavy assets) I created Collection Instances for duplicates. For the material I wanted the cavities to be accentuated and to suggest the buildup of grime and dirt. For the materials, I created a Vertex Color instance under the Object Data Properties tab, shifted over to Texture Paint workspace, set the Object Interaction mode to Vertex Paint, and selected Dirty Vertex Colors from the Paint menu. This creates a Dirt Map based on the Cavities.

In the Shader Editor I created two copies of the Principled Shader – one for the overall material and another for the colour and properties of the Dirt Map. A Mix Shader was used to combine them, and Attribute and Color Ramp nodes were used to specify the Cavity Map and control its scale and edges.

The rest is playing with lighting with a mix of warm local and cool ambient lights, and volume shaders to create areas of mist and fog. The figure in the foreground was created in Makehuman and posed in Blender. Rendered in Cycles with a ‘Clown pass’ created with Workbench to make masking and separating easier in Photoshop.

Maybe I’ll post some demonstration videos next time I use this workflow.

A personal project and ultimately a test-bed for further experimentation with incorporating Unreal Engine into a Concept Art and Previs workflow.

A design for a small, agile 2-seater scout ship that’s capable of VTOL, and both atmospheric and space flight. Inspired by Friendship Swallows and a nod to Daniel Simon’s excellent vehicle design for Oblivion.

More to follow as and when time (for personal projects) permit.

This video is a part of a demonstration that I created for my concept art and previsualisation class in the School of Design at RMIT University Melbourne.

These videos in total demonstrate a relatively simple and straightforward environment concept art workflow in students new to concept art from thumbnail iteration and selection, to a final, polished deliverable that involves the use of Blender for blocking out purposes before taking a completed render into Photoshop for completion.

The completed image is featured in my work portfolio on this site.

I’ve long been a fan of Dan Simmons’ seminal science fiction series – The Hyperion Cantos, which spans four books, hundreds of worlds, and almost 300 years, interweaving a diverse range of influences from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the poetry of John Keats, the works of Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Jack Vance, Philip K. Dick and William Gibson among others including radical theological thinkers.

In my spare time I’ve been trying my hand at a series of style frame concepts for an imagined intro to a series based on the first book of these works. One location to depict in the intro is the the seat of government for the Hegemony or WorldWeb, and a Ecumenopolis (a planet covered by a single city). The WorldWeb emerges from the scattering of humanity to hundreds of planets from the dying Old Earth, and is a collection of over 200 planets connected by ‘farcaster portals’ and ‘fatline’ provided by the mysterious AI TechnoCore, facilitating instantaneous travel and communication between worlds. Tau Ceti Center is linked to a number of other worlds by the River Tethys, which is connected via giant farcaster portals.

Work undertaken so far in Blender. Background cityscape is created using renderings of the diffuse and alpha layers of the city from an orthagonal view. These are then mapped on to planes.

Many of the later buildings are courtesy of CGTrader, and are in the process of being modified by me. Ground plane is courtesy of Google Earth. Smaller buildings are simple meshes distributed on the ground plane as particles using weight painting. Still some work in Blender in preparation for a polish pass in Fusion and Davinci Resolve, and in Photoshop.