ARTICLES

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The Art of Composition

Composition is vital in any form of art & design like painting, photography,
film, animation as well as digital art. Without a strong composition
foundation, our work will lose it's power to deliver the message that we
want to share with our viewers.
Here are some composition that i periodically used in my works :
01. The Rule of Thirds
Perhaps the most used composition that we can find in our everyday life is
The Rule of Thirds which originally came from The Golden Rule. We can
find this composition used on magazine's cover, movies, advertising etc.
The Golden Rule also known as divine proportions originated from Ancient
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Greeks. Artisans & great mathematicians at that time developed the theory
of balance in composition that pleased the eye like this image below.

Where the lines in the golden rule, it became what is called as the "Focal
Point". Whatever objects that placed in the focal point will be the main
interest for the image.

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The Golden Rule than altered to what we've known as The Rule of Thirds
to fit photographic proportion.
Here's the picture on how i applied the Rule of Thirds in my work.

02. Implied Forms

This composition is to lead the eye toward the focal point of the piece.
Here are some of the implied forms that i used :

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The Cross : Vertical line and horizontal line as a leading line

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L Composition
The frame within the frame type of composition. It's a great way to make
things stand out and effectively draw the eyes to the center of interest.

Perspective Lines to lead the viewer into the focal point

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Circular Shape : Circular shape lead your eyes toward the focal point.
( In this image, actually the focal point is the man standing in the center of
the image, the left highlight was to add interest for the image )

03. Tilting the camera to get dynamic feels for the image

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04. Simple Balance & Contrast

By keeping the areas of interest in high contrast, i can attract the eye to
focal point of the image. The surrounding darker area can be used to help
framing the image.

So there was my short mini article about composition and the way i used
several of them in my work.
Thank you for viewing this short article of mine about composition . Hope
you can find this short article useful :) .

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Lighting Composition

Light is the form of energy that makes it possible to few things. Without
light, our world would be so dark and we won't be able to see anything (
Thank God it's not! ).
Lighting can be a great tools to tell a story. Different lighting situation tells a
different kind of story and mood. I'll show you some of composition based
on lighting and how i used them in my works.

Time of Day
Basically there are 4 times of day : Morning, Day, Afternoon and Night. This
image below depicted on how i tried to imply the different times of day with
the same room and it totally change the mood as the lighting situation
change.

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A morning lighting setting can give an optimistic feeling, while a day time
setting can give us a formal everyday feels or flat mood depend on how we
use it. While afternoon setting can give us a comfort , warm and resting
mood. A night time setting used a lot to support a romantic or private
scene. A romantic candle light conversation somehow more fit in a night
time setting than a sunny hot day time. ( of course it is! :D )

Here are several of compositions based on lighting that sometimes i used

in my works :
01. 3 Points lighting
Perhaps the most popular lighting setup in 3d world is 3 points lighting.
3 points lighting includes : Key light, Rim light & Kick light. This lighting
setup with all the lights placed in different position, can be used to
emphasize the shape of our 3d object better. Here's one of the sample with
character :

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Key Light
Key light is the light that used as a primary source of light to bright up the
scene. Like this image below .

Kick Light
Kick light is the light that placed opposite the key light and it has a softer
intensity to lighten a shadow area produced by the key light. From the
image below, you can see how a kick light brighten up the shadow area
that produced by a key light with a very low & soft intensity.

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Rim Light
The third light is called the rim light. It brighten the edge of the object and to
separate the object from the background. As we can see from the image
example below, rim light also define the object's shape better.

This is how it looks when we put all the lights together in the scene.

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02. Framing ( Foreground - Middleground - Background )

In this composition, the lighting was used between foreground,
middleground and background to separate this 3 areas better. It can gives
more depths on the scene.

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03. Pools of Light

Pools of light is a light that brighten a certain object's area in the scene
instead of a whole area of it. In my image below, the light appeared strong
on the left building below as the key light came from the right side. The left
building's top area didn't get the same intensity as it is with the lower part of
the building. This kind of light can give more drama for the scene.

