Dive into the captivating world of a young virtuoso who's making waves in the 3D industry. At just 17, this prodigious artist has already carved out a niche in environmental renders, both animated and still, using Blender as their digital paintbrush. With barely over a year of experience, he has managed to captivate audiences with immersive environments that beckon viewers to explore further. His talent hasn't gone unnoticed as he recently clinched first place in the prestigious FGT3D The Ruins Challenge 'Student Category' by Fox Renderfarm, a leading cloud rendering services provider and render farm in the industry, with his evocative piece 'Every Empire Falls'. This triumph marks his debut in the FGT 3D competition circuit, hinting at a bright future ahead.
Join us as we uncover the passion, creativity, and unique perspective that drives this rising star to transform blank canvases into breathtaking digital realms, and discover how he is reshaping the landscape of 3D artistry one render at a time.
Fox Renderfarm: Hi Haider, it's great to have you back. Your work continues to impress. To start, could you refresh our readers' memories by sharing a bit about your background in 3D art?
Haider Ali: Hey, it’s great to be back. I’m 17 and I've been using Blender for a bit over a year now. I focus on these environment renders both animated and still, I try to capture the viewer in these environments hopefully making them want to explore it further. I’ve entered a few competitions before but this is my first time participating in an FGT 3D competition.
Fox Renderfarm: Can you tell us a little about the 3D artwork that won you the FGT3D The Ruins Challenge?
Haider Ali: Yeah, so the environment is basically made up of these ruins of a city overgrown by tropical nature. I named the artwork "Every Empire Falls" to try and indicate that our current civilization has fallen and the remains have been overtaken by nature.
Fox Renderfarm: When faced with such a broad theme like 'Ruins', how did you narrow down your focus and decide on the specific direction you wanted to take with your artwork?
Haider Ali: My first thought for ruins was a kind of ancient ruins from a lost civilization. I’ve done a lot of renders like this in the past. But I thought renders like that are quite common now and I wanted to create something fresh and unique. My thought was what if my render is set way in the future and we are the ancient lost civilization, what would our ruins look like? From there I generated some references and inspiration from MidJourney and began creating.
Fox Renderfarm: What inspired you to create an overgrown, post-apocalyptic cityscape with an astronaut as the central figure?
Every Empire Falls © Haider Ali
Haider Ali: This was actually heavily inspired by the game "Horizon Forbidden West" which I played earlier this year. The game has some beautiful graphics showing our civilization in ruins with huge buildings overtaken by nature. I actually went into the game and took screenshots of parts as a reference for this. There are a few reasons I decided to go with an astronaut, first of all, the game features various sci-fi characters and I thought it worked well with style, but also I wanted to hint that whoever is exploring this is from the future and this location has been long abandoned and forgotten, hence why it’s being explored in a space suit.
Fox Renderfarm: Can you describe the process of modeling the intricate details of the ruined city and the astronaut suit?
Haider Ali: Yeah so some of the buildings were actually from a Kitbash 3D asset pack and the astronaut was from a big medium small pack. To make them fit with the render I used boolians to cut out chunks of the buildings and retextured the space suit to make it stand out more without being too distracting.
Fox Renderfarm: How did you achieve the atmospheric lighting effects, particularly the interplay between sunlight and shadows? Were any lighting techniques used?
Haider Ali: So a trick I often use to get the lighting right for outdoor scenes is instead of using a sun lamp I actually use multiple bright area lights. This allows me to have greater control over the scene and darken and lighting parts as I like. Compared to a sun lamp that lights everything evenly.
Fox Renderfarm: Were there any significant challenges you faced during the creation process? How did you overcome them?
Haider Ali: Optimisation was a big issue for this scene. The environment of course has a lot of foliage and plants all with dense geometry. Scattering these plants all over the ground and buildings quickly killed performance and render times. To get around this I utilized a blender feature called collection instances that allow you to instance collections instead of duplicating or instancing geometry. This made the viewport performance significantly better.
Fox Renderfarm: Were there any alternative versions or compositions you considered before settling on this final image?
© Haider Ali
Haider Ali: Yeah, so I actually created two versions of this environment with different lighting. One was this one with the sun to the back right of the camera however the other had the sun to the right left of the camera. This created some interesting rim lighting, light rays, and lens flares. However, after asking my followers and those on the Fox discord server I decided to go with the first lighting.
Fox Renderfarm: Your astronaut figure has become a recurring motif in your 3D art. It’s a captivating element that adds a unique dimension to your work. Could you elaborate on the inspiration behind this recurring theme and how it contributes to your artistic vision?
Haider Ali: I think the astronaut character is just a really easy one to integrate into an environment and create contrast. The contrast between the sci-fi space suit and nature makes the render more interesting in my opinion. And of course, the character is also suitable for other themes renders such as dystopia or sci-fi. Overall it's just a very versatile and easy character to use.
Fox Renderfarm: How did participating in the FGT3D challenge impact your creative process?
Haider Ali: I think participating in challenges is always a fun way to create. This particular challenge forced me to think more broadly and creatively about the ruins theme, typically I think of ruins as ancient Aztec temples or something but here I expanded my view to create a much more interesting and unique render.
Fox Renderfarm: Could you share your experience using Fox Renderfarm's cloud rendering services for your projects? In what specific ways has our render farm helped you with your projects? Have you found it to be useful and has it saved you significant time?
Haider Ali: Fox Renderfarm’s cloud render farm has been a lifesaver for me multiple times. It’s easy and quick to use, unlike some other render farms. Of course, it has saved me many days of rendering in the past however the biggest benefit to me is just being able to render large scenes. Especially when using lower-end hardware often a scene just won't even begin rendering due to low RAM or VRAM, however with Fox Renderfarm you can create bigger more detailed environments and be sure the renderfarm will be able to render it easily.
Fox Renderfarm: Looking back on your experience with the FGT3D challenge, do you have any suggestions or recommendations for future challenges?
Haider Ali: I really enjoyed this challenge and the broader theme forced me to think a bit outside the box. Maybe an interesting thing you could do for future challenges is include a template file or composition. It would be fun to see how different artists use the template file in different ways.
Fox Renderfarm: Lastly, what motivates you to explore new techniques, themes, or genres? Any advice for staying inspired?
Haider Ali: I think exploring different genres can just be really fun, it brings you out of your comfort zone and you often learn a lot by becoming a better artist because of it. Participating in challenges like this is a great way to be inspired and motivated too, often the prizes are very appealing but also the support and inspiration from the community are great.
Thanks again to Haider Ali for accepting our interview! Wishing new heights in you and your team’s professional career!!
Haider Ali’s social media:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CG_Haider
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/h3d_studio/
- Website: https://www.haider3d.com/
