Chicago Alley - Blender Realism Study

Summary

Chicago Alley - Blender Realism Study is a 3D car scene made in Blender, which takes place in a rainy Chicago alley-way. For this project, I used a night-time photograph as reference.

My main objectives were to use my Technical Artist, 3D asset management, and newly acquired Blender skills to showcase my first attempt at 3D realism. All assets were textured by me using Substance 3D Painter.

Development Information

Role: Environment Artist, Lighting Artist

Team: Created by Alberto Rosado

Tools: Blender, Substance 3D Painter, Adobe Substance 3D Assets, Quixel Megascans, Quixel Bridge, Photoshop, After Effects

Duration: July 2022 - July 2022

Theme: Cars, Racing, Action

Status: Completed

My Role As Environment & Lighting Artist

The project began with a photograph I took in a Chicago alley-way during a late and rainy night. The tranquility of the sleeping city caught my attention, as it contrasted the crime and gang violence that lies within the community. I strived to capture the grunginess of the southside of the city, and wanted to encapsulate the reality that its community members endure on a daily basis.

After creating and collecting an asset list with all the props and objects seen in the photograph, I recreated the photograph as a 3D composition in Blender. Outdoor lighting is always a personal challenge, however, setting up lights were fairly easy as the streetlights acted as obvious light sources. On the contrary, I did have a difficult time matching the reflections on the car to the original photograph, due to the angle of the original image being slightly different than the 3D composition. To solve this, I used emissive objects that only rendered on glossy reflections without actually emitting light on surfaces in the environment.

All objects and props were UV unwrapped in Blender and textured in Substance Painter. I found myself going back to re-iterate the car and ground textures the most as they were the largest components of the 3D composition, and therefore the main focus. The car textures and materials were the biggest challenge of this project due to the rain drops either being too small, too large, too dense, or too reflective. Eventually after multiple iterations I was able to recreate the high-contrast aesthetic that the original photograph has.

Storytelling Through Environment Design

Recreating a realistic Chicago alley meant that I had to also make the decision whether I wanted to tell half the truth or the entire truth of what it means to live in the Southside of Chicago. Chicago is a great city with amazing, loving people, and unfortunately they have to endure living with a historically violent gang culture. Although not as common these days, shoes hanging on wires are still seen in Chicago and may symbolize different things depending on who answers, sometimes it may mark a gang turf borderline, other times it may be a memory for a victim of gun violence. Ultimately, I decided to include audio of shots being fired relatively close, to show the reality of what Chicago looks and sounds like at night.