Studio: Phil Ryan

Personal / Commissioned: Personal

A couple of months ago, I stumbled across an amazing project in Sofia, Bulgaria by architects Dimitar Karanikolov and Venete Nikolova (http://www.homedsgn.com/2015/07/21/loft-9b-by-dimitar-karanikolov/). The space itself is a small loft apartment with some really great material and furniture choices. Having just finished the SoA Masterclass, I was feeling inspired and was on the lookout for a small space to practice everything I had learned and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I had spoken at length with Gianpiero about the differences between Corona and V-Ray and as we use V-Ray in the office I decided I would also use this as a platform to teach myself Corona as a render engine.

Modeling took the majority of the time on this project as I was working from pictures and PDF plans, so trying to get everything at the correct scale was a little difficult. The lighting for the scene is just a simple HDRI from Peter Guthrie, and one or two Corona lights for the lighting fixtures in the office and kitchen. Materials were very straightforward to make in Corona, especially with the new PBR workflow in Corona 1.5 – I had a lot of fun making the floor and the concrete box shaders!

Overall the project took around 3 weeks to complete, working an hour or two here and there in my spare time after work.