04. Gradients of Tone

Gradients of tone simply means a contrast between dark and light. Instead
of using a same tone of brightness, we can add more interest for the scene
by differ the tone by gradients. Here's the example from my work.

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The left image was my proposed background scene for one movie project
in my local country and i realized it in the end on how it appears so flat
rather than pleasing the eye. The image was not used in the end ( and it's
not really surprising..lol! ) Comparing with image on the right, the contrast
between dark & light was so obvious and gives a lot of gradients of tone in
it. It pleases the eye of the viewer more to see image with a lot of gradients
of tone here and there.

05. Atmosphere
Nothing can add more drama and depth quicker than atmosphere.
Atmosphere is really still a great way to add mood and drama for a scene.

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06. Implied Lighting

Implied lighting is used to imply that there is something more in the scene
than what is appears in the scene. For example, in my image below, i
implied a shadow of window in the scene to show that there's a whole
world out there than just the class that appears in the scene.

Another way to use implied lighting is by adding a tree shadow in a scene.

Implied lighting is a great way to make the scene world bigger than it
actually is.

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07. Color Palette

The way we give a light color in a scene can tells a different mood and
story depends on what kind of story that we want to tell.
A few examples, in this scene below i used a lot of green tone to give a
creepy feeling for the image.

While in this image i used a more warm color palette to give a warm
welcoming and calm ambient feels for the image.

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With this image below, my little contribution for Tolkien with Mordor as main
theme, i used a lot of red and orange color to emphasize a danger &
uneasy situation in it.

And this the end of my short article about lighting composition.

Hope it can be useful for you who read this and if you have any
feedback..feel free to write email to me at
memento.animation@gmail.com
Thanks for viewing !

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VALUE & COLOR

In this new short article, i want to share about value and color.

VALUE
Value is the lightness or darkness of a color.
We can know about the change of one object's form from the change of it's
value.

Here's what i mean by change of value also means change of form.

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This is an illustration of the boxes with each of the box got the light source
from upper left side.
On the left side is the box before the form change. While on the right side is
the box after it got change on it's corner and we can see the value help to
differentiate the form change of the box.
Basically we can categorize values to 10 category like this picture below.
From the darkest color to white color as the lightest value.

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This is how the value number operated on the sphere with one light source.

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Below image is an example on how value can help us to see how's the
object shape take place.

Generally when a light fall on to the object there are four things that will
happen on the object. The object will have :
01. Highlight : Show the brightest part of the object as the light source fall
on it.
02. Core shadow : The area between light and shadow that usually show a
darkest color and peak area of the object
03. Bounce light : The area that got light bounced from the floor or from
other surface that nearest with it.
04. Cast shadow : The shadow on the surface that the object rests on. It is
created by the object itself blocking the light from the light source.

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Another form of value that can help us to differentiate distance is a use of

aerial perspective like this simple painting of hills below.

We can know that the darkest value is the closest with viewer. As the fog
get thicker starts from the middle ground, the hills also got lesser dark
value. The decreasing of dark value can help to push the object further
back there. As it get further, the object got lesser and lesser dark value.
Here's how i use aerial perspective in my landscape speed painting below
to help me show the distance of the mountains better.

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COLOR
There's a wide subject and study can be discussed about color, but i just
cover about temperature, hue and saturation of color in this short article.
Different temperature also can be shown with a different color. Like this
image below, hot temperature can be represented with colors associated
with red, orange and yellow. As the temperature increased, the red element
color also increase. The opposite of warm temperature is cold temperature.
As the temperature got cooler, it can be represented by increasing the blue
color or toning down the saturation.

Here's the example of warm color temperature. From the color, we can the
feel that the environment took place in a very hot area.

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While the example for cold color temperature is like this :

you can see a lot of cold blue shader that helps us to perceive that this
image took place in a very very cold place.
Next is about hue and saturation..
Hue simply is a shade of color. While saturation is the thickness of the
color. Less saturation means the color got more grey shade coming in, like
this image below.

