Art Spotlight: Hobbit Diorama

In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.

Hi everyone! I would like to show you the process on how I made the Hobbit Diorama, but before that let me have a brief introduction.

I’m Clare Adonay, 3D artist in the field of asset/character creation for gaming. I’m a member of Silhouart Game Studio, we create AAA and mostly handpainted texture style. You can check out more of our work in our facebook page: SilhouartGameStudio.

Now onto the process! I got hooked to the movie and the setting was amazing so I decided to make a fan art showcasing my favorite scene. I started to collect references from the movie and river photographs. I didn’t include all characters, instead I focus only on those who made remarkable moves.

Diorama Specs

Poly count: 10,410
Texture size: 1024 x 1024

I made my own color palette and see if it fits to each other to create attractive color schemes.

Assets texture process (Tree)

I exported the mesh I modeled in Maya as an .obj file and imported it to Photoshop. Using 3D tools, I painted directly to the mesh. Here’s a step by step process how I textured the tree:

Go to the texture map and fill it using the basic color (brown). I go back to 3d mode and drew the lines of the tree then I added some highlights. I merged the darker color and lighter color using color pick and paint it patch by patch using watercolor brush. Lastly, I added some colors relative to the basic color.

The left image looks OK, but for some reason it looks dirty together with the other trees, so I decided to change the style. I use Filter Gallery, then paint daubs, sharpen, and a little bit of curves.

Assets texture process (Rock)

I sculpted the rocks in Zbrush and duplicate it, resize, position, and some adjustments. Then I imported it to Maya and did the retopology and UV.

I baked the AO first before I start painting, clean up a bit, add details like edging. I change the color using Gradient map (a mixture of bronze and purple). I also added patches of different colors on the top layer using Overlay.

In image 5 below, I painted the grass and river. In image 6, I baked Lightmap and apply it using Linear Dodge. And finally, I added the leave’s shadows and final adjustments such as Curves and Hue / Saturation to equalize the whole scene.

Texture map is 1024 x 1024 and texture size for each character is less than 256 x 256. Some white areas in the texture map are filled with water splashes (which I didn’t include in the final diorama).

So far I am happy with the result. And if you want to see more diorama just like this, check out Silhouart. Also, please do check out my Personal Portfolio. I would like to thank Sketchfab for giving me the opportunity to share my artwork.

Thanks Clare!