Tag Archive for: RenderCrate

Creating Dynamic Space Animations in 3D

Professional VFX and mo-graph artist Jonathan Winbush demonstrates how to create simple 3D space scene animations. He did it by using Cinema 4D, Unreal Engine, and After Effects. Additionally, all of the assets used came from ProductionCrate. These include 3D Space models, Sci-Fi Sound Effects, and our brand new Space HDRI’s.

First, he used Cinema 4D to place the camera, asteroids, and ship in 3D space. Next, he brings the project into Unreal Engine for adjusting the 3D materials & HDRI. Finally, he brings the rendered .EXR file into After Effects to composite and adjust the different passes.

You can see Jonathan’s full breakdown on the WINBUSH YouTube Channel. Be sure to follow him for more 3D content and tutorials. Sign up for a ProductionCrate membership to start download our space VFX assets.

Download Free Space and Planet HDRI Images – How to Create Space Environments in Blender

Download free space HDRI images for your 3D VFX project here.

ProductionCrate has released an incredible bundle of 100 space and atmosphere HDRIs for you to use in your 3D digital art and VFX. 10 of these are available to download for free today, and only require you to sign up for a free ProductionCrate account.

Getting to space in your 3D renders can be the most visually rewarding project an artist can work on. Capturing the grand curvature of the earth, the vast atmospheric clouds and endless stars in the sky serve as the best background in the universe, and now you’ll be able to access it for free. The free HDRI’s include:

Orbital 46 – Sunset
Orbital 45 – Sunset
Orbital 40
Orbital 38
Orbital 35
Orbital 34
Orbital 30 Sunset
Orbital 29 Sunset
Orbital 14
Orbital 10 Sunset

These free space HDRI’s are ready to download in 16K resolution, making their resolution perfect for cinematic renders that demand a high texture quality.

Download Earth from Space HDRI for your 3D renders and VFX

Download Earth from Space HDRI environment images

If you’ve worked in 3D artwork, you’ll most likely be familiar with HDRI images. These are specialized images that are designed to contain all of the information to illuminate a 3D scene. This is achieved by representing the colour and intensity of light coming from every direction and is used by a rendering engine to integrate a 3D object into the environment contained in the HDRI image. HDRI images are one of the foundations of all VFX projects, as lighting your 3D models to match the lighting of background footage is crucial to achieving a photorealistic result.

In this example, the spaceship illumination is automatically prepared, as the HDRI image contains a bright sun, as well as a soft blue light beneath (representing the light reflected from the planet).

Download Free Planet HDRI Environment Maps for your 3D renders and VFX

Capturing HDRI images is a tedious process. First, a camera will be positioned in the expected location of the 3D object (so that the light being captured accurately represents the conditions expected). By taking several photographs at varying exposures, it’s possible to avoid the clipping seen if a photo contained a shadow and the sun in the same frame. By doing this, the multiple images can be “stacked” together, with an algorithm automatically identifying which exposure levels contain the most information for each area of the picture. Additionally, the exposure information is embedded into the final result, meaning that while typical images have brightnesses ranging from 0 – 1, our combined “high dynamic range” image may spread from 0 – 1,073,741,824 (based on the OpenEXR specification). This process is repeated with the camera rotating enough times to capture 360 degrees of imagery, creating a spherical photo similar to those you encounter in Google Street View. The end result is an image that can be wrapped around an environment, projecting its light into a scene exactly how it would do in the real world.

While the process of creating these can be a laborious technical obstacle, the end result is an asset that can be added to any 3D scene instantly. This is why we created these space HDRI images, simulating an accurate appearance of the Earth from space for you to download now!

Download Orbital Space HDRI for your 3D renders and VFX

Granted, we did not go to space to capture these images, however, incredible attention to detail has been carried out to offer the most realistic and spectacular backgrounds for your spaceship scenes. Refusing to accept mediocre results is what pushed us to create truly unique HDRI images that are simply out of this world. In these 16K HDRI space images, you’ll see vast cloud structures, sunsets, physically accurate atmospheric scattering and the arching thin blue line between earth and space.

