"Bear Soup of Guerneville"
Whew.
This took longer than I'd like (water is challenging), but I am happy with the result and I learned a lot.
If you'd like to learn about this render, keep on reading:
Composition Check
Like my last couple renders, I'm using classical composition techniques common in Renaissance art...with something new! Going left-to-right:
Rabatment of the rectangle to create dynamic symmetry and balance to a complex scene. Characters and objects are restrained to this armature to reinforce the implied lines.
The fibonacci spiral and golden ratio lead your eyes through the scene. I'm showing four major spirals, which start and end at each other to pull you into the composition...but within each "group" of men are smaller permutations of the golden ratio.
NEW: Circular composition. This technique was very popular in Renaissance art. The centers of the circles are dictated by the rabatment of the rectangle, then I reinforced the shape with the outline of the pool, negative space of the water (top), and the inner tube (bottom). The circular composition helps focus your attention in a busy scene.
Great example of circular composition informed by the rabatment of the rectangle in "The Queen’s Government" by Peter Paul Rubens (a circular composition superfan). Note how it brings your attention to two opposites.
Although the composition centers around the thick boi, gestures and blocking lead you to a sneaky self portrait of the artist. (Hey, da vinci did it, so its cool right?)
Environment Design
This render is inspired by the popular pool party "Lazy Bear" held in Guerneville. It's a popular gay destination for the San Francisco gays, and I thought it would be fitting for the guys from my past renders.
See? I've squished the depth of the pool by using an exaggerated focal length and perspective.
Lighting
Caustics (or, how light behaves when passing through volumes) is a really tricky thing for my 3D software. Here's (roughly) what lighting the water involved:
Simulate the water
Create proxy meshes for everything and submerge those to create the ripples
The ripples were too fine, so sculpt larger, more exaggerated water
The index of refraction for water is actually too high to see through the water, so we change this to almost zero
Add volumetric randomwalk to disperse inbound light in a pretty way
Arrange pool lights in a way that they cast nice caustics on the subjects
Phew! And, to be honest, the caustics are not super sharp. I need to practice more...I'm just happy I got it working at all.
After caustics, I generated steam and comped it in later with the depth pass (right image).
Hair
Finally, some bodyhair. The hair grooming workflow is not great and my computer is very laggy, so I rendered it separately and comped it in post. The results are...not bad, but not realistic either. I need to research this more for better results next time.
Phew! That was a lot. If you enjoy it, please check out my patreon, my store, or get some free phone wallpapers.