Ponder
"Ponder" is a render of a small paper boat travelling through a lotus covered pond. It's supposed to envelope the viewer in a sense of peace and make them feel small, protected by the gentle petals of the lotus or their majestic leaves.
All models and textures are hand-designed by me, except a few listed below:
- Trees (I used these for my other project - see "porch photo" - but I don't remember the link)
- Standing lotus leaves (https://depositphotos.com/225870468/stock-photo-lotus-leaf-texture-background.html) - I just ripped the low quality photo on Google and added a custom bump map to cover up the blurs. Then I lined the leaf with my object's UV and boom.
- Lotus trypophobia thing - Same procedure and I literally ripped it from some random scientific article, google American lotus and you'll see it.
Final render with every texture being procedurally generated and every model hand-crafted (except 3)
Full GIF of the whole procedure
Previs with hand-sculpted lotuses and paper boat
Added procedural grass, standing lotus leaves (borrowed texture from a photograph), and added extra light source
Redid lotus leaf textures to look better with damage and rot, added musgrave textures to water to simulate algae
Added more leaves and flowers to create interesting shadows, added pickerelweeds
Changed HDRi to something more fitting, added duckweed
Added a small "cliff" in the back, gave the boat some procedural water damage texture, added waterfall and trees afterwards to blend render with HDRi background