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For example in this both images below, the first image is less saturated
compare with the second image.
Less Saturation

More saturation

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You can see the application of value and color in my short speed painting
video. The highlight, core shadow, bounce light and soft cast shadow can
help to determine shape of the objects.

and this one is the application of aerial perspective in my short speed

painting video. We can see how the less dark color and less saturation
color can add an illusion of depth in the image.

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So, that's about it..my short article about value and color, hope it can be
found useful for all of you who view it.
Thank you for taking your time to view this article. any feedbacks or
questions please feel free to write in the comment section below or you can
write email to me at memento.animation@gmail.com
See you again with another useful tutorial from me in the future!

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"THE MAKING OF"

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THE MAKING OF " SPOOKY MANSION"

Hi, In this tutorial i will explain the process on creating my "Spooky

Mansion" image. This is not a beginner tutorial because i will explain mainly
on the walkthrough process on how i achieve the result. Any further
questions you can just email me at memento.animation@gmail.com.
Hope this tutorial will inspire and give benefit to some of you who want to
create a 3d scene :)

The Idea
Actually, i created this piece for a Gnomon monthly challenge in October
2012. The topic was to create a scene of Spooky Mansion in accordance
with the Halloween theme. So i came up with the idea of this Spooky
Mansion with a huge moon shape behind and bats to add drama for the
scene.
This is the story behind the image :
"It has been said that this old mansion is already empty for over a
decade. But some witnesses had said that almost every night they
saw those strange green light on the 4th level and top level of the
building as if someone were lighten up the room. Nobody know for
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sure what's remain in that building. No one had an interest either to

enter this huge mansion..."
Modelling
I used 3dsmax for this scene, but i won't share the technical side of the
software. What i'm going to share is the essential process to create this
scene, so it won't matter what software that you will use later.
Here is the tower and main building modelling :

The modelling is pretty basic. A lot of Box modelling, Extrude shape, Edge
chamfer for all the modelling edge to give a more sense of realism.
Latte modifier for the small ornament around the tower and the top tower
ornament.

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The gravestone that scattered on the back ground surface

Fences, Tree ( we can use xfrog ,speed tree ,Onyx and other third party
software to create tree, in this scene i used AEC extended that featured in
3dsmax ) and Lamp post also integrated to the scene.

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Texturing
I tend to keep the texture simple, so the texturing part for this image is quite
basic.

Here's the breakdown of some texture that i used for this scene:
The Main building texture

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Texture for all the blue roof top part

Here's the texture :

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Vray light material for the green light that illuminate from window

Texture for small concrete part of the tower and some lists of the main
building

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Lighting
I used only 3 sphere Vray lights and one Vray HDRI applied to the dome
shape.
One main light from the right front side , one secondary light ( rim light)
from the left behind side and one small Vray sphere green tone to light up
the inside part of the tower.

The Vray lights position from top view

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This is my light setting for the Main light.

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secondary light ( rim light ) from behind, to help emphasize the building
shape more stronger.

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Small Vray sphere light inside the tower to light up it's interior part.

Vray HDRI applied to the dome object, so i can get a more realistic overall
look (contrast between light and dark ) for the scene.

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Rendering
Here is my render settings

Post Production
I used photoshop to do some color adjustment and add more glow, fog in
certain areas, moon and the bats.
This is how my first raw render looked like

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Add moon on it, some dead trees behind, add fogs behind the building,
more dramatic clouds element for the background and add green glow
behind the building. Also i add more glow and light streak for the area that
glowed with green light that comes from the inner part of the building ( In
this case, the tower and 4th level of the building).

Add dead tree for the left foreground area, 4 lamp posts at the center, add
more grass and fog below the building and color correct to make it looked
more unity in color ( the main color theme is green to get the spooky mood
)

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Add dead branch on top left foreground area, put the fences and add some
fog behind the fences to push the depth between foreground and middle
ground area. To add more story and drama, i put bats on the right side flied
nearby the moon.

Finally, add a bluish layer to simulate blue ambient for the overall
atmosphere. I gave a vignette edge to keep the main building stayed as a
main focus in this scene.

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Here's a short breakdown video for this Spooky Mansion scene.

