Initiation EP by Styx - Album Cover Concept

Another album cover commission, this piece was quite challenging in the end, however I managed to pull off something pretty awesome. For this one the musician had the idea of having the a rose in the middle of a river, in which I wanted to elaborate on this by making it themed on their artist pseudonym, Styx.

I was presented with a few challenges, first of all was getting a decent water shader (which in the end you can't really see anyway) and trying to fill space in the top half of the cover. Being someone who loves messing with effects, I started playing with the post processes again in Unity, the volumetric fog was a nice touch, but was missing something in the empty air. Funny thing is, it had completely skipped my mind that the point of volumetric fog' s purpose is to interact with lighting, and I just happened to accidentally place a spotlight in the center of the image, which gave off a nice glow effect through the fog, combined with a few more spotlights and messing with the color curves editor, I managed to come up with a decent effect. Another part that skipped my mind was how intensive this process was on the hardware, and boy oh boy was 6 fps tricky to capture on a laptop.

Most of the 3D models are not my own, however were used with permission or were free assets.

Thanks to CRY.NN aka Styx for requesting the piece;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYKb4aXROL0&ab_channel=MadnessFM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30DtF-Ra7NI&ab_channel=MadnessFM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqxsEVb8Zsg&ab_channel=MadnessFM
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYpIqfU5mw2_OgL73qr7Zng
https://www.instagram.com/cry_nn/