This portfolio is part of my Lighting & Look Development course for university. This serves the second assessment project of my course, after my LLD A1 portfolio.

NOTE: For half of the assessment I put a majority of my focus into my table props due to misunderstood communication. Even though I had to make significant changes, I will be keeping my old process in this journal due to its important role towards the actual submission. Jump to the "Revamping the Interior" section for the point where I start adjusting my project to fit the requirements.

For my interior, I thought about making a café open in the morning. It would have an aesthetic which is simple but approachable. Its most prominent detail would be the windows and gaps which connect to the street outside.

Biasol creates Melbourne cafe interior based on 1950s Greek delicatessens. (2017, April 30). Dezeen. https://www.dezeen.com/2017/03/12/biasol-design-studio-melbourne-cafe-interior-inspired-by-1950s-greek-delicatessens/

Gusto cake cafe / Inco group. (2020, September 25). ArchDaily. https://www.archdaily.com/947745/gusto-cake-cafe-inco-group

After seeing the scene models of other classmates in the same course, I started to work on modelling several props for the café I envisioned. It was a dinner table with props such as a bottle of oil, salt and pepper shakers, a coffee mug and a plate with a chunk of meat on top.

I eventually found out how to import height maps into the Hypershade menu, so I tried it out only for it to show a glitchy pattern. With help from my instructor, I was able to figure it out and had no problem importing each texture map thereafter.

Later on, I had to remove the cup model due to the handle glitching out when the height map was added, alongside the tablecloth because it was just a flat low-poly plane (and I was planning to replace it with a napkin). In their place, I modelled a fork and spoon.

To texture the meat model, I mapped the UVs before exporting the model to Substance Painter. I saved a screenshot of the UV map to draw the meat texture manually, then went back to Substance Painter to fit the colors, add a fleshy texture and smooth out the glitched coloration. For the condiment bottles I downloaded salt and pepper textures off Google Images before applying them to the bottle models with a high metallic amount to make them look as if they're in transparent glass bottles.

Since everyone was making a full scene interior, I added several walls composed of extruded cubes and added a large skybox. I finished up

Later on I tested out several filters through my device's photo editor, making it seem as if the rendered scene was a photograph, with an old-fashioned and calm atmosphere as if taken from an old camera or on a calm day.

I ended up over-focusing on improving my still life modelling that I forgot that I was supposed to model an interior design. Luckily I was able to reuse my existing assets to create an interior quickly, while also adding a few more assets like chairs, railings and even repurposing the plush bunny model from my first assessment as a golden statue.

Of note is that the texture for the chairs has a similar visual glitch to the one I experienced above, and even switching it to raw didn't fix it. Still I decided to pass it off as being an aesthetic design to make the chairs look more stylish.

I applied different lighting effects through positioning Arnold spotlights to give the illusion of light sources projecting light through different parts of the building or from the outside.

Final video showcasing each of the renders that I made over the course of this project.

Bright white powder closeup macro texture pattern. Stock photo. (n.d.). Paweł Michałowski, Adobe Stock https://stock.adobe.com/au/images/bright-white-powder-closeup-macro-texture-pattern/173750822

#5848. (2014, January 28). Ground Black pepper (Piper nigrum) background. | Stock image | Colourbox. Buy Royalty-free Photos, Images, Videos & Vectors | Colourbox. https://www.colourbox.com/image/ground-black-pepper-epiper-nigrumi-background-image-8875786

Narrow street in Gdansk - Download free HDRi map - HDRMAPS™. (2023, February 28). HDRMAPS™. https://hdrmaps.com/narrow-street-in-gdansk/

MW17 BullFish. (n.d.). Menuworks. https://www.menuworks.com/images/samplemenus/flats/MW17-Flat-Menu-BullFish-1.jpg.