Making Of 'White Street Loft'

Introduction

The image was created to improve my overall rendering skills. Every time I have a moment to myself I like doing projects like this one to learn new techniques and watch how my work is improving. Since I've been working on exterior shots lately I really wanted to make an interior view for a change. After browsing a lot of architecture dedicated websites I came across the White Street Loft by WORKac. Clean design and unusual solutions immediately caught my eye; that was something I was looking for. I decided to render the living room area because of its interesting composition with the picture frames and column in the middle.

Modeling

The basic model was done in Archicad, using reference photos from the WORKac website. It was a very raw model and it needed a lot of work in Cinema 4D (Fig.01) like chamfering edges and adding details such as window hinges, handles, lamps etc. (Fig.02).

Fig. 01

Fig. 01

Fig. 02

Fig. 02

The next step was modeling the furniture. It was all modeled by me using Cinema 4D basic tools.

Sofa

To model one section of the column sofa I used the sweepNURBS tool (Fig.03a). Then the sofa section was multiplied around the column and, using the Brush tool, I gave it a more irregular shape (Fig.03b).

Fig. 03a

Fig. 03a

Fig. 03b

Fig. 03b

Chair

The chair was also created using very basic modeling tools such as sweepNURBS and basic primitives. A more interesting part is the stripes on the chair. I made them from splines which were extruded with the extrudeNURBS tool. And finally I applied a MoGraph displace deformer with a simple noise in the shader slot (Fig.04).

Fig. 04

Fig. 04

Hairy Sofa

I took a very basic sofa model and applied a Cinema 4D hair module to it. Using the Hair Brush tool you can easily style the hair and control the end result (Fig.05).

Fig. 05

Fig. 05

Carpet

A very vital part of the image was the carpet. Since it's in the foreground it needed to be detailed. In my work I don't like using displacement maps and I try to model everything as much as possible. That's why I decided to do so with the carpet in this project. I also used a MoGraph displace deformer for this one (Fig.06).

Fig. 06

Fig. 06

Lighting and Rendering

For the rendering I used V-Ray. There are two lights in the scene: a dome light with an HDR image in the texture slot and a VraySun (Fig.07 - 08). In addition to the RGB render I always render other channels like raw reflection, raw GI, raw light and material ID to use them in the post-production phase (Fig.09).

Fig. 07

Fig. 07

Fig. 08

Fig. 08

Fig. 09

Fig. 09

Fig.10 - 11 show the basic render parameters I used for this image.

Fig. 10

Fig. 10

Fig. 11

Fig. 11

Textures used for this scene are very basic using diffuse, specular and bump channels (Fig.12).

Fig. 12

Fig. 12

Post-production

Fig.13 shows the raw render (above) and final render (below). Post-production was done in Photoshop. The first step was mixing the rendered channels (reflection, GI, light) to get the best result. I usually apply the channels on Linear Dodge or Overlay blending mode.

Fig. 13

Fig. 13

After enhancing reflections and light in the places where I wanted to get more intense result, it was time to play with the levels and color balance. Since I had a reference photo I knew what effect I should achieve so it was a lot easier. The final touch was done using the Nik Software Color Efex Pro. I used the Pro Contrast and Tonal Contrast filters.

Conclusion

So that's it. I encourage you to work on personal projects like this one when you have free time. It really pays off in the future since it's the best way to improve your skills. I hope you found my Making Of useful and learned something from my work.



Some additional close-ups (Fig.14).

Fig. 14

Fig. 14

Fetching comments...

Post a comment