It’s always a delight when I have new Balassa renders to talk about! This is an artist who composes every shot with love, care, and great attention to detail. Oftentimes with 3DX you see renders where everything that’s in focus works; but objects out of focus look a bit neglected. For example, in a pinup pose we could have a well-lit upper body, but everything below the knee falls a bit flat. I’ve been guilty of this myself. But you rarely see this with Kendrew Balassa’s artwork. Today’s MOTD is a case in point. Every part of her body has been rendered with the same level of craftsmanship. So in the spirit of my contributions to our 3DX artist resource, how about we take an in-depth look?
Pay particular attention to the drops of water. Those could be premade assets, or the artist custom-sculpted them; if you have access to sculpting or modeling software that certainly wouldn’t be difficult to do. Either way they really help sell the character’s motion. The water droplets on her skin in particular are great. The fact that they have no distortion whatsoever means that they’re either a custom UV for this character’s specific dimensions, or a post effect from Photoshop. Usually with prefab assets like wet skin UVs there’s some distortion going on in places where the geometry stretched. Think breasts, glutes, those kind of areas. We don’t see that here. I highlight these things not so much to guess at what Balassa does, though, but more to indicate that there are different ways of accomplishing the same thing.
Aside from the pretty girl (with measurements that are exactly to my taste!), there is a lot to learn here. If you’re an aspiring 3DX artist, take a moment out of your day to analyze this shot. It’s a great exercise!
david kopkin
January 23, 2017Beautiful!