Disney's "Frozen" Ice Palace

Hello! This is my latest renders. I’m obsessed with Disney’s “Frozen” and I wanted to start this project long time before, but I hadn’t enough time. Now finally I can present my most complex blender scene ever. Currently I’m going to add 2 more images (one of them is almost rendered). I’m really proud of myself because every single model and material was made by me :smiley: Please give me some advices and of course share your opinion :wink:

This one was made with Cycles 2500 samples, about 6-7 hours. (Noise was terrible so I set clamp value to 1.4)


This render was made with 3000 samples, about 7-8 hours.


New one:


Nice work. Disney I think did it better (obviously)
try to play more with the lighting and the compositor giving more shine and glow to those crystals. I want to ear “let it go” in my head when I see it.
Love the movie! one of the best cgi movies I think.

I know, Disney is much better than me in CGI, but I discovered blender about year ago, so I think it’s good skill level :smiley:

I think the 3d-model and the materials are very good, but there could be more contrast in the picture. For example a brightly glowing crystal would make it more interesting… (at least in my opinion) :slight_smile:

I wanted it to be the most similar to Disney’s one, and I have no idea how to make those crystals more glowing than in the red version :frowning: I also wanted bottom of columns to be more glowing than top, but when I use volume scatter only bottom is bright and when I use volume emission entire structure emits light :confused:

I finally rendered the most amazing image of this project inspired by moment when chandelier falls on Elsa:


I have to post this image here because post can only contain 3 images.


I like the yellow picture. looks very nice. if you dont know, how to add stronger glowing: add (a) glare node(s) in the compositer. But maybe you already use this… :slight_smile:

Yes, I used glare nodes :wink: I’m more curious how to make those columns brighter on the bottom and darker at top… :slight_smile:

Ok, im not sure, but i tink this way would be possible: use material nodes -> mix diffuse and emission shader with a mix node -> use a colour gradiation as factor (mix node)
i hope, this will help you. :wink:

It’s more complicated because columns material is glass and emission from volume, so I can’t mix it with diffuse (volume works with only emission, volume absorption and volume scatter). I’m also not sure if blender will know that I mean mix shaders along Z axis :confused:

oh, i have a new idea^^, but im also not sure with it… Maybe you could use the z-value from the position input (geometry) as factor…
but its only a idea, and actually i havnt the time to try it…