That way I could quickly get through the entire building while allowing for iteration later on. It was definitely a balance between defining the shapes without being too detailed. It took a couple more weeks to really figure out the other parts of the building that weren’t shown in the concept art, but having solid reference and the dam environment decided on pretty early made those later decisions feel more like puzzle pieces than like I was starting from scratch.įor the block out, I tried to keep the shapes as simple as possible without being too primitive. I wanted to establish as much as possible that first week to really set the bar for what this project would become. Mograph and the Polypen tools in C4D really made quick work of this. Our first week on this project was to block everything out.

If you focus those reference images around things like color, age, lighting, and interaction with other elements your ability to make decisions will be more grounded as the project gets further along.Ĭoming from a background in motion graphics, my main 3D tool is Cinema 4D.

It’s more about how helpful that reference is than the number of images you have. Are you looking for something that looks like it was pulled from a 100-year-old barn or something you just picked up from a lumber store? Pull reference that supports that direction.Īlso, keep your reference image count manageable. For instance, if you’re looking for a wood board reference, figure out what kind of wood you want to use. Be purposeful about reference gathering too. It’s an easy drag and drop tool that keeps things tidy. Make sure that your reference is organized and not just a bunch of random images scattered together. Reference really helps guide a project forward and starts answering a lot of questions that have already come up or will come up down the road. After I select a concept or idea, it’s the initial stage of figuring out the direction a project is heading. Reference gathering is always a fun part of the process for me.

Paint on gridded surface 3d c4d