Hope you will find this making of Spooky Mansion scene useful and
beneficial in a certain way. I will post more tutorials in the future and maybe
will do some video tutorials after my written tutorials reach to 10-15 posts.
Would love to hear from you if you have some feedback or questions about
this tutorial. Just drop me an email at memento.animation@gmail.com
Thank you so much for visiting and see you in the next tutorial!

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THE MAKING OF "MONOLITH FUTURE" MATTE PAINTING

In this "making of" short article, I'm going to share my process on how i
create this "Monolith Future" matte painting.
01. First, i started with the sky background. I chose a suitable background
sky photo for my scene

02. Then i started to put the main building with color correction. Along with
all the small secondary buildings around it to give a sense of giant scale for
the main building. I plant to use one point perspective for this matte
painting.

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03. I placed building base photo plate as a guidance to help me with the
perspective and give some smokes that came out from some buildings.

04. I continued to place small buildings for more details on the middle
ground. I turn on the perspective guide layer to see if all the photo plate
references suit the one point perspective that i want to use for this matte
painting.

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05. I placed more building on the middle ground that got closer to the
foreground.

06.I added more buildings that got closer and closer to the foreground. I
also added fogs to separate better the buildings. As it got further the fogs
also got thicker.

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07. Finally i put the foreground buildings, with green lush plants on the
penthouse rooftop to give details and information for some buildings.

08. Now for the final touch, I put vignette & color correction for the overall
image, to harmonize the color with one color theme, which is more in a
depressing mood and a bit pale color mood to give a futuristic sci-fi looks in
it.

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Another small steps to enhance all the image is to copy the overall image
by creating a new layer and clicking Alt+Ctrl+Shift+E. After that apply
Filter>Other>High Pass ( 5 for the radius would be enough ) to the layer
and change layer mode to become Overlay (This layer is still on top of your
original image).
You will notice that it helps to enhance details and made the image sharper
than before. But you have to be careful not to overdo it.
Here's my final image looked like :

Hope you can find this short article about how i made this matte painting to
be useful. It's not the most ideal approach but that's one of the way that i
did for my matte painting.
Any questions you can drop comment below or just email me at
memento.animation@gmail.com
Thank you for viewing

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MAKING OF " THE GOLDEN CITY" MATTE PAINTING

In this tutorial, I'm going to share my process on how i did my "Golden City"
matte painting.
1. I started with the sky background. I choose photos that suitable with the
scene requirement. Because i wanted the light source came from left side, i
then choose photo that have light source from left side.

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2. I didn't satisfied with the sky. So i decided to add another photo and
integrated it with my previous sky background to have a better sky result.

3. Next, i adjust the sky color using level and curve adjustment to make it
blend each other and cover the lower part since i'm going to give sea
texture on it later.

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4. I also add a soft yellow value on the horizon line to emphasize depth and
there you can see that i put a sea texture that get along pretty well with the
scene.

5. Here's how i lay the sea texture before i add the main building.

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6. Here's a 3d render of sci fi buildings that i did in Maya and with help from
Esri city engine for those small buildings below the main building.
This one is the middle ground buildings with the main building sit on it.

and this one is the background buildings

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This is how it looks when i put them together.

I want to make sure that the composition was right. I'm aware about rule of
thirds composition in this matte painting ( red line ) and the blue line is how
i want to lead the viewers eyes : from the main building - to the
background building and goes to the far left building. The yellow circle is
the main focal point for this image, so that's the area that i want the viewer
to rest their eyes to.

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and this is how the city integrated with the background for the first time

7. I started to add fog between the middle ground and the background
buildings to push the background buildings further. I also add some smokes
effect above the cities & some glow behind the background building.

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8. I started to paint some extension parts for the buildings and some light
dots on every part of the cities to give a sense that there are activities
below there.

I then start to give a better contrast..light value and dark value to the
surrounded area of the main building. Lighter value as it come closer to the
light source and darker value as it goes further from the light source.

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9. Add more shadow on the right part of the middle ground buildings.

