OK. Here we go. I am officially throwing my hat into the ring. I have thought about this for weeks now. I have procrastinated long enough. I have a lot of trouble finishing projects so, hopefully, this WIP will drive me to finishing something.

Honestly, I need a good solid idea. I have few ideas, but I don’t want to get too attached to them at this point. Here is what I am thinking…

The scene is a sun swept, lush, alien landscape. In the foreground is a variety of alien plants and a few other framing objects. In the mid-ground is a lone soldier (some sort of cyborg) in a sad pose looking across the plain at a city. The city in the distance rises above the forested hills and is in obvious ruin. It is smoldering, crumbling; it is lost. The pale, yellow, cloudless sky holds a pair of crescent moons. The focus is on the soldier and the emotion of seeing his beloved city in ruin – a lost world.

So, what do you think? Is this enough of a start?

I’ll try to get some of my ideas on paper, scan than and post them.

Phil

sounds great! welcome to the fray ;-)

Here is a concept sketch of the city and the valley it sits in (over). No cyborg. No destruction. I'll get to those later (or should I).

I think the next step is to get a more solid proxy going. Paul's flythrough made me realize that I need to model the surrounding area before I get too far.

Click to view attachment

My drawing skills are horrific. However, the excercise was helpful. I learned a few things about what I am looking to do and some ideas that are just not going to be in the final product. The city needs to be much farther away. There needs to be much more sky above the subject matter. I have a lot (LOT) of plants to make. Yikes!

Welcome ..a sketch is more planning then I had starting

Good start.

Don't feel that you have to model all the surrounding terrain. For a still image you only need the foreground, middle ground and background. You could do this as seperate geometry, composited layers or all in one but, unless you really want to find the scale of the area or do a fly-through, it is better to restrict the models to little more than the camera will see or you may find that you have to wait an enormous time to render details that will never be seen. My Atlantis proxy is a special case because I wanted to see this space layed out to the dimensions described in Plato's Critias dialogue. Because there are given dimensions to start with I wanted to make sure that I had a visual reference to work with.

Good luck with your Lost World image.

Paul,

Thanks for the advice. I am having trouble picturing the valley between the foreground and the distant city. I imagine it as a carpet of orchards. I think that a quick proxy of the terrain would help me get a feel for the scale and dimensions and slope. Next, I would frame the shot and abandon the proxy. Hopefully this would limit the number of plants needed. I don’t think I need a flythrough. You’re right about wasting time (both rendering and modeling) on unnecessary steps. I will try hard to limit the detail (and time spent) of the proxy terrain.

Thanks for the help,
Phil

Hey Phil, cool sketch!

I think that you should leave the android in for sure! I could see him in the right side of the image, this might help balance composition too.

Great work so far and good luck!

Lee

Oh man, I missed this thread. My idea is kind of similar to this. Sorry about that. I guess its ok to have two alien landscape. Will be interesting to see how we both approach it.

I tossed together a quick proxy and decaled the landscape. I am still playing around with the scale of the city. In the render below it is one-half miles in diameter.

Click to view attachment

I don't want to be looking up at the city quite so much. I think I will make the city larger and push it back farther. The city is one-half mile in diameter and is about four milles away from the camera. The POV is a little too low for my taste.

I have a lighting question for you all. The landscape is supposed to be "sun swept". I am looking for a bright sunny day for the background. How should I approach this? AO or one of Yves' light rigs? Or should I just cast lights on the underside of the city to brighten it?

Thanks,
Phil

With some adjustments, here is what I have so far:

Click to view attachment

I like the POV much better. The city is about another mile farther away and the camera is much higher. I added some fog and changed the sky color. The city is about a mile in diameter. I put the plant in because I needed a foreground size reference. The plant's shadow is very long. I need to put the sun quite a bit higher in the sky.

Here is my latest update. I am still playing around with proxy models. The orange pillars are where the plants will be going. They are lined up as an orchard. The white stripe is for decal reference.

I moved the city closer again. I really didn't like it back so far. I stuck the Sears Tower (Chicago) on the city. Don't worry, it is just for scale. The buildings will not be that big nor that tall.

Click to view attachment

I think the next step is to start working on the foreground details.

Phil

Looking good so far pwknox!!

Keep up the good work!

George

It is good to see you making steady progress. Looking good!

This is looking really good Phil,I like the composistion.

Jay

Thanks for the encouragement, guys. I appreciate it.

After a very busy June here is my latest update. I added 268 plants and redid the foreground. I used Excel to add most of the plants by hacking the project file. Each plant has two constraints on it so doing this in AM would have been tedious.

Now that it has rendered I'm not sure that I like it. Something is off with it...

Click to view attachment

Try Steffen's MMoP plugin so that your plants don't don't look so uniform and regular.

Another update. Added more detail. Turned on shadows and brightened things a bit.

Click to view attachment


Very cool plugin. However, the idea is that this is an alien orchard. The plants are supposed to be uniformly placed. They do look a little goofy being EXACTLY the same though. I have some pose sliders that will produce some variation in height, rotation and will splay them out. I am thinking of adding sliders for color shifts and for changing the diameter of the tubes.

This is coming along nicely but I would like to suggest that you add some element that will help to define the scale. At the moment this could be a shot of alien onions standing about a foot tall or perhaps several hundred feet tall. If you include some object, that the viewer knows the approximate size of, it would make a big difference.

HA HA HA! Good point. I need to put the cyborg in there. At the moment he has no head.

Well, I think I need to concede. I just didn’t spend the time on it that it required. I didn’t get all of the modeling done. Lighting and fog didn’t get started. I struggled with texturing more than I exceeded.

I love the idea of the challenge. Colin, thanks for putting it together. I learned a lot from working on something out of my "comfort zone".

The bunch of you who finished did a great job. I love the sense of large scale that I have seen. I now realize how much effort it takes to complete a project like this.

Here is my latest render. I was working on the city. The cyborg didn’t make it in this render.

Click to view attachment

This scene is looking really cool! I love the alien look to the landscape. I really hope you don't abandon it now that the contest is over. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would like to see the finished product .

- Michael

yeah i wanna see more with this aswell...

Hi Phil,
it would be a shame to stop when you've come this far. It's a nice base that needs a few spare hours