Watch Alex Alvarez explore the making of ‘Gathering’ in his new free 150-minute Gnomon Workshop tutorial.

The Gnomon Workshop has released a new free 150-minute video by studio founder Alex Alvarez, showing how he created his personal project, ‘Gathering’ (pictured above).

Suitable for viewers of all levels of experience, the video gives a detailed, relatively non-technical overview of the process of creating a large-scale illustration – the original image was rendered for a 40″ canvas print.

The tutorial covers the entire workflow for creating the 6,000 x 3,750-pixel image, including layout, modelling, texturing, shading, lighting, rendering and compositing.

Software used includes Maya, ZBrush, BodyPaint 3D and Photoshop, with Onyx used for vegetation, Shave and a Haircut for hair and fur, and mental ray for rendering.

It’s also an awful lot of content to get for free: previous Alex Alvarez tutorials of the same type currently go for between $49 and $99 in The Gnomon Workshop’s online store.

Watch The Making of ‘Gathering’ from The Gnomon Workshop

Visit Alex Alvarez’s personal website

Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by The Gnomon School of Visual Effects.

Tags: Alex Alvarez, BodyPaint, free, illustration, Maya, Photoshop, The Gnomon Workshop, The Making of 'Gathering', Training, tutorial, video, ZBrush