Minecraft: From the Fog | Render + Fog

Hello! My name is Nesma Mavrakis and I am a beginner in the arts of graphic design and 3D modeling and texturing. I'm here to showcase how I created this very and spoooky graphic of Herobrine! I always loved Minecraft and the ominous feel that single-player mode gave off. One of the more recent Minecraft sensations called "From the Fog" made that old tall-tale a reality, and I've taken a grate interest in it. So naturally, I immediately fell in love with the idea of this "Make it Glow" contest and knew I just HAD to enter!

1. Autodesk Maya
2. Reference images
3. Adobe Photoshop

(Click More Images)

If you're going to make 3D models or even an entire scenery, it's always helpful to have reference images to go off of. So I searched for the highest quality of Minecraft textures and images I could find. I also found this handy flat layout of Herobrine's texture. These can be imported into Maya and make the layout process easier by having the textures already ready for you!

First, I modeled the redstone torch from scratch with only a few cubes and flat squares. I specifically designed it to be Minecraft life-size by making the stick part of it 2 by 8 basic Maya square-sizes tall, and the flame 2 by 2 basic Maya square-sizes big. And for the redstone-like bit of the torch, I applied a Phong object to make it transparent. It's the small details that are underrated!

Then, I created the oak trees the same way I made the torch. but this time I made it by Minecraft block sizes instead of pixel sizes. I Also made a flat grass ground with a simple Minecraft grass block texture.

Here's a really cool Arnold skydome light I think you should try! It makes the sky blue, and it makes really nice shadows! But it only works in renders, otherwise you only have a black sky in the viewport.

Then I set up the scene with a camera and an area light on the redstone torch to make it look like it's glowing. Now with the position of the camera being decided, I carefully placed the trees and the ground to make it look like there's more forest than there actually is.

Now for Herobrine. I made him the same way as my other assets, but I only did his front because that is the only side I need to use. I positioned him to be half behind the tree in the foreground, staring into the camera.

I thought Herobrine's eyes weren't bright enough in his original texture, so I used two flat planes to create new white eyes. Then I applied an Ai Standard Surface to them and upped the weight level of the "Emission" setting in the attribute editor, this makes the object glow and emit its own light.

This is where I made the final render for this scene, but I couldn't stop here! I had some other ideas to make this scene look more like Herobrine, allow me to show you what I mean...

I dropped the render into Adobe Photoshop to add the iconic Minecraft fog. First I had to make a duplicate of the picture and crop Herobrine and the tree out, this puts them on their own layers so the fog can go behind them and create a depth effect.

Then I used a square and a filter called Gaussian Blur to achieve this soft cloud look. When I put the first fog behind Herobrine, it contrasted him too much. To solve that problem, I put another layer of fog in front of him and the tree. Now the fog looks much more believable.

Here's my final product from Photoshop. I made a copy and exported it as a .png, the best format type for images.

And here are both of my final products. Since they tuned out so well, I just had to submit both to this contest!