Giorgia Garrone's early passion for arts and architecture led her to a career in interior design, where she then transitioned into 3D architecture and rendering during her studies. In this article, she shares a project balancing classic and industrial styles using 3ds Max.
Giorgia Garrone's passion for architecture and the arts has been a driving force since her early years. As she matured, she recognised the need to channel this passion into her career, leading her to start a career in interior design.
While pursuing a course in design, she ventured into 3D architecture and rendering whilst studying at Rainbow Academy, igniting her curiosity and sparking a pursuit of knowledge, encompassing new techniques and continuous improvement in her craft.
In this article, Giorgia shares one of her latest projects and talk about how she used 3ds Max to create an interior that balance both classic and industrial styles.
I discovered that Rainbow Academy offered architecture and design rendering courses. After contacting them, I had a friendly pre-registration interview where they got to know me and explained the structure of their master's program.
Balancing work and my master's degree was challenging. The lessons were comprehensive, including theory and hands-on exercises. Our teacher was always available to help and clarify doubts.
We had a thesis project and a portfolio showcasing our work, including a house project of our choice and exercises demonstrating the techniques we learned. Adapting to a new modeling program like Sketchup was initially tough, but with practice, I became proficient.
Our professors encouraged us to create a Rookies profile and participate in the Rookie Awards 2023 contest, as it is a great opportunity to get noticed but above all to grow.
I participated in the contest with a project assigned by my professor under his advice, even though I initially entered with the living room project.
The living project was an exercise to better understand the materials used on stage and a review of modeling, lighting and photography techniques. The starting reference was a photo of a living room.
I started with plans to recreate the room, to save time and not create the floor plan on AutoCAD. Once the "walls" had been placed, the direction of the natural light source had also been established - in this case a window located to the right of the camera. I then proceeded with the creation of the window opening on the right plane and the insertion of the 3D model on the which I modified the materials according to my needs.
Comparing myself with the starting reference, I noticed a plaster molding between the wall and ceiling that I then added by using the sweep profile plug-in, the same procedure for creating the skirting board.
Once the creation of the skirting boards and moldings was finished and the curtain was positioned (essential for the creation of the ceiling decoration) I positioned the camera. I arranged the parameters and began with the study of natural lighting through the use of a dome light as a source of illumination, using the clay render as the final image.
Having positioned the dome light in the model, I added an HDRI image to it that portrays a daytime scene. I opened the rendering program and set the parameters for the creation of the clay render and the image quality. Being a test they were low parameters, and I started the progressive calculation in order to immediately see the changes I was making.
Once the lighting had been defined and I had done some research, I could finally start "playing" with the materials. But first I checked that the UVW map modifier was present on the floors, otherwise it would not take the material.
Starting from the flooring, I opened the V-Ray material library and went straight to the wood section. I noticed an Italian herringbone flooring and inserted it into the material editor. I was not crazy about the colour of the wood, so I made a rendering of the diffuse, taking the image obtained into Photoshop and using the colour matching tool to create an image with the colour I had in mind. I then created the texture that I would then use as a new spread. With interactive rendering, I then modified the bump and reflection parameters and the size of the materials through the parameters of the UVW map modifier.
I also repeated the procedure for the material of the wall behind the concrete sofa and for the plaster of the ceiling, molding and skirting. The intention was to use a neutral/light colour to contrast with the dark parquet.
The most critical part was creating the brick wall on the left, created with the V-Ray displacement modifier. This modifier slows down the calculation a lot, makes the PC heat up and close the program. It was a challenge trying to find the right parameters, but the result was completely different and had more performance than a bump.
Once I finished with the materials, at least those that make up the casing, I moved on to searching for the decorative and furnishing elements in the Chaos library, my personal archive, the 3dsky site or by modeling. Also in this case, every time I imported an object into the scene I modified the materials based on the needs of the scene.
Once the scene has been set with all the elements, I could finally move on to calculating the final scene.
I opened the rendering program, added the passes that would be used for post production, set the size and quality of the image, the quantity of pixels and sent the calculation. Once finished, I saved all the passes and moved on to post-production in Photoshop.
After switching to Photoshop, I added the passes obtained in series and modified them one by one according to my needs. Once I finished with the passes, I opened the Camera Raw filter and adjusted the parameters I needed, such as colour, brightness, and contrast, until satisfied with the image obtained.
You can reach out to Giorgia and see more of her work via her Rookies portfolio here.