The 16K resolution of these space HDRI images provides an unparalleled level of detail with minimal impact on performance. Thanks to the high resolution of this environment map, you can zoom in up close to every cloud scattered in the sky with little loss of visual quality. The 360 degrees of content, combined with the 16K resolution, makes this the definitive space environment that offers your camera unlimited freedom of movement. Tilt up, pan left, zoom in, and witness an awe-inspiring view of Earth from space.

With incredible colour and exposure accuracy, anything that you add to your scene will be influenced by the light with pixel-perfect accuracy. Edges on your 3D models, whether it’s a spaceship, astronaut or asteroid, will catch the highlights of the blazing bright sun. Swathes of blue light received from Earth’s vast atmosphere provide vibrant fill light, softly illuminating the underside of your models. The pitch-black darkness of empty space will create unbeatable contrast and shadows. All of these features combined replicate the iconic lighting seen in space scenes from Star Wars, Gravity and Interstellar.

Download Space HDRI Environment Maps for your 3D renders and VFX

How to create a Space Scene in Blender

Adding space HDRI images to your 3D scenes is much simpler than you would expect. In most software, such as 3ds Max, Maya and Cinema4D, you first create a Sky or Dome light source. This sets up a source of light that comes toward your scene from every angle. We can then specify what colour each ray of light should be by simply using our space HDRI images as a texture. You may need to set the mapping to “spherical” so that it interprets the image’s coordinates correctly.

To create the space scene in Blender, you will first navigate to the Shading window. By changing your output from Object to World, you will be able to manipulate Blender’s background. Start by adding an Environment Texture node and use the file explorer to navigate to your downloaded space HDRI image. Once the Color output of the Environment Texture node is connected to the Background node, your HDRI image will be ready!

How to create a Space Scene in Blender - Material Setup

For best results, making your spaceship’s surface metallic and reflective will create the most immersive appearance. Seeing the reflections of Earth on the panels and details of your ship is an excellent way to tie the foreground and background of your artwork together, making them feel like one cohesive scene. Creating a bloom effect will also help the brightest parts of your image, such as the sun, appear to interfere with the lens for a truly photographic appearance.

Likewise, it is recommended to adjust the exposure and saturation of the space HDRI to steer your scene towards realism or stylized. Adding a bloom effect, which is built into Eevee’s rendering engine, is an easy way to simulate the bright lights of space bleeding through the camera lens.

How to create a Space Scene in Blender

ProductionCrate’s Youtube channel has uploaded a detailed tutorial on how to create space scenes in Blender. David presents several additional tricks that will then take your render to the next level, such as additional bounce lighting, bloom and how to customize the color of the planet.

If you need assets to populate your space scene with, ProductionCrate has a collection of free 3D spaceship models for you to explore. Additionally, our library of assets hosts astronauts, aliens, robots, asteroids, and other 3D models that are easy to download, set up and render.

Download Free Space HDRI for your 3D renders and VFX

Additionally, graphicsCrate hosts a unique collection of Nebula effects that can be added onto these space HDRI images for an incredible backdrop to your planet.

ProductionCrate is excited to see what you will be able to create with these free planet HDRI images. Whether you’re working on a blockbuster space film or a music video aiming to push the limits of creativity, ProductionCrate is here to make it possible.

Want to explore more content? Check out our entire collection of HDRI imagery here!

Download Free Planet HDRI Environment Maps for your 3D renders and VFX

 

Download Free 3D Models for your Epic Scenes

A few months ago we released the free 3D Castle Pack. Since then, over 10,000 creators have used it in their projects. We knew we’d have to go even bigger for our next free 3D assets kit. So we did.

Download the free 3D Models in the Industrial Kit and gain access to hundreds of amazing assets.

Download Free 3D Models

This pack contains tons of prefabricated builds to save you time and effort. Build your own mega-structures in minutes. Our prefabs are extraordinarily easy to use. Everything is modular. Constructing detailed scenes has never been so fun!

Download free 3d warehouse model

All downloadable 3D models are compatible with Blender, Cinema4D, Maya, Houdini and 3DSMax. The Unreal Engine Kit is reserved for our Pro Users, and is perfect if you’re looking for 3D Assets for Games, however you are free to convert the 3D Models to Unreal yourself.

