New Urban District in Shanghai

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Look development, modeling, texturing, lighting, shading, rendering, post.
2009
Project: -Scape
Team: David Vona

Original publication, larger images at omology.com

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As I learned at the time, Shanghai was once dubbed the "Chinese Venice", since it's built upon the delta of a big river. Many watercourses run in the city, and still today you can see some very pictoresque canals here and there, Venice-style. Since the project area was rural farmland, we wanted to enhance this feature and give nature and water the importance they deserved. Secondly, we chose to give the images some resemblance to the traditional chinese drawings, made with water and ink. Mix the two things, and you have this.

Most of the work was dedicated to the depiction of the land. Many trials were made, and we ended up with a bright, fancy-colored texture mapped upon the terrain; the roads were black, as if they were drawn with ink; a normal map aided to enchance the roads themselves, and the bumps of each lot.

Tons of work were also made in Photoshop, of course, to tone down the colors, give depth, mix the ground with the sky, and add a strong texture representing vegetation.

work in progress: