![maya paint fx vray id maya paint fx vray id](http://www.3dtoall.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/1980476_orig.png)
Also, I turned off the second bounce of the GI, so I have darker corners. V-Ray was used for this image in a very simple lighting setup: just one Vraysun and a Vraysky. In post, I would add more logos and details wherever I wanted later. This worked as planned, giving it some random diffuse maps and variation to the geo textures. Later, I just added a multichannel modifier to make variations of what shader would be applied to which element, to give some randomness to the walls. All the geometry had a box or planar mapping of very easy use.
![maya paint fx vray id maya paint fx vray id](http://img.cadnav.com/allimg/191115/cadnav-191115132946.jpeg)
I created 6 metal shaders with slightly different diffuse maps, and with different id channels to each one. Also, I added some variations to the leaves in the same Multiscatter material. I used some trees from stock, planted some area planes on the floor where I wanted them, and distributed them as V-Ray proxies with a simple Multiscatter object. They were really far, so the LOD could be super low and still work fine. I created some bipeds, changed its colors, loaded some animation on it, and snapshot the ones I thought could work, so I made like 6 variations of poses and positioned them by hand on top of the wall rings. The soldiers are literally biped models, with some geometry added suggesting an armature. The mecha looked a little bit alone, so I added a soldier with a cape, to also show scale. The sci-fi balcony where he is standing had some more geometry, and a little bit of more attention to detail. if you see it at another angle it looks off balance, but this is only the case in the angle of this making of. When I saw it in the composition it did not work as expected, so I had to make it look good only for the camera. Then I just snapshot the geometry and moved it to position. So, to do it fast, I created a biped figure and link the bones to the limbs of the mecha, and made some pose so it didn't look that rigid standing up. It was fully textured, but I did not have the time to rig it.
![maya paint fx vray id maya paint fx vray id](https://img.cadnav.com/allimg/180812/cadnav-1PQ2112F7.jpeg)
The big mecha on the left was an old model I created some time ago for another scene. Also, to have my selections ready for rendering and post-production. Organizing the file in layers, in this stage, is very important, so I was careful to name them correctly. The tubes, antennas, and handrails are just rendereable splines, with 3 or 4 segments – some profiles or shapes could be managed later as brushes in Photoshop, but I still wanted to have several in 3D. Extruding, bending, symmetry, beveling… many of the assets were recycled to form a new asset, rotated, scaled, and so on. The same technique was used in the spaceships, and sci-fi pyramids and the rest of the assets you see in the scene. I also created the rings of the city that would work as wall layers for the surroundings. I just had to be sure that would have enough polygons to be curved with a bend modifier, and would not look ugly segmented. I developed a sci-fi wall, which would be the Main Ring portal. In some way, I created a small library for kitbashing and played with it, recombining, mixing, and more. Then I created a few variations in scale, form, symmetry, and so on. I create antennas, bases, walls, handrails, towers, panels… all of this from scratch, using basic and simple modeling techniques, primitives and modifiers. The foreground elements would be a little more advanced in this particular aspect. I knew it would be a heavy scene, so I tried to keep the poly count as low as possible. In 3ds Max, I created several variations of low-poly buildings from scratch. The modeling of the city was the heaviest load of this work.