Just a casual neon, wintery night.

Hi everybody, I am happy to share with you my first personal project, carried out during Skyup Academy's Masterclass in Computer Graphics. My mentor assigned me the main reference I had to reproduce, then I took care of every aspect in the pipeline. Let me guide you through my creative process.

1. Gathering references

The first phase that put a solid base for the following stages was collecting references. Not only did I search for more pictures of the location, but I also tried to gather as many images as possible of every object in the scene.

2. Camera matching and scene block-out

As I got to study and know my scene better, I moved on to the next steps: at first I tried to match the camera position and focal length as closely as possible, then I started blocking out the main volumes. This stage was made of trial and error, and I went back and forth a couple of times to make sure that every object would give the same feeling as the original picture through the right focal length.

3. Modeling

After establishing the main volumes in my block-out phase, it was time to start modeling the various props, such as the tv, the chair, the iron door and such.

4. Texturing, Lighting and Final Render

After I put my modeled props into my scene, I moved forward with texturing. This stage was really tricky, as the lighting in my reference image was particularly dominant, therefore it was very difficult to determine the actual base colours of any part of the scene. After moving back and forth from Maya to Substance to adjust the textures accordingly to the bright pink and green-ish lights of my scene, this was the final result.

This project has been a true challenge, as it was my very first approach with many stages of the pipeline, such as texturing and lighting, but seeing the final result was incredibly satisfying. I'm looking forward to the next challenge ahead, in the meantime I'm eager to study and deepen my knowledge about every aspect of computer graphics, now more than ever before.