The Making of Slabtown 4 Renderings by Scott Edwards Architecture

Hello, Archviz community! My name is Thiago Mathez, and I'm a 3D Artist from Brazil. Today, I'm excited to share with you the process behind my latest renderings. I hope this will be valuable and beneficial for all of you.

These images were created for a contest and served as a personal study as well. The house's base model was provided by the talented Ander Alencar, while I took on the task of crafting the environment and completing the visualization.

The primary objective was to transform the original project, an existing urban house located in Portland, USA, designed by Scott Edwards Architecture. I wanted to infuse the scene with a fresh, laid-back atmosphere, giving it a whole new vibe and character.

3D modeling

As mentioned before, the basic house modeling was provided by Ander Alencar’s team, since this was part of one of the monthly contests that take place in Alencar’s students’ Facebook group.

The first step was to give it a little more detailing by creating wooden planks using the free plugin Floor Generator, to make it pop up a little.

A very important tip is to always detach each face separately because 3DS Max crashes really easily when using Floor Generator.

And that’s the result:

The sand was quite easy to model too: it’s just a plane where I used the Paint Deformation tool to make it look more organic and a TurboSmooth modifier to smooth the edges.

The water is just a plane with a Shell Modifier on it.

Scatters and details

Once the basic modeling was complete, it was time to enhance the scene with vegetation and additional details. To achieve a lush and realistic environment, I utilized assets from MaxTree and Chaos Cosmos for the majority of the vegetation. Careful consideration was given to the placement of each model to ensure it harmonized with the overall composition.

To add more depth and realism to the scene, I incorporated rocks from Quixel Megascans. These rocks breathed life into the left-side composition, contributing to the overall natural ambiance of the image.

Illumination

For each of the images I used a different illumination approach: the sunny one is using an HDRI and the golden-hour one is using Corona Sun & Sky from Corona 9, which already has the clouds feature.

The HDRI is this one, download for free on Poly Haven:

The sun and sky setting are the following:

By using a low sun position, I could achieve this nice “pink effect” on the clouds, since they behave just like in real life.

Materials

Creating compelling and realistic materials is a vital aspect of architectural visualization, and in this project, I focused on honing my skills by experimenting with various techniques. Two materials that stand out and add depth to the scene are the sand and wooden planks.

For the sand material, I aimed to achieve a dynamic appearance that conveys the transition from wet, low-wavy sand to dry, fluffy grains. To accomplish this, I used advanced material mapping techniques and texture variations. By carefully blending different textures and adjusting glossiness values, I could simulate the interaction of light with the sand, mimicking its wet and dry attributes.

Similarly, the wooden plank material demanded attention to detail to recreate the subtle differences found in natural wood.

Through continuous exploration and application of different material techniques, I was able to elevate the quality of the renderings and enhance the visual storytelling.

The sand was made by using two Quixel Megascans materials in a Corona Layered Material.

The mask used to make this blending effect was a Corona Distance Map, which had the parameter “distance from” targeted on the water (ÁGUA001 and ÁGUA MAR in this case).

The wooden planks material used in this project is based on a Quixel Megascans material, which serves as the foundation for creating a realistic and visually appealing surface for the deck.

This is the original Polywood material:

To make the variations on each plank I used a Corona Multimap with 4 “different colors” and 4,0% of Gamma Variation on the Base Color and 7,0% of Gamma Variation on the Base Roughness.

Conclusion

I would like to express my gratitude to the CG Award team for this opportunity of sharing a little bit of what I’ve been learning during the last couple of years, and showing my work too! I always read this kind of article on blogs, in search of knowledge, and it’s an honor to be writing one article now! Thank you, guys.

For more details about my work, you can look for my profiles on Instagram or Behance, or send me a DM for any other details.

See you guys!

---

---