Choose from 3D platforms, pipes, trusses, power supplies, ladders, buttons and lights. Build out your worlds in your program of choice to make some high-quality free 3D renders!

Download Free 3D Kit Assets

Find and download the best free 3D assets from RenderCrate and tag us in your projects!

Dropbox link below for media and press purposes only. Contact Niko@ProductionCrate.com for Access

Download High Resolution Images and Video of the Industrial Kit

Download Free 3D Spaceship Models

We have 5 new 3D Spaceship models available for download. Get these models for free to use in your projects.

These can be instanced hundreds of times to fill an entire futuristic night sky, or scattered around a newly terraformed planet. To provide more flexibility and creativity, we’re including 2 different skins for each of these 5 ships.

 

These are part of the popular Vehicles Category on RenderCrate. Find more 3D spaceships, cars, trucks, airplanes and more!

 

here is where you can download free 3d models of a scifi spaceship

 

Use various planet textures, Sci-Fi corridors or satellite models from the 3D Space category and bring your project to the next level. Don’t forget, you can find every SciFi sound effect you’ll need on ProductionCrate!

 

 

Free 3D Facial Expression Blendshapes Pack

We recently discovered this treasure trove of free Facial Blendshapes provided by the Institute for Creative Technology at USC.

This pack has over 150 facial blendshapes and is released under the MIT license. The pack will help  you to create completely customizable characters with their amazing presets.

Mike Smith, a 3d and  VFX Artist at ProductionCrate.com shows us how we can harness the power of this collection in this video.

 

Start by shrink-wrapping the generic neutral base mesh onto a custom head model. Apply the shrink-wrapped head as a blend-shape. Any unique character can be set up for a realistic facial performance with very little time or effort.

Free Castle 3D Model Kit – Download Now

Download the free photorealistic 3D castle kit for your 3D projects here.

For a limited time, you can access an incredible 3D castle kit to use in your projects with no price at all. With over 60+ unique modular 3D assets, this pack provides an unlimited degree of freedom to create the perfect medieval empire.

We value the countless benefits of modularity for packaged 3D content. This takes away the tedious time-consuming work of creating every single wall, doorway and window by hand. Instead, you’re provided with easy to use inter-compatible assets; leaving you only with the task of piecing together your artistic vision. Do you need a tall castle? Just duplicate the available modules and stack them up! Do you want your castle to circle around your kingdom? Pick your module and duplicate it with an array! The possibilities are endless.

The kit includes three main categories of content, each featuring a diverse range of incredible 3D models to help you construct any castle imaginable.

Download Epic 3D Castle Models for Free

Castle Structure 3D Models

These are the backbones of your fortresses. Spanning from small humble homes to enormous palaces, you’re in total control over the composition of your kingdom. Each of them carries a unique style to offer you the freedom to go down any direction you wish to take. You can combine the large circular kingdom with the irregular sprawling tower to create an even more sophisticated arrangement; there’s no limit to how far these castles can grow.

Churches, cathedrals, manors and mansions are part of the medium-scale structures found in this category. These fit perfectly in the areas surrounding your castle, however, you are free to seamlessly merge these with the main body of the castle for further customization. Despite them being smaller in size, you’ll find the detail in the geometry and textures are of unbelievable quality for a free asset.

This collection has been pre-built using the 3D models found in the Castle_Components file, which features a large array of various components such as castle windows, castle doors, chimneys, balconies, rooftops and walls. By using the highly detailed premade castle structures, you’ll be saving yourself the trouble of assembling the 3D castle models from scratch.

For maximum flexibility, these buildings have been designed to appear special from every angle. This allows you to rotate, scale and position multiple copies of the same castle structure while avoiding introducing any visual repetition. No longer are you faced with the artificial appearance seen in many 3D renders, your castles will feel natural and built from the ground up with originality in every corner.

