How to Create Your Own Silent Hill in Blender and Photoscan

“In my restless dreams, I see that town. Silent Hill.”

Chances are, you were shocked by the eerie atmosphere of Silent Hill game. Or maybe you watched the movie and it touched you.

If you are hooked by Silent Hill, wouldn’t it be cool if you can recreate it in artwork?

But how?

You will be surprised how easy it is. You just need to make a 3D scan of your own city in Photoscan and then add fog in Blender.

Steps of the Tutorial:

1. Scout a Creepy Location

01 silent hill location

2. Wait For a Shitty Weather

02 cloudy weather

3. Go to Location and Take Photos

go-to-location-02

 

4. Process Photos in Photoscan

03-photoscan

5. Import 3D Model Into Blender

 

 

04-blender-import

6. Decimate

05-decimate

7. Add a Light

 

07 add a light

8. Unleash the All-devouring Fog

08-unleash-fog

You May Also Like:

fog tutorial

Classy Dog Photoscan Tutorials and Tips

Be sure to check Classy Dog Youtube channel for in-depth Photoscan tutorials.

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34 comments

  1. PhotoScan looks like a truly phenomenal program. Now to find myself $179 usd.

    Plus maybe a bit more ram for such density of meshes πŸ˜‰

    • http://ccwu.me/vsfm/ + meshlab and simple reconstruction like in this example will look just as good. and you get better control over the process actually.

        • visualFSM can export raster layers to meshlab, then you can project them to reconstructed mesh. so baiscally yes, you can handle texture with this workflow.

  2. Love step #2. I don’t think anyone could have said it better Gleb.

  3. Java

    “Step 2, wait for shitty weather” Lovin it!

  4. Pingback: How to Create Your Own Silent Hill in Blender and Photoscan

  5. Guest

    No mention, but I assume you used the 179 version? Not much information on their site what the difference is. They state they have Standard and Professional, and when you look at their license it is Stand – Alone and Educational. Not very clear. Do you know?

  6. Jon Bowden

    Can I ask what camera you used?

    • Sure, Jon. It was just some low-end Canon (around 200$) πŸ™‚

      • Jon Bowden

        Cheers

  7. Interesting workflow but honestly wouldn’t it have been quicker and easier to shoot some pics of the building and then model a mesh / UV texture – as its essentially a box? A cleaner and faster quad mesh rather than a gazillion triangles πŸ˜‰

  8. Ian

    What did you light the scene with? Just a sun lamp?

  9. Ross Franks

    Awesome tutorial as usual and am excited to give it a go (just got some food photographed). What I’d like to see next is if you can retopologise the mesh so that it’s low poly but yet easily apply the texture that was made for the high poly model.

    • Ross, you can retopologize mesh (imported from Photoscan) in Blender, then export it back to Photoscan and rebuild the texture.

      • Ross Franks

        Oh thanks Gleb I’ll have to try that out, is it fairly easy to do or is there a tutorial that shows you how to do it? (I’m still waiting on my install download email from agisoft)

  10. AP

    Cheers Gleb ! As always mind blowing tutorial πŸ™‚ I got idea for you… It would be cool if you create images library so we could use them for photoscan. Lot of ppl would pay for this I think !

  11. Sven

    Thanks Gleb!!
    Discovered you website recently (fresh new Blender user coming from Maya) :).

    Just so you know you can decimate right inside Photoscan (the best solution for Photo based photogrammetry to me) and it works really well.

    My personal workflow is:
    -Decimate in photoscan
    -Import in blender and Retopo the object/scene (blender is so good at this!!!)
    -Use the Bake option in the render tab (with selective to active) to project back the textures from the scan to the retopo!!

    Loving your serie on lightning.

    • Nice workflow!
      We can also do this way:
      – Import in blender and retopo the object
      – Export .obj
      – Import retopologized .obj back to Photoscan project
      – Regenerate textures

  12. Jean-Marc

    Again, awesome ideas. When I import my model in Blender it is properly textured under the Blender Render but if I switch to Cycles Render the texture dissapears. What am I missing?

  13. Stevo

    Cheers Gleb! Here’s what I made of your tutorial. Thanks & keep up the good work!

    • Stevo, I like it! Thanks for sharing πŸ™‚ What city is this?

      • Stevo

        It’s my hometown SchwΓ€bisch Hall, Germany. Beautiful city! If you ever have the chance, come visit! Especially if you like old medieval buildings.
        Here’s a pic without fog. πŸ˜‰

  14. Gabor Somogyi

    It’s fantastic Gleb, I just got started with photoscanning! But what if I was to decimate it far enough to get it to a game engine? All work well except the unwrapping is messed and I can’t seem to be able to bake normals/curvature/AO etc. off of the Photoscan generated high poly to a retopologized low-poly (like I normally do) :/ Any advice/hint would be appreciated! πŸ™‚

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