Pumpkin farm - inspired by trine 2

Pedro Henrique Placido Silva explains his workflow, composition, lighting and inspiration behind his tranquil environment piece, Pumpkin Farm. Join us as we delve into the realms of rendering, UDIMs, creating a peaceful scene and more!

Intro

I am 22 years old, born and raised in Brazil. I studied Visual Arts, but I’m currently working in an animation studio in Porto Alegre. My interest in 3D started when I was 11 years old: I liked VFX a lot, and I had spent most of my time watching tutorials, reading articles and websites, and researching this subject online. Early on, I already knew software like Nuke, 3ds Max, ZBrush and others; I was an enthusiast, but I wasn’t really focused on creating work for a portfolio. When I was 17, I started studying digital painting and 3D but not in my college, as it did not teach me any of these. I had to search for YouTube tutorials on the internet. In my teenage years, I attended a course of observation drawing. There, I started to like environments and scenery, which gave me a good notion of perspective, and this is really useful for 3D modelling environments.

Composition

When I started to plan the composition, I tried to use the rule of reading from the upper left corner to the upper right corner, to the lower right and then to the lower left corner. For this composition I put different elements in each area to bring variety and more interesting details. Also, I worked with the lines of action of the environment using fences, walls and even the shape of the objects themselves to get the attention to a point of interest. When I did the concept art, I already decided the camera, the light direction, the shadows and the values so that the modelling and the look dev had a nice flow.

Lighting

For the lighting, I used the game for reference and of course, applied my own spin while bringing others elements from different images. I decided to make the shadows colder and the sunlight warmer, this contrast between blue and orange works really well. The direction of the main light was made to give volume to shapes.

I did the lighting in the scene with a warm direction light, an HDRI with a blue sky, some invisible area lights to better light some regions and objects, gobos to create some the shadows. In general, I tried to keep the lighting simple. I suggest to always keep the scene the most clean and organised as possible. I did not use light link.

Inspiration

I was inspired by a scene of the game “Trine 2”. When I discovered this game, I really wanted to make an art piece based in this universe. I loved all of the shapes, scenarios and the visual language - and I wanted to pay homage to that wonderful work. I searched for a lot of references of similar scenes until I was happy and had created a concept art that works. I tried to give the feeling of dusk, and after a long day of work all the farmers are going to have fun in a tavern.

Rendering

I used Redshift and without a doubt, it is my favourite render engine. Until now, I have not seen any limitation, it is fast and works really well with heavy scenes. It has nice material nodes, many options for lighting and sampling.

Processes

I think that the process of this artwork was more simple and linear. I decided all things in the concept art before modelling and texturing. This process works good but in some cases problems appear and I have to work out how to solve them. Sometimes redoing is better than continuing in the wrong path. For trees, flowers and some of the grass, I used free models. For scattering I used MASH tool, so I could focus on other aspects like shaders and textures. I really like to use Blender for modelling, almost the entire scene was modelled in this powerful software, also I opened the UVs of the objects, for example, the roof tile that I modelled and cut seams. After I modelled all of the objects, the scene was exported to Maya and in there I did the layout of the UVs with UDIMs for texturing in Substance Painter.

I really like to do sketches in my notebook, I’m always drawing ideas and putting them into the paper for them to evolve with time. I spend a lot of time analysing artworks of other artists, studying subjects like lighting, composition, things that have no correlation to art but reflect in my work. I contemplate the nature, watch the world around me and look at every detail like it’s the most beautiful thing.

At the beginning of the modelling stage, I was doing Kira Onew’s mentorship for concept art for background animation. There he showed me some cool rules for composition, like the “Z” reading. In the lookdev step I asked for feedback from my two favourite artists, Victor Hugo Queiroz and Rafael Chies, both were super important to get to the final result of this project. Also I had feedback from my workmates, that helped me to solve technical and artistic problems. I’m very grateful to everybody who helped me.

References

Looking for good references can prevent us from having a lot of headaches, it’s easier to reach a result when we have a reference point, rather than when we just try to create from imagination, our brain can cheat us! I’m still improving my own way of searching for good references and I hope to still get better. Another tip is to always try to improve the vision in relation to the things because the technique evolution is inevitable, the more you practice, the easier it is to evolve. Vision and perception are inherent and personal things that only the self knowledge say to where focus. I think all day in 3D, everything I see I try to think of how I could recreate it virtually. I observe nature, watch animations of different studios, analyse the work of other artists and I go back to look after some time has passed to think what I can extract again. An artwork seen today can seem to be totally different in six months.

Looking Towards The Future

I hope that in 6 months I can see this work with clarity and know all the things that I can improve on. I want to learn other pipelines, software, tools and styles, make more connections with other people and maybe share my knowledge. I am really excited for the future!