Introduction -

The Arcadia project was a personal challenge. I tried to use all the techniques that I have learned over the last few months
by my self. By the way I'm interested in the history of art and I always try to learn as much as I can from the great masters
of last centuries (Caravaggio, Possin, Casper David Friedrich and so on) Maybe from there comes the slight 2d/painting
touch of the final image? It's crazy that they were able to crate such amazing artwork without any dual processor, 3GB RAM
workstation and two 21 inch displays :) My first inspiration was like a brainwave. I saw a picture of some old columns and
five minutes later I had my first poor sketches on a piece of paper; as you know, it's important that you draw all the good
ideas that come into your mind, no matter how good you can draw! After intensive sketching I came up with a desert
columned hall, a crashed airplane and a divine light in the background. In my mind I sub-divided the whole scene into a
foreground that shows a wreck (here I put the airplane and the jet); the space in the middle of the picture represent a
hopeful presence (this is were you can see the two travellers); and finally a uncertain future the shining background. But
enough now with this scary explanations and the art stuff :) Let's have a look at the technical part.

Modeling and Composition -

In this tutorial I will not go into step by step details and I assume that you are familiar with the basics of 3ds Max, Vray and
Photoshop. All right, let's get started with one of the trickiest part in the whole process. Not everything that works on paper,
works in 3d space, too. So in the beginning I assembled my scene with simple boxes, took the camera in the right position
and played around with the size of main objects and the distance between them. The challenge here was to bring the
objects together without using a tele objective and losing therefore the 3d effect. When I was satisfied with the result I
split up the scene into four areas: the jet in the foreground, the airplane, the first four columns and the background. Then I
saved them in different files. I will render the layers separately and but them together in Photoshop afterward. This saves
memory, render time and allows me to set up different light settings for each area without affecting other parts in the scene.
With a lot of research material on my desk, I created the basic shapes of the airplane wreckage and worked out the
important details. All parts of this image were modeled as editable poly objects with some modificators on top and never
ending playing with ploy tools like extrude, bevel cut and so on. Nothing special, all this functions are well described in 3ds
Max user references. Finally I ended up with a almost "lowpoly" scene; only 300.000 faces (mesh smooth included)
 Lighting
Basically I work on lighting before I start to place my textures in the scene. This method gives me more control over the
objects behavior and shows me where later textures need more attention and which parts can be found in dark areas.
For the basic light setup I put together the most important objects in one file (as you can remember I'd split up the scene
into four 3ds Max files to accelerate the modeling process). A huge sphere with inverted polygons enclose the whole
landscape. I removed some faces on top of it, so the inside is not totally dark when turning on VRay environment light
res. VRay skylight. I ended up with an illuminated corridor between an almost pitch black column hall. Two big backlights,
or so called rim or hair lights worked as key lights. A hand full fill-lights soften the shadows cast by the key lights and add
some additional illumination. One last important installation were the "Deflector Lights". As you can see on the side view
image, I put them in front of the hall over the jet. In this case a deflector light is nothing else than a simple 3d object, a
box or a plane with a self illuminated material, to obtain bounced light. If you need a blue tone in your scene, use a blue
material or bitmap, if you need red, use a reddish one. I'm sure there exist better methods than that, but with VRay
Global Illumination and some fine tuning it works very well. Finally I imported this basic light setup into all four files and
started adding additional spots and deflectors. If your computer is too slow to work on complex geometry it's far better to
split the scene up than muddle along on one huge piece :)
 Textures -
Once I was satisfied with scene illumination it was time to start working on textures - the easiest but most time consuming
part if you ask me. I will not go into details here because you can find many good tutorials that explain this process step by
step. The textures for Arcadia were based on high resolution images of my own. I added dirt, scratches and small surfaces
details in Photoshop. When I was finished with one, I saved the diffusmap as bump map - same image but inverted,
desaturated and with higher contrast. In 3ds Max I put my maps together. I used predominantly Max standard materials,
sometimes VRay materials when I tried to achieve subtle reflections. The sand material is a procedural map mix (noise,
gradient, falloff and more noise). That's it, nothing special :) In the end every part of the scene was rendered with VRay
1.09 and saved in a format where I could bind in the alpha channel (TIFF, TGA and so on) I used standard VRay render
settings, no VRay lights, no HDRI, only the quick and high quality Global Illumination.

Postproduction
I say always that a pure render out of any 3d software is like a un-cut diamond :) With some retouches in your favorite
painting or compositing program you can enhance the quality of your work enormously. If you know what you can achieve
in postproduction, you can decide early on what you have to do during the 3d process. I opened my four renders in
Photoshop and, with help of the alpha channels, I put them together in a new file. The several layers gave me the
opportunity to work separately on the jet, the airplane and the columned hall. As you can see above, without any
improvements the whole scene looks terrible; low contrast, watery colors... In fact it's not even clear from which direction
the light is coming.
 Postproduction - continued ...
To make the ground more sandy I drew a selection by hand (you can do this with Photoshop selection tools or with the
path tool - shortcut key "P") I copied the selection to a new layer, kept the original sand untouched and added some noise.
You can adjust the effect intensity by holding down "Command - Shift - F"- If you use this key combination immediately
after applying a Photoshop effect, a small window appears where you can change the effect opacity and the layer blending
mode.

Postproduction - continued
In a new layer I created a selection on the things I wanted to illuminate. Then I filled the selection with a simple radial
gradient (from yellow/gold 100% to yellow transparent). Before I was satisfied with the look I transformed the whole layer a
little bit (edit / transform / distort). This gives illusion of a bright light that shines directly from the distant background into the
column hall. To make the gradient itself less visible I changed the layer blending mode from normal to overlay and set the
opacity about 40%. I repeated this process several times with different gradient colors and layer blending modes until I was
satisfied with the result.
 Postproduction - continued
The last thing that I will mention in this tutorial is the brightness correction. As you certainly know you don't have to
permanently apply a level or any adjustments to an image. I always prefer the adjustment layers. They work as normal
layers; you can apply, copy, edit and remove them and you can use the layer mask! I opened up a new - Adjust Levels -
layer and put it on the top of my stack. In the beginning you don't have to adjust here anything, we will come back to the
settings later. First I tweaked the layer mask to limit the effect. I have done this by clicking on the layer mask to activate it
(don't forget to press the ALT button at the same time) Now we need the gradient tool again (first color white, second
black). I drew a gradient from top to bottom. Now the - Adjust Levels - layer affect only the white area whereas the black
stay untouched. Then I opened up the - Levels - settings again and played around with the black bar and buttons until the
bottom of the image was darker then the rest. I used this technique a few more times to create the desired mood. In the
end I fitted all layers together and added a slight sharpness effect to the image. That's it

I want to thank The123d.com for giving me the possibility to show my stuff. I hope that something was useful for you :)