Create massive 3D Castle Models for Free in Blender Download Large Medieval Castle Models for Free

Not only are we including the most impressive large-scale castle structures, but to cover the surroundings of your kingdom we built out several small 3D medieval homes. Fit for a peasant, these 3D medieval houses feature wooden doorways, a selection of windows, a tiled rooftop and even a chimney.

Download Medieval Home 3D Models for your 3D Projects

From the beginning, we understood the importance of designing these to be friendly towards procedural city generation. By following a style that found the perfect balance between uniqueness and similarity, these medieval homes can be instanced thousands of times and produce a city that feels truly authentic. The minimal geometry combined with the high level of texture detail makes this the perfect model to use in your medieval city; maximising visual quality while minimising the impact on performance both in the render and while using the viewport.

Scattering and instancing is a common practice found in many 3D software, such as Blender, 3ds Max, Cinema4D and Maya. This takes in a selection of objects and duplicates them on the surface of another. In the case of a 3D digital medieval city, we would want the surface to be a large landscape in the form of a 2D plane. Setting your desired number of feudal houses to a high value such as 3,000 will immediately and automatically place this many buildings around your scene.

Advanced implementations such as Blender’s geometry nodes will provide a multitude of precise controls to fine-tune your scattering. You can control the variation in size, rotation, scale and even introduce advanced filters to break up the uniformity by adding clusters of large-scale buildings, or even trees. All of the exposed parameters can immediately change the way your city is generated, allowing you to identify the perfect settings for your artwork’s vision.

Castle Empire 3D Model - Free Download

Castle Wall 3D Models

No kingdom is safe without an impenetrable range of defences around it. Taking inspiration from real-world castles walls, we’re offering the most versatile medieval castle wall kit you’ll ever need.

The castle wall category features three different styles of walls. Firstly, a plain and minimal wall featuring a basic walkway across the top, providing suitable defence for any small town or village. Additional wooden fortifications are the highlight of the second option, making it a great choice for a new settlement or a town in the middle of a forest. The closed roof gives this wall extra height and stands out from the rest. Thirdly, a reinforced medieval wall with strengthened columns of brick lining the outside. Shadows cast by this depth-filled wall structure make it the perfect companion for large scale castles and kingdom walls. Each theme then itself has a counterpart that includes a castle entrance, such as wooden gates or a metal portcullis.

Along the top of the castle wall 3D models are an array of parapets, strategically placed for soldiers to hide behind when sheltering from projectiles. Your army of archers can line up along the top of these walls and fire their arrows down into the oncoming army. Additional battlements, such as arrowslits, are textured into the walls to offer phenomenal realism and detail into your 3D castle siege diorama.

Piecing these together has been designed to be an effortless process akin to building a model railway. Simply slot together the tileable castle wall 3D models, and duplicate your pieces endlessly to create any perimeter required. Each vertex of the 3D medieval wall assets is targeted precisely to match the adjacent piece, leaving you with a perfectly sealed model. Each theme features a set of three angle variations: a straight wall, a 45-degree bend and a 90-degree bend. This delivers exceptional flexibility when it comes to expanding your castle walls to perfectly fit your landscape.

We recommend duplicating the straight castle walls into a long array, and using a modifier to force this long structure to procedurally bend and follow a spline. This spline, unlike the discrete angle variations, can twist, turn and arch with an infinite degree of freedom. Changes made to the spline instantly update the deformed wall structure, making it a powerful solution for medieval map creators.

Download castle wall 3D models for freeDownload castle wall 3D models for free

Castle Tower 3D Models

Add scale to your castle with these versatile castle tower 3D models. These fortified 3D castle turret models come in all shapes and sizes, and help your structures stand out from their surroundings with their immense vertical size. These can be placed inside your kingdom, or even on the walls themselves. Whether you need a dungeon, beacon or watchtower, your needs will be met by choosing from the huge selection of castle tower 3D models.

The free castle turret models come in 3 main categories. Square shaped towers offer brutal sharp minimalistic corners that create impressive shadows in your 3D renders. Round towers offer similar proportions in a circular shape, creating a beautiful gradient between the lit and shaded parts of the tower thanks to the incredibly realistic brick textures. Finally, the largest towers are three times as wide as the others, making them ideal for the central towers within your castle walls.

