Behind the Scenes: The Leaf and the Ladybug

INTRODUCTION

Hello there! I'm Arleison Meira Rocha Lacerda, and I'm from Bahia, Brazil. I got to know Blender a few years ago during my university graduation and 3D art was my hobby for a while. But in recent years, I decided to prepare myself and turn 3D art into a profession.

INSPIRATION

This art came about as a result of a lesson within the course "Professional Training in 3D with Blender" at Escola Revolution, Brazil. The goal was to develop a realistic rendering of a leaf but as a personal challenge, I added one more element, the ladybug, and also reworked the lighting.

SPECIFICATIONS

• Hardware: Acer Nitro 5 i5 8ªGen | 16GB RAM | GeForce GTX 1050
• Software: Blender 3.3 LTS
• Render Engine: Cycles
• Post-production: Blender Compositing

MODELING

At the first moment, I followed the content of the lesson by modeling the leaf and water drops. For the leaf texture, I used PBR while the scene lighting was done in HDRI.

After the idea of adding the ladybug, I researched references for the model, lookdev, and layout.

Below is the lady bug I modeled.

IMPROVEMENTS

After modeling, compositing, and lookdev, I did a render which I posted on my social network. But still I wasn't satisfied.

So after a self-assessment and feedback from the course teacher, I established some points of improvement for the artwork, such as lighting, reflections, level of detail in the model, and procedural shaders of the ladybug.

MATERIAL

Below are the four textures of the leaf material.

And here is the Ladybug material: Wings, Carapace, and Antennae respectively.

LIGHTING

I used a key light on the leaf, a back light, a fill light, a mood light, and the light coming from the HDRI.

RENDER - The Leaf and the Lady Bug

Render: 1920px X 1920px | 1024 samples | Cam 100mm | F-Stop: 2.8

Render: 1920px X 1920px | 1024 samples | Cam 100mm | F-Stop: 0.8

Render: 1920px X 1920px | 1024 samples | Cam 100mm | F-Stop: 1.2

Thank you for your time!

Special thanks to the Blender Nation team for the invitation and opportunity to show my work.

About the Artist                       

Arleison is a visual arts enthusiast and a graphic designer, looking for new horizons in 3D.