First rections

I admit my first reactions when receiving the brief were a little panicked! This was a large task, with multiple submission elements to have control over in the space of only 5 days. However, what a fantastic project! I have really found myself in my element, getting to intimately know a classic house by a great architect and attempt to produce renderings which do it justice.

The model that was provided was detailed and coherently organised. It was a benefit to see how such a model was put together and how the extra detail helps in achieving great results. Individual floor boards and other timber had been modelled in detail, leaving me with the task of mapping suitable textures

Pre-production

This phase was important, and my experience so far has taught me that it is wise to start with investigating camera angles. I knew therefore very early on where my focus in materials and objects would be.

Researching the house also gave me a story. I became aware of the original client, and that she was a fanatical reader. This is the reason for the double height bookcase, and numerous reading crooks throughout the house. Plenty of well lit spaces to crouch in with a good book. With this information I already had inspiration for how my final images might look.

The most useful ​page I discovered was this one​, documenting recent owners and their mission to update the house for their own living requirements. It also had some fantastic photographs. I used these to set up camera angles, influence the compositions and returned regularly to reference lighting and materials throughout. However, once set up, I was able to choose some of my own angles but it was a useful study exercise to attempt to replicate these photographs.

Production

The key materials to apply were the beige concrete, and Apitong wood. Kahn’s design expresses these materials in simple rectilinear forms, and I see immediately that their textures are fundamental to the quality of the spaces. For the concrete, I made my own seamless texture using photoshop from the images of the house. The variation in the timber was harder to achieve, but I reached something satisfactory by using an image from textures.com. Different materials were created for floors, exterior and interior wood. Unfortunately it was not a simple task to separate exterior/interior, as the model was built with some geometry facing on both sides. Separating the geometry would have proved to be time consuming, so instead I opted for a texture that could be used in both situations.

Lighting

I experimented with numerous HDRI maps, and two are used in the final images. In hindsight, the bright daylight worked better and gave better lighting results. For the interior shots, an invisible booster light was applied for better daylighting. With the more overcast images, it was really the reflections of the trees in the windows which were the reason for choosing that particular map at that time.

Model handling and rendering

All furnishing was selected and downloaded from 3Dwarehouse, selected carefully for polygon counts, imported first into a seperate Max file before merging into the file. This gave me the opportunity to control the clutter in the model and hold rendering times to a workable level. This was much more successful than the previous submission, where the model became too heavy to work with.

I also switched to Arnold instead of ART in this project, which may also have helped rendering times. I am only beginning to see the benefits, and to make use of the special lighting and material options which make it a more powerful engine. I see however that it has greater potential than ART and than I am currently able to harness.

New modelling techniques

The mantlepiece was a unique feature which I decided to try my hand at creating using subdivision surface modelling, and mesh editing using soft selection. The result was less than perfect in its subdivisions, but achieved the desired result of the curved form.

UVW Unwrap

To get the brickwork on the patio to align correctly, I had to learn how to apply a texture to a path using the UVW Unwrap modifier using ​this video​.

Animation

Two animations were designed and rendered out , focusing on the double height living room space.

An initial walkthrough of the entire house proved to be too complicated and too fast to show detail in a 30 second animation. Instead I chose to focus on the the living room showing various angles and highlighting various points of interest:

Another video shows the Alexander Calder mobile. This was an experiment I started in the previous week, developing an understanding of hierarchical animation. Each of the arms of the mobile has its own rotation, but hangs from another arm which also rotates, giving infinite possibilities for how the mobile may configure itself with the movement of air currents. The model was found on 3Dwarehouse, unanimated. However, I see that it is likely not a true copy of an original as the Calder mobiles were beautifully produced without any colliding parts, and unfortunately I see that some of these geometries actually come into conflict in the model on occasion. However, I am very happy with the effect that animating the mobile has on the space, and the animation.