Toyota Plano Headquarters Lobby commision
Commissioned via The Brand Hatchery to complete a contract agreement with Toyota, for a hanging art installation. Seemingly this assignment went through Corgan MediaLab and The Brand Hatchery before someone in my professional network reached out to me thinking I should have a shot at this task.
As you can see in the above picture, 3d automobile engine parts hang from the ceiling. The job was to build this in real life, but the aforementioned companies could not find a reasonable real-world answer to lighting up the hanging auto parts and casting the shadows on the ground to spell out "Drive". An incredibly fun challenge that I solved in 3ds Max through technical art, research, and experience. Once I found the right light to buy on the internet, I took that light's settings/specifications and mimicked them on the computer.
The budget for this project allotted 3 days for completion. I have included all the failed renders at the end of the post to show all the research and trial and error that took this project to successful completion.
As you can see in the above picture, 3d automobile engine parts hang from the ceiling. The job was to build this in real life, but the aforementioned companies could not find a reasonable real-world answer to lighting up the hanging auto parts and casting the shadows on the ground to spell out "Drive". An incredibly fun challenge that I solved in 3ds Max through technical art, research, and experience. Once I found the right light to buy on the internet, I took that light's settings/specifications and mimicked them on the computer.
The budget for this project allotted 3 days for completion. I have included all the failed renders at the end of the post to show all the research and trial and error that took this project to successful completion.
Overhead view of my portion of the entire successfully completed 3d project.
The Brand Hatchery Render. Plano, TX.
The Brand Hatchery research.
A comfortable shot to show the render, spotlight, and projection working in a simulated real-world environment. These renders sealed the deal with the contract and proved that their original idea could be re-created in real-life.
And in the beginning, there were test renders. I use test render to get my bearings and to start working out the logistics of the project and the ways to solve the problems encountered. This way I don't get overwhelmed and gives me hope. Here I craft the words "DRIVE", add teapots for reference, and created plane on the ground to capture cast shadows.
Here I used a test light to get the scene working. This scene is in no way accurate and does not yet use real-world simulation settings. This is my work-flow for this project. I am obtaining the "big picture" and realizing the scope and complexity of such a seemingly straight-forward task.
Here, one can see that I need to have world lighting but it cannot affect the lighting of the hanging installation.
My scene set-up in 3DS Max.
Exploring the internet brought up many sites that sell lighting rigs. After bookmarking many of them that had all the technical specifications listed, for my accuracy, I started plugging these real lights into the computer's 3d program. Many failed attempts. You can see that ultimately the light-cone area and the intensity of the light created the look The Brand Hatchery wanted. A single light source was used to create the look in 3d that could be used in a real-world room.
