Author: Luca Catino

Luca Catino is a Rome, Italy based Architect / Yacht Designer and Senior CG Visualizer for Luxury Yacht Design and Architecture.

Hi, I’m pleased to share with you the process of making the JSN Tiles Chair which you can also download here (stripped of textures) by sharing…

Introduction

My fascination with 3d Visualization started while studying Architecture in Rome. As I completed my studies, I started to freelance for a few Rome based architecture studios. Then, as an architect, I joined one of the most important studios of yacht design. There I was planning interior and exterior spaces from scratch all the way to final animation.

I’m in the yacht design industry for seven years doing a lot of images for different shipyards all over Europe. As a freelanced I do also interior and exterior images for local and foreign clients, working alone in a small studio just near the center of Rome.

Before we get down to it, I like to say thank you to Ronen for what he does for us in our everyday working life and for the good times spent every year in Venice during SOA’s Academy Day events.

My job in the yacht industry is very cool and fascinating but it involves a lot of thinking before making any kind of choice so it fits the yacht design and the client’s taste. That’s why I’m going about creating my custom archive, practicing modeling of interesting and luxury furniture items at the same time. The JSN Tiles chair captured my attention from the first moment I’ve seen it.

Modeling

First things first – References!

I searched for as much reference images as I can, and finally decided to use these four to begin the modeling part.

As usual (for me), I loaded the reference images as a simple material and assigned it to a couple of planes with the picture’s same dimensions. First I made the simple chair shape from the front view, then, moving points in the XYZ axis, I tried to make the shape as close as possible to the original.

The most important and tedious part was the back side of the chair, because I had to recognize the geometry language. The front of the chair with the fabric was very simple. The front reference image helped me a lot, but for the rest of the chair I had to imagine how it all kind of fits, and it was no simple task. So, after trying different ways of modeling the geometry, I finally had the base planar model.

Once I had the base model, I just started pushing and pulling vertices trying to fit the simple first chair shape I made before.

Doing a couple of insets on each single face I’ve chosen the distance between the back wooden parts.

Giving a shell modifier, I obtained the wooden part on the back of the chair and saving the entire shape, with another shell modifier, I created the plastic part between back and front.

Analyzing the fabric part on the reference images, I had many tests on how to model it or which was the fastest way of doing it saving time. After three or four tests, I realized that there was a much simpler method than expected. Doing a simple face extrusion along face axis and assigning it a Turbo Smooth modifier to enhance the fabric roundness. To add a bit of realism to the fabric part I started to push and pull polygons with paint deformation and  assigning a relax modifier at the end.

Merging the three shapes into the same file, finally I had my chair.

Then I made the metal parts, modeling directly from the reference images and finished the JSN chair.

Materials

The material creation process was very fast because I have my library and I can pick a single material made long time ago and achieve a nice result in few minutes.

The Fabric

The Wood

The Plastic

Lighting

About lighting set up I can say it was a very simple one, with a couple of V-Ray lights and a cyclorama as geometry background.

Thx to Ronen for the attention and for the opportunity to present one of my ArcVIZ images here.

Thanks everyone for your time, hope this short write-up helps you, even if little! For more furniture renderings and interior and exterior images, please visit my Flickr Portfolio.

Here’s the link to this chair page on JSNdesign website – [Tiles](http://jsndesign.dk/page.asp?id=100)

Cheers,

Luca Catino.