Chasing your newfound passion towards a career in 3D

How much effort do you put into post-production?

It depends on the project because for my day and night project, I hardly had any post-production, (except Light Mix if you count that as post production). But for my Winter Challenge project, I saved a lot of render time by adding fog and background to my render afterward. So for me, it depends on the background/environment to save render time.  

And for that, I like to work with open-exr in Photoshop which gives me even more control over my render and helps me control the different layers and make different iterations without having to re-ender. I also often have a z-depth pass on my renders, so I can play with a variety of focus areas if I haven't set it on the camera.

Your “Day and Night” project explores the way light interacts with various textures and colors. What is the narrative behind it?

For this project, I had references with a southern European feel. The mood was a vacation in a luxurious house but still with a local authentic feel to it. I wanted the backlighting of the day render to play with the details of the bed and backboard and focus your eyes on the left side of the picture. Whereas the night render has the focus on the right side of the render, specifically on the stone wall. It creates two focus areas in the same composition.

Both the renders have lights hit from different angles, as the reference picture had light bouncing on surfaces outside. I included that in my render because it makes it feel like there's something happening outside the room. I was imagining what object and material would bounce light like that and why it was from that angle, and it kept it interesting.

How did you decide on the different materials – using wooden beams for the ceiling, contrasting smooth and stone walls?

I did have a reference photo to go from, but I chose that reference with these materials as I liked the combination and the contrast between the rocky wall and the white wall, the dark floor against the light ceiling. There is a contrast on either side of the room and I wanted to include that in my render. 

The composition made that contrast even more clear as the camera angle almost positions the room straight to the viewer. The raw wood and stone also gave the combinations of the luxurious and southern local mood to it as I mentioned earlier.
 

What skill do you think is important in order to stand out as an arch viz artist?

If I only had to pick one skill, it would be mastering lighting and then composition. You can tell so much just from the lighting. You can be a skilled modeler, but with the wrong light, the scene looks flat and boring. The light really sells the scene and makes it believable and interesting.
 

What are you working on now?

At the moment I'm experimenting with an exterior city night scene that is proving to be a challenge to make it look realistic. I just started pre-production so I haven't made up my mind yet on where things will go.