Updated: April 21, 2011
After completing my hybrid airplane article, I decided to redo all my existing models with even more realistic renders. You see, all of my existing models are rather clean, factory-made. But in real life, there's no such thing. You always get little imperfections, spots of dust and dirt and chipped paint, oil leaks, bruises, bad lighting, mud, scratches, and all those other sweet, grubby details that infuse objects with a sense of earthly belonging. My models didn't have any of those, until now.
So please prepare to be stunned. The tank gallery is the first retouched model, with some fancy extras. I focused a lot of effort on using better materials and adding bump textures. But the most important addition is grass - real grass, rendered in Kerkythea. As you may be thinking right now, even at rather modest settings, creation of these images took 2-3 hours each on my high-end desktop. Then, I also did some post-image work in GIMP, including color noise, dirt and smear airbrush strokes, as well as used some super-cool plugins.
Gallery
Without further ado:
Now we get that same shot like above, only with some rain - and a soft rainbow:
Some dramatic twilight images:
A front-side shot:
And an even better one, with clouds, water reflection and a palest of shadows:
Mud is good for tanks. Here we have some grass and patches of dirty, muddy water.
Michael Mann uses green to denote danger; I hope I can convey the same message:
And with a National Geographic filter in place:
And we end with a Diana Holga like effect, again thanks to some GIMP plugins:
I told you it would be cool.
Cheers.