3D generalist Nicolas Brunet shares how he puts together a finished image using Photoshop

For this piece I went back to an old sculpt I made of Commander Kuro after he shot to fame in his role in the fan film Star Wars: The Way to Shadows. I will show you it's not necessary to render a perfect model for static image purpose; with the help of multiple render passes and image editing softwares we'll add details and fix mistakes from the rendering process. Also, I will have a quick look at shooting 360° HDR images.

Shoot the model

For this project I used a very old 3D model of a clone trooper I made a few years ago. The character was created in 3ds Max and was already fully rigged. Once I found the perfect heroic pose, I fixed some skinning mistakes with the help of mesh select, edit poly and relax modifiers on problematic areas of the model.

Shaded model before mesh issues fixed

360° HDRI Shooting

As I wanted very diffuse mood light and shadows, with strong reflections, I used the HDRi way to light up the scene. I used a Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1 with a fisheye lens on a panoramic head to quickly capture a forest environment. Depending on the stitching software you use, you'll need more or less overlap between photos to avoid manual stitching post work.

Top: Shooting material - Middle: a picture taken every 30° + zenith and nadir pictures - Bottom: Result

Render time

My camera could shot up to 7 stops of light I merged together with HDR Fusion function in Photoshop and exported the result as an EXR file. As the render engine for the project was iRay, the 360° HDRi was loaded as environment map in 3ds Max. Then I rendered out several passes: Raw/beauty, a sharp and glossy reflection and finally a chrome shader applied to the whole mesh gave the "T1000" pass.

Arch & Design shaders were used

Cleaning mistakes and adding details

Before loading all the passes in the composited image, I took some time to erase mistakes from bad unwrapping which had resulted in ugly texture distortions. Details were added using custom brushes, metal chips, dirt and scratches, that way the trooper's armour and weapon give the feeling they have been in many wars.

Left: an unwrapping artist you probably wouldn't want to hire / Right: fixed textures