Neo Deco

Quite a change of mood for this small apartment that is probably my biggest residential interior scene available to date. The scene, available now on my Turbosquid page, is a departure from the monochromatic minimalism of my recent interiors and goes for a more colorful, more opulent interpretation of the new Art Deco revival trend in interior design.

What hasn’t changed is the rather obsessive attention to detail, and the sheer amount of stuff included in the scene (check the list at the end of this post), which makes it a chunky asset collection on top of being a self-contained virtual set.

The change of style means that owners of past BBB3viz interior scenes and asset collections can look forward to a style update here, with several iconic pieces of furniture and carefully processed photogrammetry scans that aren’t available anywhere else. Many individual pieces of furniture or modeled accessories were textured and shaded in Substance Painter, adding a new level of realism.

A few updates in my modeling workflow also means much more realistic carpets that will render in V-Ray out of the box, without the need for a separate scattering plugin. In fact, the only separate plugin needed to open this scene is the free MultiTexture map by cg-source.

Among the new goodies is an updated camera setup based on a medium-format camera. The large film plate and the use of a custom aperture map and optical vignette settings result in a shallower depth of field than on standard SLR cameras, with a subtle elliptical cat’s eye bokeh (which can also easily be turned off if needed).

I’ve tried to give special attention to materials in order to replicate the richness of the deco style, with soft velvet, rich polished exotic wood, and lush looking marbles. The careful use of custom maps and of V-Ray’s recently added clear-coat feature means adding custom reflection lobes on glossy materials is now much less computationally expensive than it used to be. This allows for marbles, for instance, that are both highly reflective yet also show a subtle hint of wear, making for a very convincing look. For SSS, I’m now using the new raytraced translucency embedded into the standard V-Ray material, which is much more accurate than the fast SSS material. And the hair material adds some really convincing softness to the rugs while rendering very fast.

As always, the scene is organized to facilitate navigation and ease the rendering, with all assets and materials clearly labeled and with the building and the furnishing located in separate layers. In addition, the furnishing for each separate room (dining room, living room, kitchen, hallway and bedroom) is located in separate layers, which can be turned on and off as required.

Fun fact: All the artworks in the scene, including the modern book covers, are custom-made and therefore copyright free, should this be a requirement for your project.

I’m adding a few wire renders below. Some models (a few of the scans and some of the fabrics) are triangulated. Most of the rest is sub-division or poly modeling, mainly using quads. Most objects were UV unwrapped by hand, making it easy to swap their textures if needed.

Below is a rough list of the assets you will find in the scene, organized by room. There is only one unfurnished room in the apartment, next to the bedroom. Some objects are duplicated in the scene.

LIVING ROOM:

* Classic sofa, vintage armchairs, designer coffee table , several framed artworks, hyper-realistic rug, designer stool, candleholders (scanned), flower bouquet and vase, wood tray (scanned), wood bowl (scanned), glass paperweight, five coffee-table art books (one scanned), vintage pendant light, vintage black marble fireplace, mature rubber tree in clay pot, four stoneware bootles (scanned), a stoneware mug (scanned), full realistic book collection, stoneware jars, plates and serving plates; vintage cardboard boxes, marble paperweight (scanned), glass vases, three different pillows (scanned), wood box (scanned), two candy jars, detailed curtains.

KITCHEN:

* Two wood bowls (scanned), three different models of lemons (scanned) one avocado model (scanned), high-end gas hobs, marble kitchen, seasoned copper fronts, high-end ovens, LED pendant light fixture, designer wall light fixtures, vintage water tap, detailed wall power socket and light switches in two configurations.

BEDROOM:

* Large rug, original artwork, antique Art Deco wall sconces, Art Deco bed wood and velvet bed, Art Deco night stand, antique night lamp with shade, wood tumbler (scanned), detailed curtained, vintage black wood and leather armchair, vintage white wood and fabric armchair, large white pillow (scanned), designer stools.

HALLWAY:

* Original light fixtures, stained-glass window, black marble plinth, wooden tray (scanned), antique Venetian mirror.

DINING ROOM:

* Monumental custom white marble table, designer wood and ratan chairs (two versions), framed original artwork, vintage pendant light, curtains, porcelain coffee pot, three porcelain soup pots, one teapot.

One last thing. Before you buy, take a look a these quick health warnings:

• The scene will only open in 3ds Max 2019 and higher. The scene is shaded and lit for V-Ray 6 GPU. It will probably render pretty much the same in the CPU version but you may need to adjust some settings such as the bump value on some materials. The scene should render fine in Vantage but you will need to turn of the V-Ray fur objects and replace them with a scatter. Earlier versions of V-Ray may need some adjustments.
• The scene requires the free Multitextures plugin from cgsource
• The scene contains 12.2 million polygons and several gigabytes of textures. Rendering it may take up to 20GB of VRAM when all layers are activated at the same time.