Here's a 3d piece entitled "Night Train". This train is at its last stop on its way out of the city. A mother and daughter are rushing to get on board. One porter is assisting them while another is making a final check before giving the all clear.
I'm working out my 3d style as it compares and relates to my background and style in 2d. There are many aspects to working in 3d that allow for a wider expression, in particular the use of artistic and compositional lighting and the "built-in" shading from those lights. The goal I always aim for is for the final image to have an illustrative feel. The toy-like simplicity of the structures and objects and the low level of detail helps to keep the realism at bay. The ability to fully control tone, colour, shadows, viewpoint, distances between objects, materials and of course lighting can be challenging but also very exciting and it's opening up new possibilities for subject matter.
Here you can see the scene without colour, materials or lighting. The floating black line square shapes in the sky area are polygons that have light emissive properties that I have placed where I wanted either some light or colour or both to catch the eye or define an area. The shapes don't show up in the render just the light they emit. The little round circles with solid black dots are point lights. There is a bright one to light up the lantern the railway man is carrying which also reflects off of the metal material of the train and draws the eye. I've placed a soft warm point light subtly lighting up the large trunk or chest on the opposite platform. I also placed a bright point light just inside the station door to create the sense of a warm interior. The circles in the sky are metaball clouds as is the steam coming from the top of the train stack area. The steam has a slightly different, more transparent material applied to it than the clouds.
It all sounds very technical and in a way it is, but it's also a ton of fun creating these little scenes where you're actually building each piece, moving them around and creating almost a theatrical set of sorts. For me the rewards and possibilities are definitely worth the time invested.
These two images show a sort of behind the scenes look at how the scene is really setup. Built entirely on top of a virtual seamless backdrop, only the elements that will be seen in the final render view are finished. You'll notice some of the buildings are floating...and there is no structure supporting that water tower! ;-) You can also see I've placed some lights between the buildings to mimic street lighting glowing up onto the buildings in the render.
It's very different than building an illustration in 2d but a whole other different kind of fun.
Here is a close up view showing the very basic skeletal armature I give these low poly people that enables me to pose them in any position I need. As my work always ends up as a 2d rendered illustration image and I don't animate anything, I don't really need an armature more complex than this. It is more than adequate.
Here are a couple isolated views of the train. It's basically my design take on what a plastic toy version of the famous 20th Century Ltd might look like.
