Path is made by walking

Ready for take-off!

Hello everyone, my name is Santiago Expósito Cañizares, and I'm close to finishing my 10-month learning journey at School-Ing. After creating personal renders as a hobby for the past few years, I decided to enroll in this school to train with great professionals and be prepared to enter this amazing world professionally and grow within this industry. I'm very excited to start this new stage, so I invite you to join me on the journey I've been on the last 8 months :)

House on an Island

After solidifying the basic concepts, it was time to choose an introductory project for the course. While exploring different options, this house from the Atelier Oslo studio caught my attention, so I didn't hesitate and jumped into it. My idea was to accurately recreate the architecture of the house, while for the environment, although I kept the general idea of a house on the rocks by the sea, I took the liberty of inventing many parts.

Once I obtained the plans, the work consisted of spending many hours modeling the house. In this project, I used several very useful plugins, such as ForestPack by Itoo Software to distribute the vegetation, and Scene Manager by Pulze to manage the different scenes. All of this using 3ds Max + V-Ray for rendering, and Photoshop for post-production.

Details matter...

After the first introductory project learning basic modeling and texturing techniques, it was time to learn the dreaded 'polygonal modeling,' where I learned the main tools for modeling slightly more organic shapes, applied to modeling the Fritz Hansen PK0 chair. This was one of my goals before starting the course, and I am proud to have managed to model this chair. Now I just need to practice more and more to get better :)

Let's go inside!

After having 'rested' while modeling the chair, we started the interior module with a residential housing project. In this case, I chose the Vespucci Winery Residence by Frame Studio, where I knew that emphasizing the great height of the project, as well as the glass box on the upper level, would be very important in a luxury home of this type. It seems obvious, but undertaking an interior project requires thinking differently than you would for an exterior project, as everything is much more confined, and the freedom you have with lighting is not as great (although, when it comes to putting in the hours to model from scratch based on the plans, creating the materials, placing and correcting materials... it is quite similar)

Table for two? Come this way

To complete the interior module, we had to carry out a retail project. In my case, I chose the Cantabrian Maritime Restaurant, designed by Zooco Estudio. From this project, I highlight a few aspects: the first is how much I enjoyed creating materials. For the exposed concrete material, stained and worn on the curved concrete surface, I combined several textures and masks within the Slate Material Editor of 3ds Max. I think it turned out quite faithful to reality, and it wasn't too complicated. I found it to be a very elegant project in the way it combines materials and shapes. On the other hand, this project reminded me of a lesson that I sometimes forget: sometimes things are easier than they seem, there's no need to complicate them. It could be a good topic to discuss while enjoying a good meal with views of the Cantabrian Sea.

The client is always right

To start the contest module, we simulated the real situation that would occur when accepting a commission from an architecture studio. We had several projects to choose from, where the client (our teacher Edu) provided us with a model and a briefing telling us what he wanted to convey. I chose this project and started working on the model to turn it into a kind of urban garden. It was a real challenge to try to clean up the model's geometry, although the tools from SINI Software helped me a lot. In the end, I think I arrived at some striking images, so I am proud to have successfully completed the project.

Work in progress...

For the second contest project, which is still ongoing, we are fortunate to have the assistance of Víctor Bonafonte, CEO of Beauty and the Bit. In this project, all students are creating images of a building inspired by The Broad, an iconic museum in Los Angeles. In my case, I want to share the images I proposed for the initial draft, of which I am developing two, and I am confident that they will soon see the light.

Just the beginning

Up to this point, this brief journey through my last 8 months of training at School-Ing concludes. Even before entering, I was certain this was the right place to steer my professional future in the world of renders, and now that I'm about to finish, I still have that beautiful feeling you get when you make a good decision and know you're doing the right thing. As soon as the course ends, I would love to enter and become part of this industry in a good architectural visualization studio where I can contribute while continuing to learn from more experienced people. Personally, renders have been the answer to a period of uncertainty regarding my future, and that's why I know this will be my path for many years to come. I would like to thank Adán and Edu, my teachers, for helping me to be prepared for this new stage that is about to begin in my professional and personal life, which I feel, as I like to say, will go "up like rockets." To see more personal projects, you can follow me on IG: @exposito.santiago, where I upload everything I do.

Thank you for your time,

Santiago