A Look into Archviz in Blender

Introduction

My name is George Turmanidze, I am 25 years old, I am from a small European country called Georgia. I have always been interested in computer engineering and design, and because of that, I decided to study computer engineering at the university. However, I soon found out that it wasn’t my thing and left the university. After that, I started to overthink my decisions and follow my hobbies and interests. One of them was 3D and I started watching Youtube tutorials. Blender Guru was the website from where I had learned most of the stuff. I recommend it to everyone, because they provide not only arch viz, but also other directions.

Main Goal of Archviz

The main thing in arch viz or any other 3D stuff is not only to make it realistic or have lots of details. The main thing is to feel that you need it in your life. It might be a chair, a sofa, any kind of furniture, or an apartment. For example, if you make something like a potato, the viewer must feel the need of having it. Achieving this is not an easy thing, for that you need to make lots of experiments with lights, models, materials and so on. Also, you need someone with a fresh eye, because when you are working on a project, after a while you can’t see your own mistakes.

Using Blender

I started with Blender and my main tool is still Blender, although, sometimes I use Photoshop for light image editing. I have spent a lot of time in Blender and I know almost every nuance of it. I haven’t worked in another 3D software and that’s why I can’t tell the differences between them. Blender has a bright future and I’m planning to stick with it. Blender 2.80 has a real-time renderer, which opens new doors in 3D art.

Textures

I download most of my textures from www.poliigon.com and I make materials from them. Most of the time I create materials because in many cases clients want specific kinds of them. I use 4 textures to create 1 material: diffuse, roughness, specular and normal.

Rendering

I have thought about using arch viz in real-time earlier, but I couldn’t achieve the desired level of realism which I get in non-real-time engines. However, there are some cases, when the time has more priority over realism. In that case, a real-time engine is a savior. Blender 2.80 Beta has a real-time engine, which has some bugs, but I hope it will be fixed soon.

George Turmanidze, 3D Interior/Exterior Designer

Interview conducted by Kirill Tokarev