Create Sci-fi Scenes

Oscar Jurez demonstrates his method for producing a futuristic scene

Many years ago creating larger images was a difficult task, mostly because we did not have the equipment and assets we have access to these days. Now it’s simpler to create our images, but it’s always important to keep in mind that it’s all a process. In this tutorial I will show you the process I follow – it’s not too complicated, but most of the time I like to have a clean workflow and a good file optimisation. Why? Having a clean workflow enables us to make changes quickly and efficiently. For example, let’s say we need to change an asset in the main model – if we have it properly named and grouped, then if we need to change anything it can be done in no time. This is the same for scattering our models, which we will do a lot in this tutorial – having each scatter named and placed with its scattering elements helps us a lot when we need to add vegetation, people or anything else we need to scatter. I will show you the process I follow to achieve the final image, from creating a concept, gathering info, using pre-made 3D assets to speed up the process, adding our lighting, composition and postproduction. Hope you all enjoy this tutorial, let’s begin.

01 BASIC IDEA

First we need an idea of what we want to do. From here we can start to focus on creating or getting the relevant assets. In this case we will do a big forest in a futuristic zone. What comes to mind? We need trees, water, birds, mountains, robots and flying ships.

02 GATHER REFERENCES

Now we have lots of ideas in mind but we need to see how they look in real life, so the next step is gathering references. Finding a real reference image will help us to see tones, patterns and many other important details. This will also enable us to get new ideas; we might see waterfalls, lakes and other elements that we can consider including in our image.