Freschrenders

A HELL of a Time - Early Access + 4k

Added 2023-01-19 17:00:05 +0000 UTC

A super high res version! I'm also gonna include some extra trivia for the 4k versions of posts from now on since you all are paying a bit more AND I think it would be fun to break down some of my scenes!

This scene is quite complex and is a LOT for a little laptop like mine to handle, so it's necessary to break down the scene into multiple render layers.

First, the background layer. This includes everything that is not in the small town in front of the camera. The town is HIGHLY dense in polycount and had to be rendered on a separate render layer to lessen computational power needed and decrease render time. And in case you were wondering, all those rectangles are actually the trees you see in the shot. More on those another time though!

The next layer is the foreground layer. Radu is included here in the shot so he still casts a shadow on the town, but his alpha channel (opacity/transparency) is set to 0 in what is known as a "holdout". Thus, he appears invisible in the shot but still casts a shadow.

Lastly, we have the volume layer. There isn't really anything special about this layer. All it includes is Radu in his pose and a box surrounding him. This box includes a volume that creates the atmospheric perspective effect around him and the surrounding environment. I didn't include the screenshot as it's literally just Radu.

Let's talk about the town in the foreground layer! One of the things you learn quite quickly in VFX is to only make what the camera can see. In the render we're only seeing a select, small view of the town. This is what the town actually looks like. It was built using Kitbash3D's Americana set.

I hope you like this little addition to the 4k image posts. Hopefully it should make it a little bit more worth it, and I plan to do these from now on! I'll focus on different sections of my workflow each render/animation I do. If you have any specific questions about how I do what I do, feel free to reach out to me here on Patreon!