Gone with the wind

The idea behind the picture is, to show the ironic of life. The field could be much bigger, the kite , which is controlled by a child, has to tangle exactly in the only single tree far and wide!
Those who allready did first flight tests with a kite, may confirm us that. Either there has to less or no wind and the kite could not fly.
Or the kite is "gone with the wind" and if you've bad luck his tangle in a tree.

Project description

We started with the tree. for that we modelled first three different branches and put a particlesystem on every one, with a ownmade leaves texture. This texture we have done in Gimp. After that we did some color variation (three branches, each one with three different colours, so at the end we had nine different branches), that all of them looks unique. Then we converted the particlesystem to meshes and join the new seperate objects together to one object. After this process we put the nine new branches as a new particlesystem on the tree.
We add a plane with multiple displace modifier for the landscape, and placed the tree.

We painted in Texture Paint mode the fieldway who guided to the tree. On one hand the way should become consistently smaller to illustrate the wide of the field. On the other hand we wanted that the way led to the rule of thirds to put the story in the focus.We continued with six different particlesytems for the grass on the field. To controll the particlesystems we used Vertex Groups and textures, a simple gradient from the front to backpart was enough, for the density. To give it a look more far away we also check the influence on the length of the particles. So they are smaller in the background then in the foreground. Also we used different procedural textures for the length and the density variations of the grassfield. As well we require easy black and white textures to influence the density of the field and the way. This are just a few of them.

In the same manner we did three particle systems for the grass on the fieldway. To create some color accents on the field, we add four different paticlesystem with plants or flowers. To make a smooth transition from the way to the field we put also the same grass particlesystem from the way onto a small strip on the edge of the road. We made another particlesystem for the stones with arround to millions of stones. For this one we have done nine different modelled and textured stone objects and create some puddles for the trail. The water in the puddles reflect some light from the hdri-map and the environment and brings details to the road. To create more details we added 3 particlesystem with mosquitoes above the water. We modeled a simple fence and put wire with curves on it. In the background we placed a low poly child with another particlesystem for the hairs next to the tree in the focus of the picture. Besides we create a kite with ribbons who fluttered in the wind. The kite we textured with a translucent material, that the light is shining through it. We put curves for the cord to the kite and placed them in the tree next to the child.

In a final step we choose a HDRI texture from Pro-Lightning-Skies and put a sun lamp which lights in the same direction than the HDRI-Map to make the light and shadows more interesting. We finally rendered it with 300 samples in Cycles and did a compositing. For this we enabled the shadow and the ambient occlusion path and also the material index. The material index we just need to adjust the contrast and saturation of the fence.

Software

- Blender 2.76
- Gimp 2.8
- Grass Essentials
- Pro Lightning Skies
- Rendered with 500 Samples in Cycles

Artists

- Martin Schmitter
- Elin Naegeli