Street in Lyon

Hey everyone, I wanted to share my latest finished project with you.

It was quite specific, client based job where I was asked to create an existing building in it’s present, time worn look. It was a bit challenging due to tight deadlines and I couldn’t hand paint all the textures. This is where the new Pointiness node for Cycles turned out to be very helpful. It allowed me to quickly blend few different textures / shaders, basing on the geometry topology and create nice looking dirt/worn effects.

Detailed views:

This was also my first scene where I tried illuminating everything only with HDR map. For better realism I’ve also included volumetric effect for better light distribution. Since illuminating with properly created HDR maps is easy to change, I created 3 mood versions of the scene - morning sunset, noon clear sky and gloomy evening. I kind of like all of them and so I’ve decided to share all three with you :slight_smile:

Panoramic views:

In general, all renderings took from 30 to 40 minutes in 1600x1100 on my double GTX 970 setup, including the volumetric effect. Morning susnet picture needed 1h 20 minutes for a clean look at 1000 samples.

Asphalt shader setup, I think the most complex (yet not complicated imo) material in the scene:

I also thought it would be interesting to put the scene online so you can find it at the chocofur store under this link. HDR maps I’ve used for this scene are also available here. Actually there’s whole different story about the HDR maps themselves as I’ve decided to write a quick tutorial on how you can use them in Blender correctly.

You can find my quick guide on that under the link below:

And finally, you can download one of the HDR images in (I think) very good quality from here :slight_smile:

I think that’s the longest and most complex post I ever wrote at Blender Artists so far. Anyway, I really hope you like the stuff, feel free to comment and if you have any questions / feedback you’re more than welcome :slight_smile:

All the very best!
Lechu


1 Like

Nice one! Trees look very lifelike, did you model them? What is your approach?

Very nice.
I really like the sunny one… good job and thank you for the tutorial!

Lech Hello, again a great job, congratulations.
Could you comment further on the settings for the render?

Great pictures - especially the first one

Great work! 5* from me! Very good

Hey everyone, thanks for your comments and feedback.

@dns_di: trees are partially handmodeled and and created with hair particles distributing the branches based on weight paint for size, particle amount etc. I plan releasing these too in near future.

@Rodrigo366: I almost always use the same settings for rendering: 500-1000 samples, increased diffuse bounces to 5-6, Clamping set to 9. Do you have anything specific in mind?

Great work! I like your chocofur models a lot :slight_smile:
5* from me :wink:
paulina.

Thx Paulina, appreciate it :slight_smile:

The pavement and sidewalk blending is way too sharp, other than that, great work!

Great idea, great models, great lighting, everything looks very good and photorealistic. Could you start doing some tutorials on yt? That would be great!

The lighting, the atmosphere, all great!

really really great work!

Superb scene!
I really love that leaf material. Is there any chance showing the node setup of the shader?

Speechless. It’s very very nice. I love it

Wonderful work!!

Thx everyone for commenting!

@Klamauk: leaves material is relatively simple, separate diffuse shaders for each side of the leaf, later added to the translucency node and eventually mixed with glossy for reflections. I think what’s most important is to add, not mix the diffuse with translucency and control the effect with translucency color.

Complete node setup for leaves:

Do you speak french? In that case: " très joli travail!"

Superb scenes, 5*.

wow, I thought it is photo.very realistic