Building A City In A Day

It is written that God created the world in 7 days (Okay, technically 6 days, cause he took the day-off on the 7th). And then, one fine day I get the challenge of building a city in about the same time. Good thing is just going to be complete CGI! But alas, the forces of the "time gods" were against me. It's instances like these that make me wish I had Hiro Nakamura's powers of time-space manipulation.

The challenge here was to fill in the gaps in the Architect's design. I had to basically create something "complete" based on a Master Plan, which wasn't even detailed enough. There was this freedom to make use of my Architectural knowledge, and incorporate it together in the 3D. In short, I too became some sort of the designer.

Now here's where the tricky part comes in. As the "designer," I had to come up with something that the Architects would like, or at least match their style. It would have been easier had there been a rough sketch from them. But since there wasn't any, I just had to create something, based on what I had at the moment (current books, and some rough info from the Architects). Another difficult aspect was coming up with closer views, rather than just Aerial views, which also mean higher level of details.

Do note that, I've been sort of out of touch with my Architectural designing. It was rather a fun exercise as well. It ain't finished yet. And the images herein are just drafts, and not necessarily what the Architects have in mind. So it could be totally scrapped as well in the end. Here's some of the closer views.

Forget the buildings...actually for this view, I sorta became
more engrossed with the sculpture (my own design).

A post-processed effect...based on Dennis Allain's style.

La Viva...Vivo City!

It's more than mid-way thru the Fashion Festival here in Singapore.

And it's almost half a year since I worked on something relating to this -- Vivo City (the background for the Vivo City ad posters).

For that mentioned project, we had to work closely with the ad agency who already had conceptualized the look. It was also a different kind of visualization. We were given the freedom to create an impression of the Vivo City mall -- and not to really follow the architectural detail to the dot. And the final image would be "muted" in a monochromatic tone as to help focus the view to the model in the foreground later.

This project also brought me back closer to my "Architectural" roots. I basically was given a rough sketch and plan. Then from there, I would design and "build" it in 3D. There are about 7 posters or so that we got to work on. But, I figured I'd just show this one.

From concept to execution. It starts from the drawing by the Ad agency.

I couldn't find the actual poster for this particular shot. But if you happen to be in Vivo City, it won't be hard to miss.

Here's just the background which I worked on. Quite few more details were actually changed and added for the actual poster, besides the monochromatic adjustment.

Tech Note:
Modeled and rendered in 3Ds Max 8.0 with Vray.

Brief scene description:
One Direct light from above, thru the skylight.
A few number of customized maps (photos of shopfronts) were used as textures instead of building it in 3D.
It was also more of an "artistic" call when it came to how sharp or visible the reflections were.
Of course, the final ad print would have also been handled by another DI Artist -- as for colour and image enhancement.

Moving without walking...

...it's either you gotta be running, in a car, or flying. In this case flying. As in a "fly-thru" (or walk-thru) animation.

Initial brief of the project: The client wanted to see shots of various areas of the development. And it was suggested that we based it on the still (hi-res) images that we had given much earlier.

I came in later as to help amend part of the 3D model, light-up and do texturing...all these so that we could come up with these hi-res images. As soon as it was confirmed that an animation had to be done, it was my job to "finish" this animation within a month -- composed roughly of 10+ shots, 2 minutes length, and lotsa-lotsa render times -- almost all by myself. (Aaaaargh! Had they given me this responsibility a few years back, I would have probably fainted straight away.) Good thing, experience taught me to look-up for possible hiccups and problems that must be taken care of even before starting to work on the model, and Previz animation. Advice with the "master chief" as well was taken in consideration.

To start of with, I had to optimize the 3D scene as to come up with shorter render times. This included cutting-down on unnecessary 3d models, making use of vray proxies, and minimizing high reflection / glossiness settings. The tricky part to this was not to over-compromise on the 3d model as to gravely affect the look of the images.

I also had to set-up simple the camera paths for the shots. What I had in mind was nothing fanciful and yet it wouldn't just involve simple wipes and cross-fades from one shot to the other. I wanted it to look like there was a natural flow from one space to the other,rather than a montage of some sort.

By the time I gotten some feedback and notes on what to amend, it was rather easy (but still tedious!) for me to work on the model due to the preparation I had done earlier. And it was good that some of the elements could be rendered in a separate pass and/or added in AfterEffects later. The images are screenshots of the final animation.

Addt'l Tech note: Most of the elements are 3D created in 3dsMax. To easily render, plants were converted as well into vray proxies. The "custom" background was prepared in Photoshop and mapped onto a sphere -- rendered separately. Some foreground elements were either a separate render or simply "blurred-out" 2D images composed in AE.

Compositing: Adobe After Effects (AE)
Editing: Adobe Premier
Rendered with Vray @ 3DsMax