For maximum blending into your scene, the base of these towers and many other 3D models in this free castle kit are textured with a dirty surface. This helps you integrate it into your scene and not worry about setting up custom decals or ambient occlusion. You only need to worry about the composition of your castle, instead of any technical maintenance.

Download free 3D Medieval Tower models for FreeDownload castle towers and spires for freeDownload 3D Castle Towers for Free for your 3D Projects

Texture Variations

To immediately make this pack 4 times greater, we’ve included a set of material options to use in your castle. Immediately change the entire appearance of your 3D castle by swapping in the textures from your favourite set. We’ve included light bricks, brown bricks, dark bricks and old bricks. Each option was photo scanned and processed into photorealistic materials, all featuring metallic, roughness and normal maps at an incredible 8K resolution. The distinct differences between these options make them perfect for establishing a different setting, time period and tone for your 3D artwork; whether you need to portray your castle as a prosperous empire or a dark fortress.

Photoscanned Castle Model Texture Materials

USD Compatible

A new industry standard is arriving that promises to become the next innovation in file sharing. USD, initially developed by Pixar, aims to become the most powerful file format by encoding all the necessary information important to maintaining the integrity of a 3D asset. This information includes scale units, orientation, materials, textures, hierarchy and countless others properties. While USD compatibility is still in development for most 3D software, it’s rapidly evolving and improving in software such as Blender, Cinema4D, Maya and 3DS Max. You’ll immediately notice the benefits of importing through USD by how quickly the process makes your workflow. Just hit import, and your 3D castle will have all materials and textures automatically linked – no need to import a million files by hand!

ProductionCrate endeavours to provide the highest quality 3D models for artists worldwide, enabling unlimited creativity for all. Releasing this incredible castle kit for free is a chance to thank our community for supporting our mission to change digital art forever. We would love to see how you use these, so make sure to tag us on Twitter and Instagram with your artwork.

If you would like to see more 3D model kits, check out our 3D city road kit.

Download Free 3D Models for VFX Artists

We released our biggest 3D Pack ever, the Modular Kingdom Pack. Download this Free 3D Collection of castle, buildings, walls and structures to use in your Visual Effects and filmmaking projects. RenderCrate  is a library full of free and Pro 3D models that you can download. Anything not marked with a star is 100% free! Find weapons, sports gear, vehicles and characters from our ever growing library.

If you’re looking for more 3D content for free, here’s a list of 5 wonderful resources. We’ll keep adding more to RenderCrate, so make sure to check back regularly.

 

  • Quixel Megascans library is absolutely massive, and packed full of high-quality 3D content. Their focus is on photogrammetry / scanned assets, so all the content photo-realistic. They recently acquired RD Textures, bringing some of the best scanned 3D Materials to their library. Quixel is free to use with Unreal Engine, they also have free assets to use with any other software

 

  • AmbientCG is a growing library of generative landscapes and photo-scanned content. From the creators of CC0-Textures (now under AmbientCG) this 3D library continues to provide free and reliable content!

 

  • SketchFab is a community driven platform, which means 2 things. First, there is a ton of content. Thousands of amazing assets are available to download for free. The only downside is not all licenses or quality of models are created equal. Make sure you understand the license associated with your model before using in any project.

 

  • Smithsonian 3D Has an open access to a massive library of 3D content available for download. The quality ranges broadly, but the scanned assets are extremely unique. Check the usage conditions for each model, as they do vary.

 

  • TurboSquid is another user submitted site. Since ShutterStock acquired them, the site seems to be going through some revisions. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that they continue to provide 3D models. Usage rights will vary per-model, so make sure to check before using any downloads.

 

Find more 3D Models on RenderCrate.com 

 

Download 3D Monster Effects

Mike the Monster Making Machine has been busy! He’s made you several new 3D models to download and use in your projects. All 3 of these creepy creatures are Mixamo compatible for some animating. Let me introduce you to your new friends.

