Halloween project

[Caveboy]

I did this piece for the Spinquad annual Halloween Challenge. I didn't quite finish it, but this version is more finished. I want to add more details to it, like animated grass, flying ghosts, a flying raven, maybe some fog and animated wind effects and lightining.

[blindsided]

thats so cool!
My only comment would be that maybe it needs some atmospherics, a bit of fog/fadee with distance, or maybe just a bit of DOF??
but what do i know!!!
i didnt even manage to model a pumpkin this halloween!!

[bobakabob]

Great style and composition... Love the colours!

[daforum]

I love the spooky styling of the house and tree. Did you use FiberFX for the grass?

Also the house could be subtly lit more at the front, as a lot of the detail is lost in the darkness.

[daforum]

How did you make the tree? :gotpics:

[Caveboy]

Hey thanks for the comments!
Originally, I had the fog settings more visible, but the house was getting lost in the fog. Funny! So I actually started the fog near the back of the house and out to the small hills in the background.
I experimented with ground fog and was going to try ray marcher fog, but it was taking too long and I needed more time. I might revisit it or try some hypervoxel fog.
I also wanted to add some wind fx like flying debris and leaves or something.
DOF sounds like a good idea!
Originally, I tried FibreFX in layout, but I was not having any luck. It always looked like hair. Some of the rendering looked OK in the render preview, but when the anti-liasing passes were processed, the grass always ended up looking like hair.
I tried FiberFX in modeler and it worked much better. I was able to assign UVs, use a weightmap for placement and density (which I later decided not to use). I might explore that more. Also, by having the UVs, I was able to control the look of the grass pretty easily.
I agree with the lighting on the house. With the moon in the back, I kept holding back placing a light "on the dark side". But in the end, I decided that if there was a clould hovering behind the camera, I could justify placing a light that would "bounce" off and hit the darker side of the house. I should have made it bit stronger.
Tweaking is the fun part of finishing a scene.
I modeled the tree in modeler and kept the camera view in layout visble so I could update the modeling and make adjustments accordingly. It wasn't too tedious. I took the model into ZBrush, but I was using the new version 3.12 on the mac, and it's different than version 3.1. I even exported the high res tree from ZBrush as an OBJ model, but some of the faces were flipped. The detail was pretty high and my model was over 500,000 polys I think. The lightwave version was around 900 quads. I used some procedurals for the tree with some minor changes.
Here is a screen grab:

[SonicPerfect]

Very nice project!!
I love the girl seated on the house stair!!

[SonicPerfect]

Oh sorry!! Thats a ghost!! ^^