Masterpiece in Blender

Idealisation; the action of regarding or representing something as perfect or better than in reality

Individualism; self-realisation comes through art, apart from society, endless, unique potential

Exaltation of passions; overflowing emotions and feelings, such as love, heroism, patriotism, fear, anguish, triumphalism, horror

Exaltation of imagination

Dramatism; a whirlwind of emotions and feelings, full of life and tragedy at the same time, generates very ”theatrical” scenes almost like Baroque

Dramatic, theatrical light

Energetic brushstrokes; strokes gradually become expressive while containing the vitality and passion that the artist carries inside

Dynamic composition; scenes with a lot of movement and vitality

Exaltation of the almighty nature

Exotism; the idealistic and dreamy nature comes with a fascination with exotic, little-known worlds, worlds of fabulous stories that feed the imagination

Importance of the landscape genre; idealised, dreamy, or full of nostalgia or symbolism

The Fighting Temeraire – J. M. W. Turner, 1839

Consistent attributes, like form, texture and colour accentuate the mood and atmosphere

The romantic melancholy theme is suggested by the way Temeraire seems to be disappearing as a ghostly spectre as a new dawn rises on the other side of the world

Melancholy palette, a large quantity of space in the scene for the viewer to fill up the space with imagination

Swirling lines of force maintain the idea that nature has a power all its own

Light and loose brush strokes for a hazy effect

Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog – Caspar David Freidrich, 1818

Whites, pinks and blues for the sky above and darker colours for the rocks in the foreground, notable contrast between light and dark

The implied texture of lightness, air, and fleetingness creates a rhythm of movement in the mist, with rougher and craggy texture on the rocks

A vast landscape is achieved through highlighting, contrasting and converging colours, textures and various lines and shapes

This painting depicts a man in awe of nature and ultimately, God, as he faces the vastness of the world. He is truly in the presence of greatness. As we watch him looking out towards the sea, contemplating life and nature, we are also faced with this landscape, considering our own place in this magnitude. We too, stand on the edge of our own greatness.

2D to 3D

Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog is one of my all-time favourite paintings and I find myself coming back to it year after year. Since my idea is to create a 3D visualisation of a romantic masterpiece, it was clear that I would need to practice on the actual masterpieces first. A while ago, I found a video on youtube where a 3D artist recreates Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog in Blender. I took it upon myself to try. to follow in his footsteps and do the same, at the same time getting to know Blender better. I already know how to use it at a basic level, but I’m still very green when it comes to figuring out elaborate stuff on my own.

The video isn’t a tutorial of any sort, but a recalling of how the person made the final result. He breezes through the process pretty quickly, so I had to sometimes pause and look for an answer to a problem I faced by myself. This was an excellent learning curve, as problem-solving is the most effective way for me to learn.

I started off by downloading MakeHuman and exporting a very simple model with a rig to Blender. Blender has a neat plug-in for MakeHuman, so I was able to export the model with a single click from the toolbar. After that I applied a little bit of specular to the model’s texture, to mimic the transparency in human skin that lets light through.

After that, I created very simple clothes for the model by copying the polygons from the base mesh and setting a different texture. I used a little bit of sculpting to inflate the clothes so that they weren’t appearing too skin-tight. I posed the model based on the original painting that I had brought into the scene as a plane and then used physics to set the cloth simulation. This part took me a very long time, as the clothes simply didn’t seem to be able to drape as nicely as they had in the video. I tried multiple different settings until I realised I was supposed to be editing the collision object instead of the cloth itself. This solved the issue and I was able to drape the clothes more naturally. I also modelled a simple collar of a white blouse and a walking stick that can be seen in the painting.

After the human in the scene was mostly done I moved on to the scenery. To start off with I needed to model some very simple rocks, which I made by inserting a cube mesh, subdividing it a few times and then modifying it in sculpting mode. I did a few different variations of the rocks and placed them around the foreground of the scene. At this point, I also set the camera to be similar to the painting and started to think about how I was able to create the background. In the painting, the distance between the man and the mountains is massive, but I wasn’t able to do that in Blender without losing control of the viewport completely. The further the objects are, the more difficult it becomes to control the viewport camera. I was also worried about the performance, as I didn’t want the scene to become too big. In the end, I played with the perspective and sized the objects in the distance to look like they were further away than they actually were.

After I was happy with the layout of my shot, I used the hair particle system to create grass in the foreground and trees in the background. The grass I used was a model I had done a while ago and the trees are a png photo of a tree I imported in as an image plane. Since the trees were so far away, I didn’t need to worry about how they looked. By using the weight paint on the terrain I was able to place both the grass and the trees more organically.

At this point, the video started to talk about the problems with volumetric fog and Blender. It appeared, that when using an HDRI to light the scene the volumetric fog created a very dark and noisy render. To work around it DECODED used a render pass for mist, which I thought was a great idea nevertheless, as this would take down the render time tremendously. A colour ramp and Add-nodes were added in the composition tab for better results. After this I realised that my model didn’t have any shoes, so I quickly modelled some very basic boots for him.

The next step was to add some hair. This was again done using the hair particles and then entering the hair grooming view where I cut and styled the hair to resemble something like the original painting. After I was happy with the way the hairdo looked, I went and textured it as the video had done. I coloured it light brown and followed the steps to add nodes to the texture. I really liked how the light shone through the hair and how the texture looked realistic in the HDRI environment.

Before rendering I added a ground plane to resemble the foggy sea. The plane was set to semi-transparent and then the final step was to render the completed scene. I rendered the scene in three transparent parts; foreground, background and the entire scene alongside the mist pass. I brought all of the renders to Photoshop, where I composited the image and painted in the foggy waves. This was something I decided to do in post-edit, as after trying to add an ocean modifier first I didn’t get the result I wanted. This also cut down the rendering a lot. I also did some colour correcting and then I was done.

I was pretty happy with the end result, considering that this was a very quick and experimental study. The video helped me a lot and I was able to learn a lot about Blender in general as well as the nodes and composition. The two images aren’t too much alike in terms of texture and the vastness of the space, but it is a good start for future studies to come.