Behind the Scenes: Rusted from the Rain

Hi. My name is Vladimír Stáňa and I am currently living in Prague, Czech Republic.

I started with Blender a couple of years ago with no other experience in 3D modeling and the beginnings were quite hard :). Since then I have learned the basics of modeling, texturing, and rendering as well as using other softwares like Photoshop, ZBrush, and Substance Painter. Finally, I started to work with game engines (Unity/Unreal) and a few years ago I got my first job as a 3D artist.

Inspiration

This small project was strongly influenced by the game Nier and images from Matt Dixon. Nier is a Japanese videogame that is set in a world where alien-created machines fight against human-crafted androids. Matt Dixon is a British illustrator and conceptual artist who focuses his works on a “robot theme”. I recommend you to visit his ArtStation profile, which is filled with beautiful and storytelling paintings.

Inspiration from Matt Dixon.

Tools

For this project, Ii used blender 2.79 and 2.82. I used both versions because modelling for me is still a little bit faster in older versions of the program. Version 2.82 I used for rendering and compositing.

The final render was made in Cycles in Blender 2.82 and post-processed in Affinity Photo. For the texturing process, I used Substance Painter.

Process

Originally I had planned to do a much simpler image with a focus on the cogwheels, hidden partially in spiderwebs.

But the image was missing something, so I decided to add some story to it and built a lonely sad guy :).

In the first version, I planned to add some magic to the image with a simple particle effect.

In the next versions, I added raindrops and changed the whole lighting and feel of the image. For faster render view, I used EEVEE.

Finally, I added a motion blur and a little distortion to the water. At this point, I must thank the CG Boost community on Facebook, which pushed me further in my progress.

Final Image with color grading and sharpening.

Thank you for reading!

About the Author

Vladimír Stáňa, 3D Artist