Cherry tree Cave

Underground

"Cherry tree Cave" is a creative result of a weekly challenge posted by the amazing community over at "Create with Clint" Discord server.

Over the course of a week we were tasked to create a submission that would fit the theme "Underground".

What you see here is my interpretation of the underground theme.

Looking for inspiration, I got really inspired by the work of Olga Antonenko and her original mat painting (see here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vGq6E).

Light busting trough the hole into the dark abyss, light shimmering and dispersing throughout the entire cave, revealing amazing shapes and structures from the inside - realizing that seemingly dark spaces can glow brilliantly and produce amazing images.

This relationship of light and shadow really made me want to recreate the scene from a 2D painting into a 3D space.

Honestly, I just wanted to see if I can model something like this in 3ds Max.

Never having done a cave before, this really put my skills to the test.

Sketch & Setup Phase

The start was simple - create a hollow room with a hole on top and work from there.

Set the sun up above so the light shines trough the hole. A few more lights inside the cave set very dimly so it's not too dark nor too bright.

Setup the scene and camera angles; how deep to make the cave look, how low or high to make the cave hole, how far is the tree in the center going to be.

Modeling Phase

Modeling a cave was purely experimental. Sculpting tools and Displace modifier maps were the keys to creating basic shape of the surfaces. Layering more and more of them on top of each other, balancing until I got the desired feel of the "cave"-ness.

As the cherry tree is the main focal point in the scene, I placed a lot more branches on it so it's more visible from afar and feels nice and blooming.

Texturing

Making the entire cave just purely out of rock or earth from top to bottom seemed a bit boring to me. I wanted a bit of mystery, where if anyone would walk above ground wouldn't know that there's a cave system hiding beneath their feet.

So I made a very conscious decision to have a clear cut line where the earthly surface ends and the underground rocky cave begins.

The earthly part had to feel softer from the pointy rock formations below, creating a contrast in terms of natural materials and yet a balance in it's composition.

Rendering

I've rendered 3 differently exposed images, which I used in Photoshop to balance the highlighted areas, shadowy areas and a medium as a base.

Post-processing

Photoshop really made the scene pop with life!

Added sun rays coming trough the hole really brought the point home that above is the actual surface and below is truly underground.

The light bouncing from the surface of the water onto the rocky formations was made by adding blue gradient on top and blending it trough.

Water layer was masked to create small ripples where it touches the cave.

The cherry tree was brushed all over so the highlighted areas are on top and shadowy areas more inside the tree to portray more depth.

Conclusion

Displace modifier made all the difference in the world in the cave creation. You can sculpt all day long, but creating maps with Displace modifier is so much easier and makes the process a lot faster. Definitely a very powerful tool in 3ds Max.

Textures can be used inside out! If the front side of a texture with added displacement doesn't seem to cut it, try to flip it's Normal and use the back side. This helped tremendously with achieving a sharp look to the rocky formations. It was done completely by accident and it made a world of difference.

Going "fantasy" is not a bad thing! Even though I always try to achieve a realistic look as much as possible, I knew if wanted to really get the feel of Olga's artstyle, I needed more colour and more details to complete the look. and make people go "Wow!".