1919 Bedside Cupboard

So here's the final image! Hope you guys like it :)

It's been an amazing experience as my first contest and portfolio piece ever. I put so much effort and learnt a lot during the creation process. I tried to stick to my guidelines as close as possible.

The rendering phase made me face some difficulties that I was eventually able to solve.

Since my PC couldn't stand a heavy render including a high amount of DOF and Glass Props, I chose to render out the AOV to avoid rendering the aperture. I composited the ZDepth AOV in After Effects and achieved a good looking result. I also avoided rendering too much SSS (Candle) and composited it in Photoshop as well as the candle flame and some dust particles.

Hope you all had a great Christmas, and wish you all a great end of the year.

Here's a breakdown of the last phase

And a breakdown of the Props related to Peaky Blinders I found meaningful

Last but not least, here you have the Zdepth AOV

This project was so much fun, I hope you guys like it.

PS: Hope the 5MB upload restriction doesn't ruin the quality too much ;)

So the set dressing is done! 

Hope you guys like it :)

I'll be rendering the final shot soon

Today I did my first try ever at making some bed sheets and a pillow in Marvelous Designer.  I kinda struggled getting it to work in the way I wanted ( Looking forward to understanding how to make a clean topology out of it).

This is going to be the last prop and hopefully it's going to work.

Long time no see guys! It's been a very busy week and just today I finished off this nice and easy Hamilton Pocket Watch.

The last prop I'm going to add is going to be the bed and then I'll move onto the rendering phase.

Hope you like it so far!

This morning I modelled a simple pocket knife for the scene.

This is really simple geometry and hopefully is going to be enough for the shot.

Here's a very low quality render just to test out the knife. Its positioning and rotation do not convince me yet.

Also the size could be a little bit off. I'll probably work on it in the next days.

I tried some color grading and added the candle flame and some dust particles in Photoshop. 

Here's my last render to test out the new props and some colour grading schemes.

Today I created these 2 books that are going to be added to the final comp.

Even though it is not going to be noticeable, I always like to give reason to the way I make props. Instead of making two simple "place-holder" books I wanted them to have a story that connected to Peaky Blinders.

I strongly believe that giving every element the right amount of detail is going to strenghten the final scene, even if you don't see it.

The Torah (Hebrew Bible) links to Alfie Solomon (Tom Hardy) and Marx's Das Kapital is related to Ada Shelby (Sophie Rundle), whose husband Freddie Thorne (Iddo Goldberg) was a well known communist.

I used the Rookies logo as "publishing house" of these 2 books. I do really hope to not offend anyone by putting it on a Torah. This has by no means any significance. I just wanted to celebrate my first partecipation to a Rookie's contest and my first stand alone project.

I was able to gather these 2 images from google and make some very simple alphas in photoshop (2048x2048) that helped me bringing the cover decorations to life.

Here's a light building process view. I wanted the pistol to pop more, that's why I cranked up some light values a created and more contrasty look.

Today I spent some time testing out the lights.  The scene pictures a room with closed blinds even though some sun rays filtered inside.

 I always like to give context to what I do. 

While doing this I imagined a man who knew  he was being followed and then locked himself up inside a small apartment. He knows the only way to get out of that situation is to use his pistol. 

He grabs 8 bullets to load it, drinks a glass of gin, sneaks next to the window and peeks through the blinds while leaving his gun unloaded. A mistake that could be paid at the cost of his own life.

The last image sums up my general idea for the lighting. 

Missing Props: Bottle of Gin, The Bible, Das Kapital, Silver Ashtray, Pocket Watch, Candle, Extra prop (Yet to be defined... so mysterious), Bed, Wallpaper.

I started building up some volumetric lights to make some sun rays breach through the blinds.

I'm slowly getting closer to a final lighting comp.

So today I modelled an oil lamp. I kept the geometry and the texturing super simple due to the prop's role in the final composition. Positioning the lamp close to the camera allowed the eyes to channel through the image and concentrate onto the gun.

I feel like this might be the shot angle I was looking for. Even though it would mean to sacrifice the key and the drawers, I reckon it's going to help making the composition a lot stronger.

This weekend I have no extra time to spend on the project. I therefore just threw a simple Arnold Render Out with some placeholders and some simple alpha blending. 

The missing props are a couple of Books (The Holy Bible and Marx's Das Kapital which are going to make a direct quote to the series storyline), an oil lamp, a gin bottle with a glass, a candle, a pocket watch, a bed, a painting (probably Turner fits fine).

I do still have a lot of doutbs about the final shot angle. I might change it on the go. I'm sure I'll make up my mind as soon as I'm finished with the props.

I started placing some of the props to give myself an idea of the final comp. This render is just a set dressing test, I just put an HDRI and positioned a default camera. 

These last days I've been quite busy. I did some baby steps into completing the following props.

I modelled a small Bryant and Mays Matches Box. These type of matches where often used to light up cigarettes and oil lamps during the early 1900s. This is going to take a really small part of the scene therefore I didn't spend too much time in modelling and texturing it. Hope you like it anyway :)

After the box of matches I had a few moments to dedicate to the modelling and uving of a Chest of Drawers I'm going to put into the scene.

 I'll probably texture it soon.

Tonight I worked on the Sweet Afton cigarettes pack. It was so fun to texture and made me explore different workflows I could use to approach things I had never done before. I do really hope you like it! I added some stains and worked on the roughness to give the texture more realism.

The high poly is no big deal but I wanted to post it anyway inside this process view.

Nothing too fancy for this morning. I started blocking out easy shapes based on my reference to build a nice looking pack of Sweet Afton Cigarettes. I started with building and UVing the Low Poly and then moved to ZBrush to work on some details.

I reckon I'll finish the High Poly Sculpt between tonight and tomorrow morning.

I decided to use ZBrush to add some organic details on the cigarettes butts. I'll later on use the final sculpt that will include the pack too, to bake those informations inside Substance Painter.

Today I worked a little bit on fixing the geometry. After a first approach to my first gun model I started thinking about UVs and instantly noticed that my initial edge flow wasn't going to help me out at all.

By dividing the model in smaller pieces and focusing on making a decent topology I was able to work out some useful UVs.

Wrapping the day up with some early stages texturing tests. These were done just to give myself a good direction regarding the overall look of the scene and to test out the game-asset geometry with some PBR texturing. 

IRay Render in Substance Painter.

I'm building a small scene inspired by the series. It is going to include a variety of game props I'm gathering references of. The first and main prop is going to be the iconic Luger Pistol (I'll add some bullets references too). 

In the second panel I simply summed up the phase where I identify different components of the main object to make it easier to understand and reproduce. This is my first Rookie experience so I do really like my workflow and methods.

I still have to plan which one of these I'm going to make. Hopefully I'll have enough time to model them all.

Looking back at oil paintings (Caravaggio's for example) it is clear to see that having one light source can add powerful dynamism to the overall image. I want to tell a story through objects in the same way a still life painting does.