Making of "Lemon Slash"

When I was putting myself to work on "Lemon slash" I was working on commercial visualizations and because of lack of time - I didn't have too much free time. One evening I decided to make something else to relax. The idea was to make something small, but very detailed and unusual in just one evening. A slashed fruit was a good idea.

THE VERY BASICS - GATHERING REFERENCES

First of all I had to gather some references.  The main objective here is to find an image with the main shape of a lemon, the cross section and some images showing various parts of it. Try always to select a good reference to get a realistic, but "catchy" shape of the upcoming model.

  

MODELING

First of all I started to make a whole lemon, which I would slash later. So after putting on a plane my image of the main shape of a lemon, I started to draw a smooth line along the border so the shape reminds the one from the reference. There's no need to draw along the whole border - simply just draw half of it and use lathe modification to turn it around obtaining that way the lemon shape. Now it's very important to focus on the shape. For my taste, the obtained shape was very stumpy, so I needed to scale it a little.

After obtaining an interesting shape, I needed to get rid of the regularity so the look were more natural. For this I used Paint deformation on my polygon shape making both ends of the lemon and some wavy irregularities painting with my brush along the surface. After making the irregularities, I use the relax brush and turbosmooth modification to have nice and smooth lemon shape. Here, to tell the truth I could use Zbrush, but like I said - the idea was to make a quick artwork, so I used everything useful that 3DS Max offers.

Have in mind, that at one end we need to make the stem. Also the bulge under him looks a bit different. After modeling the bulge of the lemon, I began with a sphere to make the stem. I also used the simple tool of paint deformation and some noise modification to obtain a stem-like object which I would paste to the end of the lemon.

Now that you are here, you could use Zbrush to make the surface of the lemon - but I did it through the shading.

SHADING

I wanted to make the material of a lemon through shading without the need to use textures. For this I tried to focus on every part of the shading. For the diffuse color I used a falloff material of Distance Blend type in which I found fresh lemon colors.
Tip: If you have a problem finding a color, you can always import an image to 3ds max and take it through "sample Screen Color".

As for the reflections I used only fresnel reflections like in the picture.

Now the main "attraction" of the lemon - the lemon peel. For this I used Bump and Displacement. Bump with noise material for noisy/irregular surface, and Displacement with cellular material for the peel.

Now that I had the lemon peel ready and steady, to keep it natural I needed to make some parts turned green - mainly at the bottom where the stem is. To obtain that kind of effect I used VrayBlendMtl where the base was my material from above and a coat material (same as lemon peel, but without bump or displace, and with a green falloff in the diffuse) with VrayDirt in the blend amount. This time doubled for a better effect of the green part. Having in mind, that the stem interacts a little with the lemon - there will be more green color there than in the rest of the lemon. Same goes for the other end, where the wire is focused.

For a better effect of the lemon peel - I used again the base material as coat material with a darker diffuse and the displacement cellular map as blend amount. This gives us a darker porous surface.
VERY IMPORTANT - the diffuse color should be just a bit darker, not too different of the one from base material.

The Shading is almost done. Just need the stem material. For this one I used a Gradient map with green/brown colors in the diffuse and reflection channel. Reflection glossiness changed to 0.7. Seems it worked fine for me. Also used a little bump with a noise material to get more irregularities on the stem.

Applying all the above I used only UVW Mapping with Box Type (normally I would use a spherical type or unwrap mapping but this time... I didn't. It just didn't give me the same results as box did).

STUDIO, LIGHTS, CAMERA - ACTION!

The scene setup is pretty simple. I made a sheet-like object (similar to the ones used in real studios). with a spline which I extruded after. Applied a very basic material with just a little gradient on the diffuse channel.

The light setup need to express the lemon peel and make it catchy. For that I used 2 lights from behind the lemon (one above, one below) and one from behind the camera to light up a little the front. This way I could show the consistency and reflectivity of the lemon peel.

The camera is really basic. I just increased the focal lenght to 70mm and zoomed the image to flat a bit the lemon. F-number changed to 1.8 (worked fine for me) and unchecked Vignetting. Voila!

RENDER SETTINGS

I don't use gamma correction, so the Gamma/LUT setup is unchecked (Rendering -> Gamma/LUT setup...). For the rest... I will let the images below speak for themselves.

SLASH IT!

With the whole lemon done - now we can slash it!
For this I converted to poly once again the whole lemon, and selected half of it (face selection). After detaching it, I placed both parts (with the stem!) in a "commercial pose" to show the interior of the lemon. Need to close the hole after slashing it, so I just selected the border - extruded by 0 units and scaled it down then cap it. Selected the border once again and chamfered it with a few segments (4-7) for better results.

Now I just had a dilemma - or I could model it, or making it through a texture. Keeping the basic idea of making it fast - I went with the texture. For this I had to find a really good photo of a lemon interior and make it through photoshop to get it out and making other masks for a good render result (keeping all the time, that it will be the main part of the visualization!)
.

After the process of making the texture, I've selected the faces of the slashed part of the lemon and applied the new material (watch out for the borders ! apply it that way so the displacement map doesn't go beyond the edges too much).

LAST DETAILS

To make the slash scene look more realistic - I made some water drops in the air by using Super Spray particle system as shown and placed it so there were drops near the camera and far beyond the lemon. Doubled the Super Spray object and made a bit more drops in the middle of two halves so it gain a bit more expression. It will look very cool with blured and focused drops in the air!

I also did some drops on the lemon interior, so it looks more juicy. For that I made some spheres which I deformed using Soft Selection on the vertices.

The water drops have a simple material of water witch a bit more reflection to gain some more detail.

RENDER IT! AND POST-PROCESS IT!

For the final retouch I used all the vray passes to adjust color and light correction. Added also some gradient maps and individual curves, exposure and color balance correction.

The final touch is for Frischluft lenscare! I use this one in Adobe After Effects. I used 2 zdepth passes (one for front blur, other for back blur) and here it is!

I hope you enjoyed the making of this simple but detailed scene as I did making it. The idea was to make it fast and show how an evening is long enough, to make something unusual.
If you have any doubts or comments you would like to share - feel free to contact me.

Be creative!
Chris John

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ChrisJohnCG
Portfolio: http://chrisjohn.cgsociety.org
Tel.: +48 695 042 797
Mail: k.debski123@gmail.com