Cabin in the mountains

Final Renders

My first scene is a "lifeless" day scene.

My plan from the beginning was to make a lifeless day scene and a colorful night scene.

I worked with a soft HDRI light to give the feeling of a "flat" picture. I didn't want the scene to pop too much with hard shadows. But It's tricky to make a lifeless scene seem interesting.

 I quickly found out, that it's also challenging to have so much snow and have a nice-looking contrast in your scene. I used the skies to give me more contrast so the cabin wasn't the only dark object in the scene. I feel like there is a certain flow between the dark and the light that is intertwined with each other.

To emphasize the feeling of isolation and solitude I used depth of field in the scene. I controlled the focus of the scene by using a Zdepth pass. With the depth of field, it seems more closed in on the cabin.

I thought a lot about guidelines, and from the beginning I wanted the hill in the background to be that guiding line.

To implement the fog I tried a different kind of fogs. Vray environment, Zdepth, and I ended up with the plain old photoshop fog, which I thought to this project had the best result.

I didn't like how the particles made the snow, so I had to hand-model all the snow. I have modeled everything except the trees. I have made every shader except the wooden pillars and the pillows.

My colorful night scene

My goal was to make a powerful and colorful night scene. At first, I thought it was too bright. But then I remembered that you have to have a long exposure to see the light outside, so the light from the inside will be extremely overexposed. 

Because of the long exposure time, I also smudged the fire afterward in photoshop to make it look more realistic.

My blockout had light chains going from the cabin and to the hill. But there was too much light, and I wanted the fireplace to be the only exterior light beside the moon.

I think I've reached my goal by making two opposite scenes. One flat and doll and the other colorful and bright.

My take of a winter scene is a modern cabin surrounded by trees, rugged terrain, and snow in a Scandinavian country. I will create a warm night scene with lots of orange light bursting from the house and the light chains above the terrace to give the feeling of life and coziness. My other scene is going to be a cold daylight scene with a minimum of colors to create an opposite mood from my night scene to give the feeling of solitude and emptiness. 

I have an idea of rendering this in real time, but time will tell. Looking forward to the process of this contest.