"Directions"

The Idea

It's not too rare to come to a point where you're looking for directions and trying to find a way. And you often end up having so many different guidelines to choose from, though the actual directions aren't as various. In this, you can easily get confused... Since all this is just a "model" of thinking in images, I went straight ahead and aimed for a model-like appearance, hence the focal-blur to imply a miniature scale and close, but not quite, realistic clouds, grass and textures.

The Objects

Only the person was modelled in Silo 2, everything else was generated with POV-Script.

The signs were modelled and pre-rendered in grayscale for heightfields, using a small turbulence on he camera to slightly warp the signs.

The grass and stones were placed with my Surcoat-Macros using a handdrawn grayscale image-map as base where to place stones instead of grass blades.

The background was rendered in a seperate pass with high-quality media for the clouds, a simple procedural pattern for the paths and some randomly placed CSG-Signs. This was done because the image relies on focal blur, and good quality focal blur requires a lot of rays. If I were to shoot lots of rays into a media sky, the render wouldn't take just 4 hours (two hours each, background and foreground)...

The Lighting

This one is lit with a few simple point-lights, some of them shadowless to be used as fill-lights. The foreground was shaded with an area-light, but the background (rendered in a seperate pass and then just layered behind the foreground using my Glare-Macros to place the image right in the line of sight of the camera) uses a simple point-light, because media and area-lights don't mix too well.

Personal Note

I came up with roughly 50 things to write on the signs. Some of them were suggestions from my friends and family. One which I have noticed to be particularly recognized by viewers is the sign "Eva". I know that people sometimes just rely on the thought and suggestions of a friend, trusting them to make a choice for them when they're unsure or aren't capable of making a proper choice. Most of the time, this isn't just some random guy who happened to be around when the choice needed to be made, but someone dear or special to you. Since Eva isn't just one of my closest friends, but THE closest friend, I figured her suggestion of putting her name on the sign fitting to get the point across: Sometimes, you know that you can just trust someone, no second thoughts.