10. Add more smokes. Emphasize atmosphere to give a better depth for
the main building.

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11. Since i'm going to give a foreground building, i add fog to give a better
atmospheric effects at the middle ground area

12. I put a foreground building at the right corner

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13. To add more interest in the scene, i added ships on the sea and space
planes flying on the sky area.

14. Next, i color corrected the scene with level adjustment layer to give
more contrast and used curve adjustment layer to lower the blue channel
tone a bit so i can get a warmer tone result.

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15. For a final touch, I enhanced the scene further using Photolooks filter
from Magic Bullet plug in for photoshop. It's a very cool plug in that
enables me to put a cinematic looks for my matte painting

And that's the overall step by step on how i did my "Golden City" matte
painting. Hope you can gain insight from my process.
Any questions just email me at memento.animation@gmail.com
For more updates of my tutorial just follow my instagram
@mementoanimation
Thanks for viewing!

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TUTORIALS

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EFFECTIVE LIGHTING SETUP

In this short tutorial, i'm going to share on how to set a scene with an
effective lighting setup without using a global illumination that will keep the
render time short and also make it easy for us to change the light situation
immediately.
I'm using Maya to set the scene and Mental Ray for the renderer.
This was the scene that i started with. Rendered with Mental Ray and no
lighting setup :

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01. I tried to simulate a day scene, so i started to place the sky using half
sphere object with lambert material and incandescence slider set all the
way to the max. I used a light blue color for the incandescence color
setting.

02. I started to put the light and start with a spot light placed as the sun light
( The sun light is my key light ). Here's my sun light position and my light
setting. Everything was default setting except the intensity. i increased the
intensity into 2.

Here's how the render looked like for now, with only one spot light as a key
light in the scene.

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03. I started to place bounce light on the scene based on how the sun light
hit the bed and floor.
Here's the light placement, i used area light for both the bounce lights. The
color was the same both for the bounce light, except the smaller one had a
smaller intensity ( 0.1 ) while the bigger one was 0.25. Both the shadow
was Depth map shadow with 1024 for the resolution and 8 for the filter size
( this shadow setting applied to all the bounce lights in this scene )

Here's how the render looked like with those 2 bounce lights on. As you
can see, it started to enlighten the area that supposed to receive bounce
light from the floor and the bed.

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04. I add another bounce light near the bed's edge with intensity as you
can see below and the shadow setting was same with the previous bounce
lights.

and now this is how the render looked like

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05. Next, i added a soft bounce light at the ceiling to simulate light bounced
back from the ceiling because it received the light that bounced from bed.
The shadow setting still follow the previous one.

Here's how the render looked like, it started to enlighten the scene now.

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06. Another bounce light that bounce back from the wall that got frame on
it. As you can see the intensity was 0.03 and still with the same shadow
setting as before.

Render result :

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07. Now, After some bounce lights, it's time for fill light to get in the scene. I
add another area light outside the window to fill the room with a soft fill
light.

Render result :

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08. Almost there! Now i put another area light near the window from the
inside to simulate gloom light near the window area. A cooler blue tone to
simulate that the window's area affected by the sky light
Here's the light position

And the render result :

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09. As it came close to the end, i noticed that the chair lacked shadow, so i
added another area light to lighten the chair and give shadow for it. Here's
how i positioned the light above the chair with a low intensity so it won't get
too bright on the floor.

And here's the render, we can see that the chair now had a soft shadow
below.

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10. And now..it's time to give Ambient Occlusion for all the objects in the
scene! It will give a better depths for the scene and give a global
illumination "like" appearance .
I gave mib_ amb_occlusion from Mental Ray shader in Hypershade and
assigned it to all the ambient color attributes inside the lambert of all the
objects.
In this scene..i still use one lambert for all the objects so all i need to do
was just assigned it to that one lambert and all the objects are affected
immediately.

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and now..this is the result. I tried to keep the render time under 5 minutes.

the render time for this scene was 4:54 in 1280x720 HD resolution
This is my Mental Ray setting in the quality tab :

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For bonus, i added gloom effect near the window by turned on glow from
special effect in my sky's shader lambert setting.
As you can see, i set 0.2 for the glow intensity effect, so the glow won't get
too bright.

