Dust jacket and frontspiece (UPDATE)

[Speedster]

Hi all;

A close friend and noted railroad historian and author commissioned me to create the dust jacket and frontspiece for his new (22nd!) book on the Denver and Rio Grande railroad.  So this is what I came up with.

Train, station and all props modeled in SolidWorks and KeyShot 5 Pro. Heavily tweaked HDR "kodachrome basin" from the KS cloud. WAY to many layers in Photoshop CS5!  But most were add-ins like foliage, etc.  But a lot of levels to pull everything together. On scenes I always add a top level Warming Photo Filter to unify the comp, at about 5-8%.

11,988,719 polys. .bip is smaller than my usual at 1.73 GB. 

Bill G

[TpwUK]

looking excellent from here Bill

Keep em coming

Martin

[Dragos Pitu]

the train looks good , plenty of details and so on. i like it. the composition of the image lacks something i can't put my finger on. the train doesn't pop out. you should add more dirt to the train and some fog. cheers and keep up the good work!

[Speedster]

Hey, smok!

I appreciate your comments!  I agree "something" is missing. It is rather dark overall, but on purpose, as they always print lighter and toward cyan, probably because of the CMYK conversion.

But I think what it really needs is more smoke, almost "foggy" as you say.  I saw the train drifting (as it's called) into the station, but more smoke is in order as if it's "puffing"outbound. Each piston stroke results in a "chuff" of white/grey smoke. I've ridden in cabs of steam locomotives, and many times you can't see a darned thing!

Bill

[Speedster]

Well, I took the comments to heart and really pushed this further.  Happy to say the author is really excited and happy with the product!

Added a lot of levels adjustment to the locomotive, along with dirt and stains.  Also balanced the composition with some changing aspen trees on the left, stripped out of some shots I took high (11,000 feet!) in the Santa Fe National Forest, which right now is in full color.  Also added to and detailed the smoke.

FYI- I use "Ron's Brushes" for Photoshop for steam, smoke, rust, stains, you name it.  Absolutely awesome collections, highest quality and a must have for any CG artist in any genre!  http://www.devineydesigns.com/Professional/Digital-Art/

Learning a lot! Thanks for the help, guys!

Bill G

[Josh3D]

Looks excellent Bill. Great additions.