Fox Renderfarm, the industry's top cloud rendering service provider and leading render farm, had the pleasure of speaking with Dylan Donaldson, a talented 3D artist from the UK who took home the top prize in the professional category of our FGT3D The Ruins Challenge this year. With a background in freelance work across the advertising and esports industries, Dylan is now setting his sights on the film industry, where he believes his true passion lies. In this interview, we delve into Dylan's creative process behind his project "Anuket", the inspiration behind his award-winning piece, and the challenges he faced along the way. Join us as we explore the journey of an artist who has turned a personal project into a stunning visual narrative that captivated the judges and earned him first place.
Fox Renderfarm: Hi Dylan! We are honored to have you here! Please introduce yourself first to our readers.
Dylan: Hi! It’s a pleasure to be here! Thanks for the interview and for hosting this amazing render challenge as well. I’m a 3D Artist from the UK. I’m currently freelancing primarily in the advertising and esports industry, but I’m looking to get into the film industry as I think that’s where I belong.
Fox Renderfarm: Congratulations on winning 1st place in the FGT3D The Ruins Challenge professional category! How do you feel about it and why did you decide to participate in this challenge?
Dylan: I was shocked to hear I was one of the winners! There were so many great renders and it was really cool to see all of the submissions. I saw the challenge on the Fox Renderfarm home page and it reminded me I had started a personal project about ruins earlier in the year. Other jobs had come up that took priority but seeing the competition gave me motivation to finish the project.
Anuket © Dylan Donaldson
Fox Renderfarm: How was the scene in this photo conceived and designed? Where did you get the inspiration from?
Dylan: I drew inspiration from the Dune movies and ancient Middle Eastern culture.
Dune © Warner Bros. Pictures
Fox Renderfarm: Can you explain the decision to include a character on the right side of the image and how it enhances the composition?
Dylan: Often the characters would be the main focal point of a shot, in the light, and focus. But I wanted to give the sense that you are one of these travellers visiting the city. So I did the opposite by putting the characters in the shadows and having the city as the centre of attention. The travellers themselves would be more interested in the city and aqueduct than their fellow wanderers. It's something I could have improved on, though—the camera is slightly off the path and moving faster than the characters. It has a handheld camera shake, but it's moving like a drone. It doesn’t entirely make sense, but it felt right compositionally.
Fox Renderfarm: How did you achieve the grand sense of scale and detail that the jury praised?
Dylan: I think the slow-moving waterfall helps a lot to sell the scale as well as the haze I added to the scene. The detail comes from high poly assets, scattering, and days of detailing. As well as smaller techniques like using the albedo map as a bump map, to add micro-details on top of the normal map.
Anuket Breakdown Thumbnail © Dylan Donaldson
Fox Renderfarm: Can you walk us through your creative process using Blender, Houdini, and other software for this project?
Dylan: This project was my first proper use of Houdini. I am still learning the program so I used it primarily for simulations and then exported them to Blender. I did all of my rendering in Blender. For my next project, I want to give Houdini Solaris a go and try a more Houdini-focused workflow.
Anuket Clay Render © Dylan Donaldson
Fox Renderfarm: What was the most challenging part of the project, and how did you overcome it?
Dylan: The most challenging part of the project for me was making the camel animation feel real. Human/creature animation is probably the most difficult aspect of 3D and I think something that could really benefit from animation school; learning anatomy etc. There's always room for improvement but I overcame this by ‘tracing’ a reference video of a camel walking, and making a fat/muscle simulation in Houdini. I also had a simple FK rig which didn’t help. But my rigging skills are not good.
Fox Renderfarm: What are your favorite aspects of the final render, and why?
Dylan: One of my favourite aspects of the final render is the white waterfall, I think white water is something that can be difficult to achieve in CG. The foreground sand also looks pretty real to me which I am proud of. This required some texture blending and painting, especially on the road.
Fox Renderfarm: Have you tried or heard about Fox Renderfarm’s services before? What is your impression of our cloud rendering services?
Dylan: Yes! I found out about this challenge by using Fox Renderfarm. I often use it for jobs with a tight deadline. It's surprisingly affordable for how fast it is. I was very pleased to hear it's powered by renewables. Everyone is also very friendly :)
Fox Renderfarm: Do you have any advice or things to say to aspiring participants in future FGT3D competitions?
Dylan: I think it’s a good idea to treat a render challenge as a personal project too for self-improvement. If I didn’t win I still would have been happy with what I created.
Software used:
- Blender
- Gaea
- Houdini
- Liquigen
- Photoshop
- After Effects
Computer specs:
- RTX 4090
- i9 12900k
- 64gb DDR5
Render time:
I rendered in Cycles
My scene was quite unoptimized but I had the time to render. For 220 frames it took ~36 hours locally on 1x4090. It’s hard to know how long I spent on this project as I had made some progress on it at the very beginning of the year even before I knew about the challenge. I worked on it on and off a lot. I was also learning a lot about Houdini as it was my first time properly using that program. There was lots of experimentation so I spent at least a month of time working on it.
Dylan’s Social Media:
- https://www.instagram.com/zertox3d
- https://www.twitter.com/zertox3d
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/zertox3d
- https://www.youtube.com/@zertox3d