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and here's the render result now :

Let say if we want to change the light situation, we just need to change the
light's color and it's intensity if needed with all lights position remain the
same.
Also change the ambient occlusion color with the color that suitable with
the lighting situation. Like what i did with these 2 scenes below :

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For the night scene, i tone down some of the light's intensity, because night
scene is not supposed to be so bright like the day and afternoon scene.
That's all the process of this lighting scene. I hope you can find this tutorial
useful.
If there's any questions just email me at memento.animation@gmail.com
and feel free to leave comments below if you have any :)..would love to
hear from you.
Thanks for viewing and stay tune for more tutorials in the future!

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Outdoor Lighting Setup

Continue from my last tutorial about Effective Lighting Setup, now i want to
apply the same principle for outdoor scene setup. The software that i used
for this tutorial was Maya and Mental Ray for the renderer, but the principle
can be applied to any 3D software.
I suggest that you go through the previous tutorial about effective lighting
setup if you haven't done so, In order for you to get the basic
understanding about lighting setup itself.
I only used one type of lighting for this scene..area light. I still prevented
this scene to be rendered with global illumination so that i can reduce the
render time significantly.

DAY TIME SETUP

I'm going to start from this outdoor day time scene.

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Here's how i put the lights in this scene :

1. The Sun light - main light source ( key light ) for this scene is an area
light from left side. At the right panel, you can see my light color and
intensity that i used for this key light. I let the ray trace shadow attributes
with its remain setting, unless the shadow rays set to 2.

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All the 3d objects in this scene already applied with ambient occlusion ( for
more information about ambient occlusion, please refer to my Effective
Lighting Setup tutorial )
This is my render setting for the quality tabs from Mental Ray. I leave all the
setting remain unless sampling quality to 3 and filter to Mitchell with 4 for
both the filter size.

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Here's the render without sky background

2. I used sky dome for the background and applied gradient ramp for the
texture.

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I link the gradient ramp to the color and incandescence of the shader, so i
can get the color of the sky to be lifted up and bright.

Here's the render with the sky background included

3. Next, we're going to give kick light ( rim light ) at the back right of the
dome to give a bit of blue shade of the sky on the shadow back part of this
building.
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Here's the light with it's color and intensity on the right panel. I turned the
ray trace shadow off for this one because i think we won't necessary need
it right now. Ray trace shadow that already casted by the key light was
enough for this scene.

And here's the render result now with kick light added. In this scene, you
can see how the blue shade from kick light started to fill the shadow part of
the building .

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4. Lastly, we're going to add bounce lights for this scene.

As you can see from this image below, i placed 5 bounce lights to the
places where i estimated would reflects light that came from the Sun light.

3 lights on the roof top represented light bounced from the roof, i gave 0.1
for each of their intensity and light cream color for the lights itself.

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The 2 bounce lights below represented light that bounced from the green
grass ground, so i gave light green for the color and 0.1 value for each of
their intensity.

All the bounce lights has no any cast shadow. So i unchecked the "Use
Ray Traced Shadow" from the ray trace shadow attributes of all the bounce
lights.
And here's how the final render result with all the lights sets in it's places

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With this light setting, i can easily turn the scene to afternoon by changing
most of the lights to be more yellowish and with a bit orange. Here's the
example

I also changed the gradient ramp color to have a quick sunset feel for the
sky dome background.

NIGHT TIME SETUP

For night time, the lighting setup was a bit different. I still kept the key light
and kick light in their place, only change the color to be more bluish. The
major difference was i changed all bounce lights from the previous setup to
be the kind of lights as if they were spot lights that illuminated the building
in the night. Plus i added more lights to illuminate the building better.
Here's what i mean :

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All the lights that i selected above are used to illuminate the building with
soft cream color and orange color to give a warm feeling in the middle of
night lighting setup.
The intensity range of these lights was between 0.1 - 0.4 with ray trace
shadow turned on as i wanted to represent the light to be like spot lights
that placed below certain areas of the building.
Here's how the render:

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Here's the final result after composed with night sky photo background and
added plant element on the left corner below so it won't get too empty.