First off is the Wolfman! He’s around 6’2, 315lbs, and likes long walks in the moonlight. Find him here

Download 3D Werewolf

 

Our next monsters is the Goatman. His diet is mostly ogranic, fresh human flesh. Just look at that smile! Click here to download this charmer

 

Download 3D Goatman Here

 

And finally, the Vampire! While he has no wings, he’ll still sweep you off of your feet (kicking and screaming). Perfect for cave-monsters and underworld dwellers, find this monster here

Download 3D Vampire Model

Download royalty free 3d vampire model

Download 3D Retro Technology Pack

Download this incredible Retro Technology Pack with a Computer, Laptop, Computer Mouse, Printer and Floppy Disk! These amazingly detailed 3D assets come with PBR textures for ultimate realism.

download 3d floppy disc

 

Use these 3D assets for your motion design, NFT project, Youtube videos and films!

 

Get instantaneous realistic results with minimal effort. This is just the latest in our growing collection of 3D assets, make sure to check back in the future for more amazing content!

Download Modular City Road 3D Models – Tutorial

Download the 3D City Road Models here.

Along every 3D modeller’s journey, there is an attempt to create a 3D city.

Several fatiguing hours later, it becomes clear that this project is no walk in the park. One of the most time-consuming steps in such a project is creating the roads, where everything from pathways, streetlights, curbs, lanes, props and markings have to be taking into consideration. Building a 3D city is a time-consuming endeavour!

We’re offering the most comprehensive solution to 3D roads for your city scenes. This bundle contains over 60+ road modular tiles that can be pieced together instantly, allowing you to construct your cities foundations within minutes instead of weeks. Whether you are producing blockbuster VFX, architectural renders or games, this 3D road kit is for you.

Download City Road Tile 3D Models

City roads are complex, which is why this bundle contains a vast variety of road types. These come in 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 lane variations, giving you the flexibility to piece together everything from bustling city centres to suburban alleyways. Changing from a 6-lane road to a 4-lane road is as simple as inserting a lane conversion module.

Lanes can also intersect with our 3D crossroad tiles, helping you construct the iconic grid of cities such as New York and Los Angeles. These come with every possible combination of road types on offer, such as 2×2, 3×4, 3×6 and more.

Download 3D City Road Tiles 3D Models

To save you even more hassle, these 3D road tiles have also been constructed with low-poly props such as streetlights, road signs, traffic cones, bus stops, bins and more. This introduces instant depth and detail to bring your city to life.

These are provided in FBX format, helping retain the real-world scale and easy-to-setup materials for your project.

How to use the 3D City Road Kit

After downloading the bundle, import the “RenderCrate-Road_Tiles_Individual_Detailed.FBX” file to your 3D scene. Make sure that your Up direction is set to the Z-axis. If your objects come in flipped at a 90° angle, no worries! Just flip them back upright.

We’ve designed this road kit to fit together seamlessly. You will need to set your 3D scene to “snap” objects into position at units of 3-feet. This is so that when you move your road tiles, they will slot into place at discrete intervals, similar to toy bricks. Just remember to set your units to feet, and your grid to 3-foot spacing. Here are some useful tutorials that cover this in Blender, Cinema4D, and 3ds Max.

Road Tile Materials

The entire collection contains 3 basic materials (Road, Path and Objects). Slot in the photorealistic textures we have provided, and within a minute you will have the entire collection of 60+ tiles sharing the same consistent appearance. This means you can adjust the darkness, reflectivity, glossiness and displacement of the road and have the changes conveniently apply to the entire city.

You should now be able to start copying roads from the neatly arranged collection of modules and piece them together.

3D City Road Preset Models

It doesn’t end there! We’ve included 4 various pre-built city road templates to save you even more time. These come with “building seeds” that can be used to easily scatter buildings in the correct positions. This can be done using a proxy instancer or a particle system, whatever you feel most comfortable with.

Download 3D City Road Model Presets

To further expand your virtual world, you can check out our highway road modules and various street props.

We’re proud to be building the most comprehensive collection of VFX, sound effects, graphics and 3D models to help you build the impossible. With constant updates to our library of over 10,000+ assets, you can become part of the growing community of creatives improving their projects by joining ProductionCrate today.