the “making of” a rendering

People often think that creating a rendering is as simple as pushing the “Render” button. While I really wish that my keyboard had one of these magical buttons, it’s not always that easy. Creating a rendering involves lots of steps, and is generally a very iterative process. Every artist works in a slightly different way, but I wanted to give everyone a little glimpse of one of my renderings in progress, from start to finish. The two particular renderings posted here were done for a feature article on Urban Turf called Re-Imagined, where I envision how various features of a home could be transformed. You can check out the article to get a better idea of the purpose of these images.

I started with some basic listing photos from a home for sale on Redfin.com. This is the photo that you see in the first frame of the movies posted here. Each step after that represents one more iterative rendering, in other words, each time I hit that “render” button. When each of the images in the process are strung together, you can get a little insight into how I went about creating the rendering. You’ll notice there is a lot of trial and error – adding new lights, adjusting the brightness, rearranging furniture, adding colors, and creating new textures.

In each of these examples, you’ll notice there are about 14-15 steps to creating the final look. Each step can take anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes to do, depending on what is being added or adjusted. Usually, I am working with textures and furniture from my library of resources, but sometimes, I’ll have to build a new custom piece of furniture or create an original texture from scratch, which adds to the time spent on a project. Other times, I will buy a new model or texture from a site like Turbosquid, which saves time. Each project is totally unique in how I get from start to finish.

What do you think? See anything you’d have done differently?