So that's about outdoor lighting setup. I tried to keep it simple and didn't
want to get too complicated about it. Hope you can find this tutorial useful.
Any questions and feedback just drop in the comment box below or you
can email me at memento.animation@gmail.com
You are free to subscribe to my blog:
www.andrewsuryadi3dtutorials.blogspot.com
for future useful tutorial updates! Just drop your email in the subscription
box on the right side of the blog.
Stay tune and thanks for viewing :)

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MATTE PAINTING BASIC : DAY FOR NIGHT

In this tutorial, I'm going to share about a basic matte painting technique on
how to change a photo image from day time to night time.
This is how the original photo looks like :

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And here's my process :

1. I used level adjustment layer to darken the sky. I only want to darken the
sky so i applied mask in the level adjustment layer and give white mask for
the sky.

Here's how it looks like now

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2. Using the same layer mask setting, now i add another curve adjustment
layer and curve up the blue channel until i got a result like this

3. Next i created another curve adjustment layer with no mask and curve
down the blue channel so i got a yellowish color for the entire photo.

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4. I created a new layer and filled it with a deep blue color like this

Applied multiply for the layer mode

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Applied layer mask for the layer and start to paint areas that affected by
light at night.

Here's the result so far

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5. Next, I selected almost all of the windows at the building and turn it to be
yellowish using curve adjustment layer to mimic lights from inside the
windows.

And here's how it integrated with the image now

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6. I lighted up the lamp posts at the right side also

7. I used cooling filter from photo filter adjustment layer to tone down the
yellow ambience

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8. I found the result was too dark, so i lifted up the scene using level
adjustment layer like the image below.

And the result so far :

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9. Next i added clouds background for the sky to give more dramatic feel in
the image

10. Lastly, I added vignette layer using dark blue soft brush with multiply
layer mode at the top of the image and done!

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Hope this short tutorial can be useful for you.

I included the raw photo that i used for this tutorial & my PSD work file
to be available as a free download for those of you who want to
practise with this tutorial. You can get it here:
Day for Night Matte Painting Tutorial Resources
If you have any questions just email me at
memento.animation@gmail.com
Thank you for viewing!

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HOW TO MODELLING DESTRUCTION IN 3DS MAX

In this short tutorial, I'm going to share the way i modeled destruction
like i did in my "Jakarta Old City" scene.
01. I started with a box object applied a rust wall texture on it.

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02. Then i converted the box to editable poly, choose one of the edge and
applied Extrude Edges . Keep the extrude radius decent & not too far from the
center edge.

03. I applied UVW map modifier with box mapping , choose all the polygon
surface & cleared all the smoothing group in this box.

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04. Under vertex sub object, i used cut tool to start do the destruction part of
the wall's edge.

I kept the vertex both left and right side on the same number so i can attach it
later.

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05. Remove the center edge.

06. Connect the left and right vertex with cut tool so it will looks like this

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07. I selected the polygon in the destruction part and gave it a different
smoothing group with the rest polygon on this box . ( Any number will do, but
mine is 4 smoothing group for the destructed polygon and 3 for the rest of the
other polygon )

08. I selected the vertex inside the destructed polygon and go to vertex sub
object...pull down the scroll panel at the right bottom all the way down to paint
deformation panel. There we will find push/pull button, pressed it and adjust
the number ( mine is Puh/Pull value = -3.5 mm, brush size = 65mm , Brush
strength = 1 )
Note for the Push/Pull value : minus number is to push the surface, plus
number is to pull the surface

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09. So i started to rub the surface until i got the result that i desired.

Here's the quick render result, not bad huh :) . The technique is pretty simple
yet it can give a cool result and add realism in our environment scene.

