Star Wars Battlefront Key Art

[bmcaff]

Earlier this year (2015) I had the amazing fortune of working on the Star Wars Battlefront Key Art as part of Cinco Design.

I was responsible for the preparation of all the 3D elements that were to be used by the retoucher to create the final composition. This included converting all the in-game vehicle models to 3DS Max/Vray format, building the foreground environment, posing all the vehicle and character assets, setting up all shaders using existing game textures, lighting the scene and final rendering of all elements. Final assets were delivered in 32bit layered PSD files with all the usual render elements. Files sizes got a bit mental.

I used 3ds Max 2015 and Vray 3 along with HDR light Studio for lighting. Nothing really complicated involved in the image but the final size was the only complication. All individual elements were rendered at a minimum of 8k (large stuff like the ground work and the Hero vehicles were rendered at 20k). Most of the assets were used as is except for the rebel characters and some additional pieces for the stormtroopers that needed high res preperation by another 3D modeler in Zbrush. All the characters used 32 bit displacement from Zbrush. Also some minor improvements needed to be done to the AT-AT due to the final render size. At 20k wide this is one of the largest images I have worked on.

EDIT: OOps should not have posted the in process stuff as it was not client approved... sorry!


Thanks for checking this out, hope you all liked it.

[Morne]

That's the most awesome stuff I've seen in a long time! Excellent work and congrats on being a part of it, must be a nice feeling for you!

[bmcaff]

Yep, it was a dream come true. Thanks!

[Macker]

Awesome!!!

[georgi.zhekov]

Love it, good job!

[jamesf73]

fantastic! what a fucking dream job!

[Mokiki]

Excellent Job. Congrats

[Margarita.Stoeva]

Awesome work!

[savage309]

Very impressive work this is !

[AJ Jefferies]

Fantastic Brendan! So glad I can finally perv over your work in this

[tricky]

What a phone call that must have been!

[bmcaff]

Ha, yes indeed.. "you want me to do what??? let me think about it for about..HELL YEESSSSSSSS"

I had to do a few test renders in order to demonstrate that I could work with the models and hit visual targets from in-game footage.
The interesting thing about the whole job was the quality of the models and textures. Battlefront uses a PBR rendering engine and so all the assets were supplied with PBR shaders and textures. This made the job of using them in VRay a hell of a lot easier as all the reflection glossiness maps already existed and there was no lighting baked in to the textures, asyou typically get with game assets.

[cheerioboy]

This is awesome! The render resolution by itself has me awe of your project

[bmcaff]

Yeah, for some reason clients are just asking for bigger and bigger images. About 5 years ago most games covers I was doing at around 6k, now it's at least 10-14k. This one was at 20k because they wanted full bleed and side extensions to cover a whole range of different usage formats and sizes. I did the Scalebound cover recently too and the dragon had to be full bleed with wings included and ended up at 25K square with multiple 32bit 8k displacement maps. It was a challenge.

[joconnell]

Seriously good work, I'd love to see a breakdown or a video walkthrough of your texturing and shading process, the results are gorgeous.