The Clock Seller

Shot 1 and 3 renders:

This project is based on a concept called "Clock Car" by Zimmy. I picked this concept as I really wanted to challenge myself in modeling a large variety of props and textures. I knew I wanted a somewhat more realistic look than the concept so I started by gathering a ton of photo reference. First, I tried to find photo references that closely matched the props in the concept. Then I collected a lot of "additional" photos of props that I could reference to fill out the inside of the truck.

I started with a simple blockout.

Once the truck and all the important shapes were blocked out, I started thinking about the environment surrounding it all. The concept doesn't cover the environment so I had to figure that out on my own. I explored a few different ideas, including the option of placing it on an old village road. In the end I decided it was important to keep the truck as the focus on the truck and avoid crowding the shot so I decided against adding any buildings. 

I wanted a peaceful, calming type of environment. My first thought was a forest but I wasn't sure how to justify having a truck in the middle of a forest. Then I started thinking about outdoor public events and the food trucks that often accompany them. This gave me the idea of a "artisan market" type of situation. I live next to a park with a lovely lake and it suddenly felt like a plausible location for a traveling seller. 

I used V-rayWater  texture node for the displacement on the water surface.

I created the trees and grass variations in Speedtree, then converted them into Vray proxies, imported them back into my scene and used MASH to scatter them.

I wanted to have a little bit of dry grass in high traffic areas such as the edges of the pathway, under the truck and other objects. In order to have enough control when scattering, I used two separate MASH networks for the grass - one for green and one for dry grass - and scattered them manually using the placer node. 

At this time I was using a wider lens camera but I eventually realised that it was distorting some shapes too much, as it was making the tires look elliptical.

Since the environment was taking shape, it was time to finish the finer details on some of the props and proceed to texturing everything. I modeled the chair frame and ornamentation in Maya while trying to match both the photo reference and the feel of concept.

After texturing in Painter was complete, the final stages included small modifications to the environment - such as adding extra foliage; lighting adjustments ( mainly a few spotlights); Look Dev for various shaders; animating the clocks; camera motion; rendering and finally some comp in Nuke.