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Here's how the technique applied in one of my 3d work

That's all about how to do destruction modelling in 3ds Max for now. I know
some of you might say it's better to use Zbrush. This technique is more like a
traditional technique if you want a quick result without move to another
software, i think it's fast and works great :)
Hope you can find this tutorial useful. Thanks for visiting and keep on
creating!
PS: This tutorial also got featured in 3dtotal.com. Click here to view it

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BONUS TUTORIAL CONTENT

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Realistic Render in Maya with Mental Ray

In this tutorial, i'm going to share about my process in doing a

realistic render of Old Man head sculpting in Maya using Mental
Ray renderer.

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1. This is how my viewport looked like with the main object placed
on a bended polygon plane to simulate a studio setting. In this
phase there's still no light placed in the scene.

2. This is how i placed all the lights. There are 4 area lights in this
scene. Light 1 is the main light and the only light that had ray
trace shadow. The other lights had no shadow turned on.

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3. I applied mib_blackbody from Mental Ray > MentalRay Lights

hypershade panel to Light no.1 & light no.3 color attribute.

4. In the mib_blackbody setting..I give light no.1 temperature

5500, intentity 1 for a warmer light result to simulate the sun light
and light no. 3 temperature 6500, intensity 0.7 for a cooler rim
light result, simulating a natural day time light in the room.

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5. While light no.2 is to emphasize light to the sculpture's head

with a normal light intensity at 1.5 and light no.4 is to simulate the
bounce light from plane below , also with normal light intensity at
0.5.

Both light are applied with light cream color

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6. For the camera, i also applied an attribute from Mental Ray,

which is mia_exposure_photography from Mental Ray> lenses
hypershade panel, and put it inside Lens Shader ( click the small
checker box at the right and apply mia_exposure_photography)

7. This is my setting for the mia_exposure_photography ( right

panel ) and whitepoint setting ( left panel below with red border )
inside the mia_exposure_photography to get result like a real life
photoshoot camera settings.

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8. Next i go to render settings> render using Mental Ray ( in case

the mental ray choice doesn't appear in your render settings,
activate it by checking mayatomr.mll in Windows>
Settings/Preferences>Plug-In Manager )
Then in Indirect Lighting panel, i click create panel from the Image
Based Lighting and choose a HDR image as my souce image.

This is my HDR image looks like

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9. Next, in Lens shaders panel from the camera attribute editor, i

clicked Create and applied physical_lens_dof from Mental Ray >
Lenses inside the hypershade panel.

10. Last step, i measured the distance using distance tool from
Create > Measure tools > Distance tool and type in the distance
that i got to the Plane column inside physical_lens_dof but with
minus added to it and with radius remain 0.1
For example : the distance that i got from the distance tool is
20.978387, that means i can type -20.978 for the plane setting

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This is my final result

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Hope this tutorial is useful in providing information about how to

apply Mental Ray attributes in light and camera to get a realistic
result.
If there's any questions just email me at
memento.animation@gmail.com
Thanks for viewing

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HOW TO PEEL THE WALL

In this section i will share on how i peel the painted wall and exposed the brick
behind it.

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The process is surprisingly quiet easy. I used subdivide modifier in 3dsmax to

peel the painted wall, which i will show you the workflow process below :
First, i created a box and i applied subdivide modifier to it. Inside the box i
already placed another box with brick texture, so when i delete the surface,
we can see the box with brick texture inside. We'll see more about that later.
For this box i set the size at 50 mm ( depends on your unit setup, mine is mm
). The smaller the number, the more it will subdivide the object.

After that, i converted the box to editable polygon and here's how it will look
like with the wireframe turned on :

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I selected the surface that i want to delete with paint selection region tool.

and here's how it looked like when i deleted the surface, we can see the box
textured with brick that i already placed inside.

s
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Here's with "Use NURMS Subdivision" inside Subdivision Surface section

been checked and literations set to 2 for a smoother result.

I applied texture for the outside box surface and extrude all the surface a bit
so i can get a thickness for the hole area to make it more belieavable.

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I think that's quite all the process that i used to make a wall peeled and
revealed what's inside. Hope this short tutorial will be useful for you.
Any questions or feedback you can just mail me at
memento.animation@gmail.com
Here's how the subdivide technique applied in my 3d building model.

Thank you for visiting this tutorial and see you in the next tutorial!

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