Contest : Islamic medieval city
Submitted render (click for Hi res)
BlenderGuru.com contest – Ancient civilization : Islamic medieval city
hi everyone,
I’m posting something different this time, as you may know BlenderGuru.com are running periodically very interesting contests with different subjects, finally I found some free time to participate, and I really liked theme; so this is a work in progress thread, that I will update over time…
I hope that you’ll find it useful and don’t hesitate to give me some feedback /critics please.
thanks.
Day 1: Concept Design
before starting the 3d modeling process it’s important to have a clear image in my mind, so I’ve made those sketches on the go, I mixed different elements that makes an islamic city; the cubic houses, the Mosque, and the big wall that protects the whole city, I tried different points of view
and finally I liked the point of view at the entry of the town; a perspective showing the huge door…
after that, I got the Idea to reproduces my own city (Algiers at the 18 – 19 century) instead of making something from scratch,
after some research I found this great painting by William Wyld

Algiers Harbor by William Wyld – 1833
Day 2: Base modeling
at first, I set the scene scale by simply taking the mosque dimension as reference, the mosque still exist to this day, so just used google earth to pick it’s dimension. then started the classic modeling process …from cubes, planes…extruding, cutting with the knife tool…etc
Day 3 : setting the scene mood and adding details
I like to work in a non linear workflow, I prefer to set the base lighting, textures and global mood before finalizing the modeling, I believe the sooner you start working on those areas the further you go, and the better is the result…
Day4: sculpt – texture paint – relight
the current scene status…
this is screen capture from the 3d view to see how the detail modelling is going on, especially the details sculpting on the left wall
a simple clay render with new lighting, some work is needed on the sky color / mood