Hadley's Hope

Yeah you could say i fell in love with the city i created in ‘Phoenix Rising‘. Since i have built me quite a nice plate in Vue i had to take another visit. And it could become more in the future. I’m sure you don’t mind as long as some stunning vistas like this one are the results of the excursions. Again i’m wondering why i’m into such megacities. I’m very interested in technology, where it took us in the past and where it may take us in the future. Maybe that’s a reason.

When i started this one i didn’t have a real plan. I was just playing with atmospheres and clouds in Vue and found a nice point of view on the city part we see farther in the back of my ‘Phoenix Rising‘ picture. I started to add more details to that area and moved objects around to find a good composition. Lots of smaller testrenders happening in that stage. When i had arranged everything to a point of satisfaction i started play with the lighting. I really wanted to make it look somewhat photoreal without to lose the usual tension and contrast that i usually get into my pics. I eventually became undecided between a more natural lighted sunset with the light source behind the camera and a real devilish/hellish red backlit situation with the sun shining directly into the cam.

I stuck to the backlit setup because of the tension it created in the scene. Nonetheless i had a problem with visible detail. Since it all was pretty much in shadow. But i wanted lots of details visible! What i did was rendering both lighting situations i had in mind. The one with the sun behind the camera captured all the little details i wanted visible. I took that render pass and layered it above the backlit version and started work both together. That’s a technique i use whenever i want more detail in certain shadowy areas. Of course you can also use the multipass possibilities of Vue to fix those. It all depends on what you want to achieve.

In the end i managed to get together a pretty decent result that can walk hand in hand with my ‘Phoenix Rising’ project. It shows another side of that megacity. A bit darker and dense… almost like you could swim through the atmosphere. Another view i would die for to see for real.

Vue – Photoshop – Wacom – 4000px wide

UPDATE 25.10.2010
Updated the pic with a more dramatic cloud setup. Should look better now. It's closer to the pic i had in mind now. Print is updated too.

Details
Light Studies - [link]

Print Detail - [link]

Wallpaper Pack - [link]
Two versions of wallpapers in the pack: 1920×1200/1080p – 1680×1050 – 1280×1024 – 1280×800/720p