Hi, as before, I post another breakdown of my latest Blender Collab submission. This time the topic was “A Triptych about a Productive Disaster". Or, A Happy Accident in three chapters.
Here is my submission:
Prep Work
This time I sat down and sketched the three steps. I searched for reference images and color palettes. I ended up using the color pallet from the Geometry Nodes course.
My workflow includes AI. Images are collected in PureRef. Once I had a good set of ideas and images, I went back to Google Gemini to create a coherent set of reference images, by providing e.g., the color palette, and a few design criteria, such as a low poly look.
In the end, all generated images have been used as reference to support my wonky blender skills. AI for the win!
Pots
And some got some sculpting love
Acorns
For the acorns - I used these images to create a set of different colors. The acorn seed is a cylinder, with some loop cuts, which got scaled down. The acorn cups are based on the top edge of the cylinder (copy and separate). Then extruded to form the cup. I think I re-meshed it, then used mesh > transform randomize to get some variation in the surface. The leaf is a plane with a solidify modifier.
Light bulb
The light bulb took a few attempts. The bulb is a round cube (Extra Mesh Objects Add-on).
I like that Gemini created a wire frame view as well.
Extruding the lower half to get the shape. Cut off the bottom faces, scaled them in z + 0 to make them flat. Used loop tool make the opening round. Added a solidify modifier to get the thickness.
Modeling the central stem for the filament again was a plane that got extruded. The stem is one piece.
The threat is made using a simple spiral and the Boolean modifier.
In EEVEE, the glass shader didn’t work right out of the box. From @Grant_Abbitt Isometric scenes course, and the Potion Bottles, I cloned the settings for EEVEE, enabling Raytraced Transmissions (hit N in the node editor to open the side menu). Given EEVEE and Cycles need different IOR settings in the shader, I added two material outputs, one for each renderer.
The Bulb-Acorn is a simple position and scale job of the acorn seed and the bulb’s thread. The stem is an extruded cylinder.
The fruit is another merge-job. But the body has a different shader. And added a longer stem + a leaf.
Bench
For the bench, I used Gemini to create an orthographic view of it.
Pretty happy how this one turned out.
^^^ First attempt for the side pieces was to use spline curves. Which worked but had a few issues creating an odd mesh. Ended up using a plane and extrude it. Used insert and extrude to create a bit of structure to the metal side parts. For the wooden parts, I copied the inserts of a side piece and extruded them. Needed only minor adjustments. Adding a Bevel modifier made the seat look nicer (Harden Normals ON).
Shed
The inside of the shed is made of boxes and planes. For shading large areas, I unpacked the UVs and then scaled them to zero. Find the orange dot in the UV editor, bottom left.
Fertilizer bag
The fertilizer bag. This is one was interesting, and learned a bit about cloth simulation, inflating a thin box. I spent more time learning this vs just editing a box + some sculpting.
The textures have been generated again.
The second image has a bag texture, which I ended up using as bump map and for roughness.
The pill pile is a particle simulation. Maybe overkill, but why not.
Broken Light Bulb
Breaking the light bulb was relatively simple. I selected several faces and separated them. Arranging them took maybe longer. The alignment tool is not my friend…
The Tree
The tree is a simple cylinder. The root part is the original cylinder, from there the stem and branches have been extruded. Branches were added using the insert faces and loop cut tools. And loop tools to make them circular.
Plan B was to use Grease Pen and convert it into spline, then a mesh. Kind of worked, but that resulted in a poor mesh.
The treetop is a bunch of Icospheres I distorted in sculpt mode. And instead of placing those, I used the new Array Modifier (tells you how long I haven’t touched blender). Paired with randomness, it allows to create some variation.
Fruits
The fruits are instances (copy alt + D) and received a new, longer stem to connect to the tree top.
The Wall
The wall was created using the Wall generator in the Extra Mesh Objects app-on.
Hedge
The hedge is a made using Geometry nodes. Thx @StephenWoods. I simply distributed a single leaf geometry on a plane. A bit of randomness for rotation and scale did the trick.
To get some color variation in the edge, I used nodes again. The random output of the object drives the color generation for the generated instances of the leaf object. The color ramp provides different greens, the hedge image some additional variation.
Background is a generated picture of the night sky.
Lighting
For each scene I used a key light, and some fill lights. All are area lights.
The world background is a rain forest HDRi. With 0.1 strength.
Rendering
Three cameras have been used. Why? To have a different look in each image.
Gemini created me a set of lens sizes and f-stops to get a specific look. Field of depth is enabled. The focus of a camera was set on the key object in each scene.
This resulted in the blurriness of the background. I went for a subtle settings, so ppl can read the Magic Growth bit, which enables the story.
Instead of rendering each image on its own, I set keys in the animation to toggle the camera with each frame. Rendering a movie creates the three images I want.
Compositing
I use Davinci Resolve to create the final image. While I could have done this in blender’s compositing, DR is quicker for me as of now.
Added a vignette and a glow effect.
End Result
Cheers,
Ray
ps: Feedback is very welcome 