I've been interested in the concept of Speed Renders for some time now. I recently downloaded some great Speed Painting tutorials and they've helped me start to shape a 3D version of the same sort of thing. Speed Rendering is like Speed Painting, only using 3D software instead of Photoshop or Painter. The idea is to be able to quickly create a 3D image as a concept development tool.

David Levy is one great Speed Painter. His portfolio is pretty awesome. My last two renders, Cloud Carrier and Entrance to Syntron were created using very fast techniques, fully composed and rendered in only a few hours.

A key component in Speed Renders is the appearance of very small details, which fool the eye into thinking there is more there than appears. Transparency helps. I used GridModeler to create most all the transparent maps for these scenes.

Levy has a great render called "Gallactic Worm" which is wonderful. IMO, it's a prime candidate for a 3D Speed Render, so I knocked out a Vue7 version of it last evening to learn more about what it takes to do a Speed Render. It's shown below. Please know mine is not original material, but a copy done in 3D-- all the composition, lighting and concept credit is Davids. I just tried to see if I could copy it and come close to a 'speed' feel. Not sure I succeeded.

Some notes: All background terrains are very small 128x128 resolution. The water and roads are alpha planes with quick scribbles for the features, floating slightly above the ground plane, and with cast shadows turned off. This uses a standard atmosphere (more control over color) and GI. There's a large mountain off screen to the left to cast the foreground shadow.

I'm not too happy with the foreground building complex, so I know I need more work there. But overall, for a quickie, it's a start.

Cool picture Chipp!  I think yours looks better than the original. 

Very good, definitely better than the original! One thing I don't like much about speed painting is the lack of details and precision. I know the whole concept of speed painting is not about details but rather about the overall concept. But still, I like details. Like someone said, "God is in the details".
Your image has details, it has precision. The original hasn't. Maybe the details and precision in your image are all an illusion, but a good one it is.

How long did you take to do this, excluding the render time?

Thanks for the comments.

Probably took me 4 hours from start to finish. The render was 33% larger and I shrunk it in Pshop for this forum.

Frankly, I prefer David's image much more. But, of course taste is subjective. Artur and I have discussed this previously ;-)

I started out with the atmosphere, ground plane and the mountains. It's much easier to control the sky color using standard atmosphere. Once that was done, I added the terrain 'launch pad' then added the rivers and road planes.

The foreground buildings is a single bitmap driven terrain with a primitive based ecosystem on top of it. I added some lighting textures as well as some refelective maps to spice it up a bit.

I'd prefer a better foreground and I also like David's color scheme better. I ended up using a couple point lights to 'brighten' up the middle ground.

I forgot to say, I really like how the light and shadow are distributed in your image. Again, better than the original, IMHO.

Hmm, yes, I also prefer the color scheme of the original, now that you mention it.

Yes, taste is very subjective. :-) Each one of us sees an image in a completely different way. This is influenced by so many different things from our lifes. I often think that I have this fixation for details because I worked for many years as a programmer, where attention to details is vital.

Very good idea and nice image too! Hope to continue and see what next with this idea