Interview with 3D artist David Baylis

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

David Baylis, the author of work “One last ride” will answer on six questions and give us a look behind the work.

– Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you become a 3D artist?

Hey everyone! My name is David Baylis, I work mostly in the architectural visualisation field but I also focus on automotive design during my spare time.

I started watching some tutorials and started experimenting on my own. Always keeping an eye on the CG news to learn new tips.

– What’s your favorite aspect of creating 3D art? Is there something you specialize in and enjoy the most?

The challenge behind every project. Each of them are unique and have their own level difficulties. Always dream big…

I specialise in both architectural visualisation and automotive rendering.

– What or who inspires you today?

Automotive design, architecture, photography.

The rise of real-time rendering in today’s workflow.

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

1. – Reference images are really important when it comes to realism, it’s a great exercise for replicating physically accurate designs;

2. – Lighting makes the whole mood of the render, and takes some tweaking until it feels ‘right’;

3. – Textures are without a doubt essentials to realism. Luckily for artists nowadays there are several services offering huge scanned assets;

4. – Sense of scaling is very important, a mistake that is easily forgotten but takes a lot of time to repair afterwards. Always check your units to have everything scaled properly;

5. – Imperfection, wear on materials without over abusing it.

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

Sure, here is my reference image for the competition work.

Scene in the Unreal Engine 4.

Find differences: my scene vs reference.

Variation of the concrete to avoid repetition.

Each assets was textured using the Substance Painter live-link tool for UE4.

By the way, you can see virtual camera of the car and scene here.

– Which of your designs are you most proud of and why?

It’s hard to pick one favourite, but the L.A river scene is the one I’m most proud of, as it originated from a simple idea in my head, into a realized project. I had all the necessary tools and skills to achieve it, just required a lot of patience and dedication.