First of all I would like to thanks CGarchitect organization and specially Jeff Mottle for giving me the opportunity to show you my work and the process I followed to make it.

What I Wanted to do:

I'm am enthusiastic of Dutch 17th century paintings. I love landscapers like Salomon Van Ruysdael or Jacob Ruysdael, day-to-day live painters like Gabriël Metsu, Pieter de Hooch and of course Johannes Vermeer. I'm particularly interested in "still life" painting from Willem Claeszoon Heda, Willem Kalf and Pieter Claesz.

I accepted the challenge of creating an image trying to simulate the colors, lights, atmosphere, textures and objects I saw in all these pictures. 

REFERENCES

Landscapes:

Day-to-day Life:

Still Life:

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

When I thought about how to make this project, one of the first things that worried me was how to produce five minutes video with just a standard computer in a reasonable period of time. I had neither enough machines nor enough time to make pure animation. So, the first decision was to base most scenes in fixed images and animate through matte painting techniques, sphere fade or just animating some elements like fire, smoke, etc.

On the other hand I wanted to have full control over lighting in post-production process. I decided to not use GI, lighting the scenes by dome and matrix Omnis , taking out the appropriate render elements to manipulate later in Nuke.

STORY BOARD

I placed my story in Delf, at the beginning of 1.600. At sunset, Pieter Claesz, who has had a brief dinner, comes back to work in his kitchen. He is painting a still life. It's getting dark, the fireplace is crackling and it's necessary to light some candles. The night come over and the painter is hard at work. A clock sounds, time runs out quickly. It's too late and he goes to rest. At dawn the picture is nearly finished.

 

ANIMATICS

The story was complete. I continued making a very schematic model in order to build a basic animation.

 

 

 

LANDSCAPE SCENE

For creating the landscape I chose VUE 10 xStream.

I used Procedural Terrains, a water plane and Paint EcoSystem to put plants, bushes, flowers and trees.

I used standard materials for ground and water just modifying a couple of parameters like "overall color".

I chose a spectral sunshine (Venice) for the atmosphere.

I got this result. I didn't mind too many lights, colors, saturation, etc., because I was going to manipulate it in post-production.  

For introducing architectural elements I preferred using VUE through 3ds Max in order to have easier control over materials.

I rendered the scene in six different planes for animating in NUKE

After that, I built the scene in NUKE

 

This is the final result

CITY SCENE

To build the city scene I modelled several houses, towers, churches, etc. I took reference images and pictures from Dutch cities.

Materials are quite simple. I decided to dirty most of surfaces using a VrayDirt into a Composite map as you can see in the image below

I used the same procedure in the previous scene. I rendered several planes for animating in NUKE.

Everything was ready for postproduction in NUKE

The result...

INTERIOR SCENES  

I recreated a 16th century Dutch Kitchen. These rooms used to be the main space in the houses and they were full of a lot of objects, not just kitchen objects, because there developed a large proportion of the life. I references from many pictures of this time which describe meticulously these objects.

I started modelling the room

Lighting

As I said, I decided to not use GI in order to save time while rendering and to have more control over lighting in postproduction. I created an "Omnis" matrix inside the room and a "Target Direct" for sun. I reinforced the sun light with a "Vray light" and at the back of the room, I added another "Vray Light" to simulate the brightness around the window. After that I added some Omnis light for candles and fire.

 

 

Objects

I modelled all of the objects that appear in the scenes

After placing the objects into the kitchen this was the result 

Materials

It was a big challenge to make materials for the all objects and they had to be visible from near and far. I'm going to explain just a few of them

Tile wall

For the most materials I used VrayDirt to dirt the surfaces easily  

Clay floor

Old glass in window

I used a noise map into the bump channel to simulate the irregularities of the old glass.

For metals I chose a Shellac material to get double specularity.

Tin material

Old bronze

Old Silver

In many materials I used "VrayEdgesTex" to get rounded edges.

Wood

Fire: I used FUME FX to make flames and smoke. I rendered it separately from the rest of the scene, so I could have more control in postproduction process.

I rendered just the fire, assigning matte material to all the other objects.

The fireplace:

These are the settings I used :

The candles

The settings were:

Obviously I put an Omni light in each point of fire, taking out the appropriate Render Element, for manipulating in postproduction.

Animating scenes: I chose matte painting techniques to animate the scenes. Only two of them have pure animation and I made them through "sphere fade".

Sphere Fade of curtain and clock

I built the total scenes in NUKE . I will show you how I built the total scene of the curtain:

The rest of the scenes are animated through matte painting

Post-production

In post-production I controlled lights, color, zdepth, blur, glow, fire, smoke, etc. and I added some atmosphere effects like “Volume Light", dust, and particles. 

Some examples:

Before post-production

After post-production

Post-production process 

Before post-production

After post-production

Post-production process

Before post-production

After Post-production

Post-production process