The Concept

The Gates of Hell was created for the 38th 3Dluvr contest entitled "the gates", which got 3rd place. I was wondering how many people in the contest would make the gates of hell and how would be the most obvious representation. I remembered Rodin's the gates of hell. I wanted to make the gates of hell but not the gates of hell of the hell itself, I wanted one gate sculpted in stone, but still very scary. Something high detailed, like baroque ornaments.

One of the first concept I drew the umbral with a lot of serpents



(the serpents has a lot of symbology in mythology and religions), then with confused details of rock and mystic ornaments and finally with a lot of nude human bodies representing their souls trying to move up to the paradise (or get out the hell). Mixing the concepts and re-elaborating some parts, I got the whole gate concept finished.

References

Planning stages

The planning is generally an underestimated process of execution, but in the gates of hell I had to take care in a special way as it was cleary very complex to manage (the final concept had the umbral filled with human figures, and a human figure requires a mininum number os polys to be recognized)

The first main problem I had was about human figures and how to manage the polycount and still position the figures, arrange elements and the realtime viewport continues at an acceptable frame rate. The other problem was the time, I had the contest deadline to meet. So I decided to start from the most complex part, I started modelling the human figure and use the layer system to manage. Is crucial to solve the problemas when working with complex projects.

continued on next page >