Interview with 3D artist Shoji Amano

Hi everyone! We start a series of short interviews with the best artists from Hum3D competitions.

Shoji Amano, author of the best work created in Maxwell, will answer on five questions and give us a look behind the scenes of his winning entry.

– Tell us please a little bit about yourself.

Hello everyone, I am SHOJI AMANO. I live in Tokyo.

My main job is to create CG of architecture and interior. And my CG career is about 25 years.

At the beginning of my career, I used Macintosh II, I worked on a simple modeling computer only, and then I was creating handwriting with all my hand drawing. Trees, furniture, cars were also hand-painted. Of course, now all the work is done in the personal computer.

Recently, I mainly have work of creating CGs for hotels, hospitals and restaurants.

– Where did you find the inspiration for your latest entry?

While thinking back to when I lived on the West Coast in the late 80’s I expressed the dry air feeling of Baja California visited by a single trip. I remembered the lonesome bar in La Paz and came up with an idea to tailor container truck to spaek easy truck.

– Could you please show us any additional images from the work process with a short description.

Mainly improving dirt and scratches on metal parts. The setting that the car arrived here through a bad road.

Representation of tire dirt and old door. The coastline of Baja has a strong sea breeze, and the iron part has also been rusted.

In contrast, the interior of the bar was made a clean space.

– Please tell us your five short tips for creating realistic renders?

I am the only Maxwell Render user in this entry. All are listed in Maxwell Render’s manual. Of course I think the other applications are the same. Although it is only natural, I think it is very important.

1) Texture mapping with presence like dirt and gloss.
2) Angle of view. My job is mainly architecture and interior CG. In the case of interior CG, wide-angle lenses are heavily used due to space restrictions. The work of this time set as 35 mm lens so as to look natural as one landscape.
3) Time setting. Think about the atmosphere of what kind of atmosphere.
4) Artificial lighting setting. Avoid setting illumination which can not exist in reality. I will spend considerable time on this setting.
5) Shutter speed, f number, ISO. It is also closely related to the artificial lighting setting.

– Could you please share more of your works?