Alien Lab Facility

dtschultz

Hey. I've been working on a new piece.  It will only be high poly, but I thought I'd share it here in case anyone is interested in the process or has any questions.

This is the first WIP image I made a few weeks ago:



Here's a newer image.  It's still pretty rough, but it's getting closer.  I might move out the two passageways on the left and the right for composition.  I'm also going to keep working on adding some more elements to the walls and floors and refinining the machine itself.  I will pose the arms once I am done.

C&C welcome. Thanks!

dtschultz

Another run at this Alien Lab. I'm tempted to add some more mechanical/structural elements to the foreground. 

Kiyamlol

Loving the last render, i feel like maybe u can push it further? Like everything is really grey atm...:)

dtschultz

Hey, Thanks!  Yep, I agree. I am working on it. I wanted it to have a bit of a darker sort of Prometheus vibe, but I think it's missing on some visual interest for sure. I'm adding in some structural elements, and I want to see if I can help give your eye something else to focus on in the darker areas. 

dtschultz

I imagined this as a sort of alien facility where they are harvesting biological elements from specimens. This was initially supposed to be a quick concept for an environment with a little more painting and less modeling. I ended up taking it further than I initially planned.  Some of the geometry is still a little rough, but hopefully it gets the ideas across.  I did a lot of Photoshop work to get it to this point.  All of the modeling/sculpting was done in Zbrush. 

Cglewis

I really like it but it feels muddy the image prior to this felt more clear and concise 
I think it would be cool if you added some atmospherics and moved away from a pure white light

dtschultz

Hey. Thanks a lot for the feedback!  I didn't like how flat the first image felt.  I removed a lot of the fog I had because I felt like it was flattening out my image.  Your point is well taken though.  I probably pushed the contrast too far in this one. Thanks!

bsichterman

Looking nice, I personally really dig the post processing on the latest shot. Getting some good old school Alien vibes from it Some local atmospheric fog on the ground might add something, maybe only on one side to break the symmetry. Unless thats what your going for of course.

dtschultz

Thanks a lot!  Yeah, I had a handful of shots I captured from Prometheus that I was trying to match in terms of color grading and lighting.  I could pull back in some of the fog I removed and keep it on one side to give it some asymmetry. Thanks for the feedback!

dtschultz

I added back in some of the fog and pushed the focus on the central area.  Thanks for the feedback!  *Edit: I had a .5 pixel blur on my higher res image for other forums and when I pushed it to this lower resolution it was still on. That's why it was so soft.

dtschultz

One more go based on some great feedback from the KeyShot forums. #Zbrush, #Keyshot, #Photoshop

Higher Res: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/JJPbz

shabba

Don't be affraid to have corners of the background go to near black in darkness, to help clean up  some of the noise where things might be getting lost. Not sure if its possible to push some of the roughness value separation a bit further apart.

I hope you don't mind me doing this, but I just duplicated your image, leveled it super dark and then really roughly masked it back in.
This is sort of what I was trying to describe. I think it really makes the focal point very striking, and still lets the eye kind of move through the image? What do you think?

ZacD

Having different hues between the focal point and background can help a lot as well. 

dtschultz

Thanks for the feedback, Darren!  I didn't really want to push it that far, but I thought I pushed it pretty far to black. It's interesting to look at it on different monitors when playing with this stuff.  On my monitor at home and one of my monitors at work there are a lot of blacks in this image, but when I look at it on my other the background is a bit brighter. I fight with this on every image where I am trying to do something darker and more contrasty like this.  I'll take another look at it and see if I can push it further without losing what I want.

ZacD: Thanks. Yeah, I wanted it all to feel a little more blue/green with yellowish highlights like what I thought I was seeing in Prometheus.  I did add in some red to help push it out, I thought.

dtschultz

I darkened the background a bit more based on your feedback. Thanks!