Tada! 
The Back Alley
I started this project over a year ago but ran out of time to finish it. However, I found myself with quite a lot of spare time recently – I guess that’s one upside of being unemployed 
One extra fun aspect of this project was to figure out how to use the Cloth Modifier in 3ds Max to place the fabric on the wooden poles. I really like this modifier; very advance yet easy to get started with
I’m currently stuck with my laptop with only 2GB of RAM thus I wasn’t able to render the whole scene in one go, with all the displacement going on. Hence I had to break up the rendering into different passes with each building separated. I then composited it all together using Eyeon Fusion. Blimey, pre-multiplied alpha can be a real bitch! I had to delve deeper into this, and experiment with ways of getting around those ugly dark or white halos. So far I’ve made steps forward but I sense there is much more to discover on this, somewhat, confusing subject – but I’m always keen to learn 
Cheers mates!
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Here are some WIP post:
WIP: The Back Alley – Part 1
WIP: The Back Alley – Part 2
I finally got some time over to pick up where I left of with this piece. So I’ve been working with unwrapping and texturing for now. Texturing is something I really need to improve on. But I found some nice tutorials on the net that should give me some tips and tricks Check out my collection of Photoshop links here.
I also tried out TexTools 2.9 and it’s a really nice tool. It adds a lot of new features for unwrapping in max. They don’t always work or perhaps I just haven’t figured them out yet, but I still like it alot. Try it out, now!
Here’s the new update:
The Back Alley
Comments and critique is always welcomed!
Cheers mates!
I’ve been doing some 3d work during summer holidays. But laziness got the better of me and my productivity hasn’t exactly been through the roof. However here is a piece I’ve been working on from time to time.
I felt an urge to create a back alley in a Mediterranean like environment. So I spent some time on google and searched for reference images and when I found my inspiration I got to work. This is what I’ve achieved so far:
The Back Alley
I spent a lot of time trying different light rigs, materials and render setting to optimize my render time and final resault. The Images above is 600×800 pixles (click on it to enlarge) and the render time was 5 minutes and 52 seconds. I’m pretty satisfied with the lighting by now so from here on I will focus on texturing the rest of the buildings and modelling more destruction to get a more gritty, dirty, “wear-and-tear” kind of look. Old stuffs makes really nice art