Daniel Diaz Del Castillo on the making of 'Broome Soho'
We speak to Daniel Diaz Del Castillo on the making of his ‘Broome Soho’ project and get some golden nuggets of advice on noise targets, reflections and achieving true photorealism.
Click on the image hot-spots to find the Poliigon assets used.
Q. When and how did you get into 3D visualizations?
Daniel: I started very early on, in the second year at university, when a friend introduced me to Sketchup. At that time computers were slow and I didn't have much money, so it was a rough start...but I fell in love with CAD design. It was so simple and easy to show your ideas to others, and I’ve always loved computers, so it was like home for me.
I started with plain SketchUp, then came Vray for SketchUp, developed by a third party; the software was a little buggy and, at that time, SketchUp was a 32bit app, so if your project was over 3.2 GB of ram it would crash. There was a lot of tinkering and optimization to be done in order to have a working project!
Q. What is your typical workflow for creating a visualization?
Daniel: Most of the time I work off floor plans or CAD files; when it's for personal projects, I look for plans on the internet and remodel that way, but if there are no plans just a photo match will do.
I use 3ds Max and Corona Render; so I search for 3ds Max models and run through a process of standardization. This consists of checking the materials, sometimes redoing them, cleaning layers and any unwanted objects, and storing the object in the correct library folder for later use.
After the modelling phase, I start making materials. I use an interior HDRI for lighting, and pay close attention to differences in photographed reference.
Then I start looking for a nice composition, and once that’s locked in I start playing with the lighting in the scene and looking for the right mood.
Click on the image hot-spots to find the Poliigon assets used.
Q. What's your process for adding doors and windows?
Daniel: If it's a special looking window, I just model it and place it on the project manually. But if I can use a generic one, I tend to use a custom ‘intelligent’ object that I created in 3ds Max that has a couple of helpers for the Height and Width on the opening, to fill the project.
Q. Do you use any plugins or add-ons to make your workflow faster?
Daniel: I use a lot. Forest Pack by iToosoftware, Floor generator, Multitexture, and one that is a homebrew plugin for Corona. It handles all the cameras with different HDRIs, sun positions, camera resolutions, file names and extensions. It’s a lifesaver.
Q. What inspires you, as an artist?
Daniel: I really love interior design, color and movies; I think that's where my inspiration comes from. It can come from video games too; just about everything you see can inspire you, I guess. I have a couple of big folders with photos, renderings or just pretty pictures that I take inspiration from.
What I really love to do is replicate those images into renders; you’d be amazed at how much it can help you understand the behavior of light and colors. You can have great models, great shaders, but light will make your images great, or meh.
Click on the image hot-spots to find the Poliigon assets used.
Q. So, tell us a little about your ‘Broome Soho’ project.
Daniel: It’s one of my latest artworks; ones where I used a lot of Poliigon assets.
Broome Soho is an apartment from March & White on a Renzo Piano Building; the project was made by The Boundary and I was inspired by images I had found of apartment interior design, so I looked for the plans and started modelling. I wanted to make a video for the project, but I only have one machine, so I had to pull every trick out of the hat (and then come up with some new ones).
One small trick I learned some time ago was to unlock the sampling pattern; if you do this, the animations won't have the same noise pattern all over. With this simple change, you can denoise your videos on a DaVinci Resolve or similar, allowing for better render times.
Q. How long have you been using Poliigon assets?
Daniel: I started using Poliigon about 3 years ago, and I still use the carpets on a regular basis, they’re so well made! A lot of textures that I’ve implemented on my shader library come from Poliigon, too. Don't forget to check out their brushes, they work really well on displacement maps!
I’d recommend Poliigon to other artists, no doubt about it. But always remember to work your textures or models with the project’s soul! All materials have imperfections; mother nature is super random, in ways that are difficult to simulate, so use all those grunge and dirty textures to give some more character and life to your creations.
Click on the image hot-spots to find the Poliigon assets used.
Q. What did you learn whilst creating this artwork? Were there any ‘Aha!’ moments?
Daniel: I learned a lot in the making of this project...and I really mean a LOT. Most of it was achieved looking for ways to resolve a new problem, something new that I’ve never done before for the lack of time, or the fact that it was difficult to do, or just the lack of render power to make a CG video.
The most important part of the background that a lot of artists forget is that it's super important for all the reflections. I use a 360 photo as a background; otherwise the reflections on floors or other surfaces close to windows will just reflect some clouds, or most of the time will get washed away; but with a 360 city photo or something else that fits the project, you get richer reflections that adds to the overall feeling of the image. I found a nice 360 background photo to use on Wikimedia commons, using the keyword ‘360 panorama’. I used those images as the backdrop directly from the render; no post was applied to the video in that regard.
By the way, I never go lower than 5% noise target; for this project in particular, the noise target was as high as 7-10%. Don't waste your time with 2% noise targets! if the noise hasn't cleared on 7%, you have a problem in your scene.
Click on the image hot-spots to find the Poliigon assets used.
Q. What’s been the most important lesson you’ve learnt as a 3D artist, that you would pass onto other aspiring artists?
Daniel: The most important lesson for me is that your memory is not perfect. Look for reference in every step of the project; when you’re making shaders, compositions and lighting. Look for movies or photographs, too; if you only look at renders, you’ll see an artist's interpretation of reality, not yours.
Q. What are three other artworks people should check out, if they’re interested in seeing more of your work?
Daniel: They can check out ‘Malalcahuello Cabin’ and ‘At Night Comes The Light’, or browse my portfolio here.
