Behind the Scenes: Greve Geral

INTRODUCTION

Hi, I’m Pedro, a 3D generalist with 7 years of experience in animation for advertising and content. I worked with many studios on great projects. Recently, I launched an Introduction to Substance Painter class on the Domestika platform.

My development as a 3D artist was done with YouTube video tutorials, sites, and forums like BlenderArtist, BlenderNation, and other creators like Blender Guru.

I have always been interested in environmental art, both 2D and 3D mediums. When I have inspiration to make a portfolio work, I like to care about the concept art and all aspects of the image. That is a way to have some control of my artistic process and choose the way that makes me feel better.

INSPIRATION

In April of 2024, my city and state were destroyed by several floods. My family and I were not affected, but many friends were.

The people were supported, and reconstruction was started after many days of intense storms.

This kind of tragedy is an example of climate change and the lack of government infrastructure and care for the workers. The people that had lost everything were the workers and from day to night, they became poorer than they already were.

I started to study the conditions and responses of this situation, so:

Labor Day, 1st May, was my inspiration for this work. The 20th century was historical for many aspects—the end of an era of modern colonization in African countries and unionized movements for better work conditions in Europe and the US. For many reasons, the quality of life in several European countries was better than today.

This artwork brings the memory of this time, when the organization of workers was more powerful and society had a socialist horizon for the political economy. Today, we have many ideological state apparatus (Luis Althusser, 1970), that destroy any proposal to change this situation of poverty, economic austerity, and huge capital concentration.

Some of the weapons of the working class were strikes, syndicates, and organization. I then started to search for historical photos and pictures of the 20th century. In Brazil, we had a lot of strikes and revindication for better salary and heath conditions, resulting in advances for the agricultural and industrial workers.

The aesthetic for this artwork is the noir films, B&W, and Victorian age architecture, with contrast and atmosphere.

PROCESS

Modeling

The model step was a simple process, starting with cubes and basic shapes. The reference for the main building was a miniature model.

The black and white look was chosen at the start of the model block. The light and mood was decided with the references. So, the process was a work of bringing this historical aesthetic to the final image, with high contrast like a noir film.

In Substance Painter, I worked with noir color profiles to match the references. Many textures are from Substance assets and Megascan.

The Blender compositor was used in the viewport from the beginning to the end. A really useful feature.

Materials and Shaders

The ground was difficult for many reasons. Adding details like water pebbles, roads, and the train track deformation was a great challenge.

I used the raycast node to make a mask and blend with the Megascan displacement to create the train track deformation.

For the road texture, it was the same process. Using the geometry nodes, I created a UV mapping with a bezier curve to drive the texture’s UV direction and mask.