It was an honor to learn my balsa model renders took 1st place in the NGA House Maxwell Render visualization challenge held over at my favorite Architectural visualization blog/forum, ronenbekerman.com

The brief was simple: In this mini challenge you are being asked to submit 3d exterior visuals of the NGA House using the 3d model provided to you. You cannot change the house model but you can add to it and the environment is totally up to you and your creative minds!

The first three images here are my final submissions followed by my works in progress and finally a short video breakdown of my light passes and post work in After Effects. Initially I had intended to create a dusk waterfront scene but just wasn’t feeling it. During my modeling phase I started using a balsa look for fun and found this a much more interesting path for me to go. I ended up building out a full CG balsa model as well as an interior scene for my “exterior visualization”. Everything is modeled and textured by me aside from the leaves in the trees which are part of a stock model from Evermotion.

There was a good chance I wouldn’t finish my entry at all. Timing couldn’t have been worse, since my wife’s due date fell in the middle of this challenge and I would undoubtedly be pretty busy once our new baby arrived. I have to thank my wife for understanding and supporting the all-nighters I had to pull only days after we had returned from the hospital!  I just couldn’t leave it half-done!

As usual the challenge was a lot of fun and reminded me just how much I enjoy using Maxwell Render! There were so many great entries for this challenge and it was a pleasure to see and share progress in the challenge thread. Congratulations to all the artists involved for a job well done!