This image was done for Master and Servant challenge. The main topic of it is our own weakness.
Bad habits or too strong ones. Sometimes we're our own servants. We do this in that time when we start to be led by objects or material goods. Odon is the Servant and the cigarette character is the Master. Honestly it's just the physical aspect..the real Master and Servant is Odon, both at the same time.
The title comes from that small polaroid framed image on the right. "Am sorry dear..maybe one day" says the script below the girl. It's a memory of Odon (the main character). The background story lays here. It's a lonely night of Odon, after a hard day he found this image about his ex-lover (it was years ago) and memories gone unleashed. He stopped smoking few weeks ago, but this moment is too much for him. I grabbed this moment of his life.
I tried to explain emotions and to develop my skills. It was a leap to operate with SSS shader in mental ray, coz it was a huge image to render. Original is 3700 in width. GI, FG and DOF were also used in render directly. I was curious how can i manage these things in one shot, without special passes. The final render was done around 18 hours, after the 15-16 optimization rounds. Finaly i deleted some maps to avoid memory outs (2GB RAM used).
Maps were painted in Photoshop. One of my friend gave me a Wacom tablet and it was a great parcticing time with that. Maps were painted with common tools and i only used some specials for backround dirt and for the veins and wrinkles. I also used painter 8 to keep brush strokes on the diffuse and bump maps. I started with SSS+displacement, but it was impossible huge task to render, so the displacement map was turned directly into mesh with max's displace modifier. This modifier was my best friend at this time.
Please feel free to add crits and comments! Till that have nice day/night,
Mark