ZURD!

This image is a followup to Technical Imperfection and a 3D version of `delyas Already Gone

I'm letting a print quality UNCOMPRESSED PNG version and a wallpaper pack of the image render overnight, I will update with that in the morning!!



I'm reminded of the song by Train called New Sensation when I look at this image. Let me explain...

It's been two years now since I last rendered a Zurd. A lot has happened in those two years. I had become a well off 3D animator and moved to LA, I then had a spontaneous pneumothorax, I was then hit by a drunk driver. I subsequently have suffered from serious depression and after losing my job, I stayed in San Diego at my moms house for almost a year. I am just now starting work again in animation and I was recently made at peace with the drunk driver incident.

It's time to recover. It's time to make things right and get things to how they used to be. I think this image symbolizes this stage of my life better than I could put into words. And I think it could symbolize the way a lot of people could be feeling in the course of this year.


It's time to art again!



Technical Details

Made in Maya 2009, rendered with mental ray. Polygons were used for everything, including the liquid... except for the needles, which were NURBS and reused from Technical Imperfection. Ramp shaders on everything, although I was going to use the new mia_materials but I got lazy.

I used an actual light this time instead of pure final gathering, however there is a big trick to the final gathering in this image. I got a more subtle look to his lighting silhouette by creating a special environment sphere with a ramp on it that was only visible to final gathering. It was rotated in the direction of the area light so that the bright spot was behind the area light, and it created an almost hazy distribution of ambiance. There was also a sphere you could only see in the reflections of the needles, because the finalgather sphere looked weird in reflections.

I had about 20 photoshop layers, mostly to fix render glitches.



On to the pictures!

Some screenshots from the viewport: Low-Res, Viewport shot

The render passes: Solid pass, Reflection pass


ENJOY!!!