Villa in Azores: Exteriors

Hi!
Today I’m coming with the new set of images for Lindner Planungsbüro
After long, after hours work I managed myself to finish the exterior set of images to this great, Azorean project.

I’m really proud of myself how good it looks, and how more and more I develop my own art style.

You can see full res images on my behance page here: behance.net/gallery/208855677/Villa-in-Azores-Exteriors

Also come to my IG too! :heart:
Adrian Długosz (@dlugosz.illustrating)

Set in the evergreen landscapes of the Azores, this contemporary residence blends harmoniously with its natural surroundings. Inspired by traditional Portuguese architecture, the house’s clean lines, expansive glass facades and minimalist design offer uninterrupted views of the Lagoa das Sete Cidades lake.

Carefully sited among cedar trees and volcanic stone, the house blends into the landscape, creating a seamless connection between architecture and nature.

This project is an example of modern living in perfect balance with the wild, untamed beauty of the Azorean environment.

Let me take you on this small journey!

The exterior imagery was first created to accurately capture the mood and atmosphere of the genius loci. Nature first – that was my driving force for the rest of the project.

The Japanese Red Cedar, which I created in the SpeedTree software, is the main forest tree visible in the nature of Sao Miguel. To keep the vram usage quite low, I created three LODs of the model to scatter it for different distances. To push it even further, I created the tree without branches, but instead with emmiters, to randomly scatter pre-built branches with a good old-fashioned blender’s particle system. This allowed me to render a fairly dense forest and still fit it into the GPU’s memory.

In those two images you saw another custom created tree in SpeedTree. It’s trained Sycamore tree (Platanus occidentalis) which is also non-native species on islands and adapted very well here in its humid and mild climate.

I like this tree. It reminds me a bit those Portuguese arrivals here - the islands adapted them, and the people adapted islands too.

Oh, and those furry guys above are just a photo. I’m just really good at placing any creature to the cgi image :smiley:

What was completely new, was the use of AI in my workflow. I’m still an advocate of pure 3D work, but I’ve found a use for it in the workflow. I’m using it to create custom cutouts of people for my images. Usually, I can easily find the cutout I want or the material for it on the web, but there are cases where the only solution to tell the story you want is to use AI. In my case, I’ve started to use Stable Diffusion and, for example, the lady in the pool (both the aerial shots and the rest of the pool shots) is artificially generated. Same with the guy on the terrace. I’m looking to use AI more in my work, but I only see myself using it as a tool to do cutouts – bigger or smaller ones. For the rest, I’ll stay with pure 3D, because that’s where I feel most comfortable.

And the last shot I called Layers of Azores and it was pretty fun to work with!

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This render is absolutely stunning! The way the modern architecture blends so seamlessly with the natural surroundings is just beautiful. I love how the large windows open up to the lush greenery, making the house feel like it’s part of the forest. The lighting is perfect, giving the scene such a calm and inviting atmosphere. Amazing work!

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I featured you on BlenderNation, have a great weekend!

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Thank you Bart! :heart:

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You’re on the featured row! :+1:

Stunning job!

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Thank you :heart:

Stunning work @ADlug - flawlessly executed!

I would have thought the vegetation in the Azores is much more tropical, but I guess not. Again - amazing work!

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Exceptional photorealism, especially with the natural elements.

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Recently, I decided to sit again to this project and play with it in Compositor to find more natural colors and image balances.

I’ve developed a new method for a complex postproduction based entirely on the 32bit file. Previously I was using the compositor to produce the needed passes to further postproduction in Photoshop and I was based on the 16bit files.

The complex colorgrading on the 32bit file opened for me so many possibilities to achieve the smooth transitions with the tonality and a new, deeper contrast, which wasn’t possible to bring from the lost data of flatten image.

You can check all images in the new version on my behance here:
behance.net/gallery/208855677/Villa-in-Azores-Exteriors




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I created also an additional shot, which highlight the garden tree even more!

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I like to go back to my older works and try to find new ways and new visions for the shots. So, this time I’ve reworked my aerial shot for this project. The previous story about the connection of architecture and nature wasn’t told clearly enough, so I decided to expand the canvas as much as possible and show the whole hill until the lake.

I like this shot. Even if it’s not perfect and has its flaws :smiley:

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