Hey guys!
First time poster here :)
A couple of months back I stumbled across an amazing project in Sofia, Bulgaria by architects Dimitar Karanikolov and Veneta Nikolova. The space itself is a small loft apartment with some really amazing material and furniture choices. I was really inspired by the project and had been looking for a small scale project to test out Corona on for some time so a couple of weeks back I started the task of modelling the basic structure to see if I could use it for testing purposes.
Working 9-5 as a 3D artist usually means that in my spare time I try to get away from the computer but once I started the project I found I was soon dedicating all of my spare hours in the evenings (which was roughly 1 or 2, so...not a lot!) to constructing the spaces. The the modelling portion itself, which is something I usually don't enjoy so much, was actually really rewarding, and not being the strongest modeller I found that I learned a lot in a short space of time.
When it came to lighting and materials, as I mentioned earlier I had been wanting to test out Corona for the longest time, and so I figured this project would be perfect. I couldn't believe how great an engine it is! Unfortunately my computer at home isn't the greatest so testing any of the heavier scenes (the living room and kitchen had a lot of assets) was laborious and slow, but I found being able to move my region renders in the frame buffer as it was rendering to be an absolute lifesaver and the interactive rendering viewport is a GODSEND when it comes to lighting! Material creation is so incredibly simple that it really allows you to focus on creating very detailed materials without getting bogged down in huge amounts of settings (plus the material ball preview is so much better than Vrays!) Even the error messages when a normal/displacement map has been loaded with the incorrect gamma was a huge benefit when converting Vray materials over and you don't have time to check every single one.
As I said, my computer at home is about 6 years old, which meant that I could have worked much quicker and refined the scenes more had I had access to a faster system, but I found Corona handled it very well overall. I had intended to try and use the existing shots of the space as inspiration for all of my shots, not necessarily to recreate it exactly (that would have taken way too much time!) - so I just made do with what models I had access to which includes a lot of Model+Model and Evermotion assets. Again, the purpose was to get to grips with Corona, not necessarily to focus on recreating the space exactly as it is in reality so I hope you forgive the differences!
Here's a link to check out the real life project:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/23385259/Loft-9b-(-photos-not-3D-)
And here's a link to my Behance (very unpopulated right now!)
https://www.behance.net/PhilRyanHope you enjoy the images, I think I'll keep working on the space in the new year, but with Christmas just around the corner, I figured I won't be rendering anything before January so I thought it would be a nice time to post the images!
Thanks very much guys!
