And so......
Life and other projects have demanded that only 1 garden exists in this video for now though there are 5 in progress.
Time is against me.
For now I've compiled this suite of pans and outs because it needed to "be" in whatever current form it's evolved to become.
It's a short walk in history through a garden that was designed 2230 years ago at the rise of the Qin dynasty.
More to come.
This, and about 30 other Chinese ink drawn bamboo paper plans, deserve to come to life as never before and I have been in communication with the Beijing University for some time on the project.
Exacting and Respectful of Chinese Historians.
I've taken exquisite care to (as perfectly as I can regarding the sketchy drawing) recreate the plants and elements positioning as drawn, their scale and size and while I don't know what plants they were, BioSphere and the ability to make what you need from primitives in iClone means that 99% of the time you're never short of what's required and close to what's needed.
Evolutionary pause...
If you recall I initially tried to use EarthSculptor and failed because resolutionary output was miserable so I shelved all this until iClone caught up.
Later, iClone did evolve and allowed superior landmass sculpting with height mapping.
My Highlights...
The iClone crew will have seen this many times, or most of it, but my favourite and most successful elements of the production are...
1. The randomly created lawn and compressed perspective on distant mountains.
Took me a long time to hide tiling over such an enormous landmass. B2M to the recue. (3 masses actually, ghosted together.)
2. The night time lanterns attracting particle flies and moths and the night-time lake surface with skimming mosquitos.
3. The atmospheric control we have now in iClone which turns any scene or take into something magical and radiant.
4. The effectivity of mist planes and hi-res skies.
5. The continual 50% overlay of tooned output. I didn't want total tooning, not total "reality" rendering. I wanted a pleasant soft mixture of both. So everything had to be output three times in three different styles.
A) So with A.O.,
B) I.B.L. and
C) H.D.R. with
D) 'Tooning using
E) visible and invisible intersection lines
... we have a diverse ability to incredibly and accurately stylise and control output in ways you cant imagine until you sit and watch their results.
The value of graduated transparentised layering.
Layering each take at varying degrees of transparency allowed me to achieve a wonderful half way mark with everything I wanted to see that encroached tooning and normal. Perfect.
Study, study and more study...
It comes across as simple...... but believe me there's been a massive mountain of long winded research and technique to try and do these wonderful priceless drawings justice and I'm the first.
Also, "uncomplicated" is an essence required in the gardens spirituality.
I haven't seen this done before so I have no cornerstones to work on.
The other gardens are enormous compared to this and just need planting out now.
Wait and see.
Well done Reallusion. Well done Mike. Well done us. 
We're heroes. 
And thanks to so many of the Iclone crew who have helped in so many respects with land modelling, graphic theory and technique. Mike provided the Chinese Low-Poly Characters which, on my previous struggling computer, were a Godsend.
Armstrong.
Edited
10 Years Ago by
Armstrong