SUN KISSED - By Christi Chansri

SUN KISSED

Coming across the concept by SONG SONG (www.artstation.com/songchunrui). I felt inspired to create a cozy, homey environmental scene. A house in the middle of the woods, and the magical atmosphere during sunset. Combining multiple concepts and references, I sketched my final concept.

Modeling and Sculpting

Once I got my final concept, I started blocking out everything in Maya. Then the detail modeling of the house, the main big trees, and the other environmental assets. After that, I took everything to Z brush to give the assets further details. 

Saving resources, for the trees that were at the back of the scene I used planes instead of geometry. I used the same techniques for the bushes, flowers and grass and lastly the vines were created with Maya Ivy generator. 

Texturing

I used Substance 3D painter for this project to texture my scene. I was quite intimidated by keeping everything stylized and in the same mood, but at the end I am really happy of how it turned out. 

Lighting

The lighting goal for this scene was to give it a sunset vibe, warm atmosphere and cozy feeling. With a touch of magic, that something interesting is happening in the house. 

Compositing

After noticing that my background is quite empty, I added some more trees at the back to fill in the space. Painting has always been fun for me, so I painted all the layers of matte paintings. I also wanted to create the stylized painted look. It was quite a challenge to match the styles with the 3D scene.

Next I added some smoke coming throughout the chimney then added particles that float through the air bringing the scene alive. Creating volume and depth with dept of field and smoke to push the atmosphere.

It comes down to finalizing the scene. For this project, I used volume rays in nuke to create the god rays. Color corrected and gave it a look-up table. Then gave the scene some lens distortion and aberration. To make give the whole scene the same overall look, I also added some noise at the final end of my composition. 

It has been a really challenging and fun journey throughout this project, I also hope that you enjoyed the process. 

Thank you for checking out my work.