From sculpting and hard-surface modeling to material creation, lighting and final touches in post-production.
Blocking Out Ideas in 3D
Whether I’m designing a vehicle, structure or environment, I start by sculpting rough shapes in Blender. At this stage, I'm not too worried about detail. After laying the groundwork, I search for an interesting spot to place the camera and look for the appropriate lens to go with it. This method of sketching in 3D gives me a lot of room to iterate on the design in a short amount of time and provides the client with numerous 3D sketches and camera positions.
Materials & Texturing
Next, I move to the shading panel. This is where the realism starts to kick in. I work in a physically based rendering pipeline to achieve maximum material-flexibility. I like to create my materials from scratch whenever I can, and try to keep them as simple as possible. I often mix several materials together to create dusty, scratched or rusty surfaces. These methods, combined with custom ambient occlusion maps add a lot of depth and realism to the models.
RenderING & Post-PRODUCTION
Once the scene is properly lit and the final details are in place, I generally include an ID pass, ambient occlusion pass and a mist-pass to my final render. I then bring these images into Photoshop. In this phase I mainly fine-tune the mood of the scene. Special effects, graphic elements and fine details are also added where needed. After a final color grading phase, I paint on top of the image, transforming the original render into a cohesive artwork.