It was just another silent, peaceful day in Babylon, the center of all cultures, 5,500 years ago when all of a sudden, clouds strangely started to gather over the Tower of Babel. Most people kept at their daily business, not even realizing that the very existence of the tower had angered God. The first to realize what was happening were the animals. They sensed something was wrong and begun panicking slightly before there were even signs of the chaos that was about to hit the tower. After a short while the sky started to shape in an unnatural way, being very bright on one side and dark on the other. This was in fact a revelation of God himself. At this point most people still didn't know what was going on and while some stood shocked and terrified, others were fascinated by the spectacular view. Some people still kept at their daily occupations ignoring all the signs. Moments later, the ground which the tower was built upon started trembling, increasingly shaking the very foundations of the tower. Thats the point when this image takes place - just about the last second the Tower of Babylon stood tall, when it just started cracking up (the lower stories beared the highest pressure) and a few moments before it collapsed and changed the face of human history forever.
While watching helplessly as mankinds' greatest creation began crumbling into nothing more than bricks and dust the confusion just got much greater as God started to spread different languages among the cultures resulting in anger and forever separating mankind into many groups.


[disclaimer] I did a lot of research about this story and about the tower design before I even began working on it. I've tried to keep things generally authentic but also to give them my own twist.


A few notes about the symbolism in this piece -


Peace - I think the whole concept of Babylon, the city where all the cultures lived together speaking the same language and worked together for a shared goal, is the strongest symbol of peace. When you think about it, This was the last time mankind ever lived in peace.

Advances/Innovation - The Tower of Babylon was probably one of mankinds greatest creations. It probably seemed impossible to create a few years before the construction begun, same as things and achievements we make today seemed impossible yesterday. I think this tower is a symbol of mankinds will to always push his boundaries and break the limits (even as far as to reach the height of God and maybe beyond it).

God - The bible is filled with stories about how mankind angered God and got punished for it but also were forgiven for their sins. I've tried to symbolize that in the sky and in the lighting: one side of the sky is dark and raging while the other is warm and "hopeful". The general lighting setup is the same - cold from one side and warm from the other. The end result of this story is the same: God was angry, but he decided to only shake the ground around the tower itself to bring it down and not to harm people who were far enough from it.



That is it !!
I would like to seriusly thank everyone who supported me on this in the past 2 months! the critique especially helps when working on a single frame for so long and losing objectivity.

good luck to everyone !

here it is compositted in.
need some feedback on it (more / less ?) cause I think I am totally losing objectivness over this piece allready :)

since the tower is just starting to crack up and crumble, I'm adding a little bit of dust to the bottom of the first floors (again, where the pressure is the strongest).

Just rendered another layer of dust.
This one is much "lower" than the first one. I figured most of the dust is closer to the ground (when everyone is running and the ground is shaking) so I made this layer.
It wont be a very noticable difference but it adds.

added some cracks all over the tower.
mainly in the lower stories where the pressure is higher.

fresh from the oven ...
Checked my other computer and it finnaly finished rendering (see the image how long it took o_0 ).

Unfortunatly I couldnt find a way to put this in without ruinning the composition so I'll be dropping this idea.
I'm gonna take this weekend to finalize this image and submit the final on saturday.

It is quite nice to have 2 computers to work on at the same time.
the above screenshot of the particles only showed 10% of the particles. I have set it to use quite alot of particles at a very VERY low density, resulting in a very soft and "dusty" look (as oppose to the solid crisp look). I am now rendering it at the full resolution and thats gonna take about 70 hours(!).
Meanwhile, I'm doing lots of general and local twaeks to this piece and I'll see in a few days how (if at all) to implement the spiral dust render.

I've added another slight fog pass to balance the image, did lots of color adjustments, started adding some local cracks to the tower(more to come) and added rays of light comming from the right. the rays are something I had in my mind for quite sometime. For me, if the blue lightning thing on the left symbolizes god's vengence, the rays on the right simbolize his love and forgiveness to mankind (after all, he never gives up on us).

I've decided its time to post a higher resolution image to better show the details so that I could get more specific crits and directions from you as I fear I may have lost my objectivness working on this piece for so long.
this image is 33% of the original resolution -
http://www.zivcg.com/babylon_med.jpg

I'm experimenting with an idea I had that could solve some of the issues I have.
its not gonna look exactly the way I am showing in the screen, but thats the idea.
kinda hard to tweak render good volumetrix in such high res.
I hope I get the results I want by sunday or I probably drop it and finalize the image.

I've been doing tons of tweaks and minor additions to the sky details. I'm afraid that by this point I might have lost my objectivness with this image and I dont wanna go overboard with the skies in general and especially with the effects on the right. I keep trying to limit myself not to get it overbright and to keep it fitting in.

here's a closeup on it and how it works with the entire composittion.
what do you think ?

I should mention that I'm gonna try to do something to the tower this weekend that might change the composittion alot, but most chances are I'll stick to what I got now (besides alot of more local tweakings).

Ok, this is what I got so far.
I was testing and trying to figure out what will work best for this image all weekend. I came to the conclusion that I cant do what I originally planned (with lots of fireballs thrown into the tower) because It will get the composittion too busy and mainly because I dont have enaugh time to get into the detail level I wanted if I did go ahed with it.
I'm actually stil trying to figure out what I wanna do with what I got now (considering I got 15 days left). I am pretty happy with it so I may not make any more major changes and focus on more local fixes and additions.