Light Shape Hallway Introduction

Easing into Interior Spaces

I’m call this Session the "light shape hallway exercise”. It serves as an introduction to minimalistic interior spaces, which can be very easy and surprisingly free-form to create. Even drifting into the abstract if you let your mind go free…

Keeping with the minimalistic theme, modeling is day-one-beginner stuff. Starting with a primitive, edge loop cutting, face deletion and extrusion. That’s it. Basic tenets of a polygon modeling workflow. The thing about the hallway structure is that it’s a safe place where leading lines drive the composition.

Things get interesting when we introduce a light into the scene. We can use it like a paintbrush of sorts, letting light and shadow create the visual interest. Beyond that we only need a concrete procedural material and post-processing treatment to push it toward a believable level of realism.

Finally we will discuss what constitutes a “finished render". Does a still frame qualify? Or does it have to be animated? Does it have to have an explicit focus object?

Spoiler: They all qualify! But it’s worth exploring our options.

Having trouble keeping up?

Blender has a steep learning curve and it's a lot to keep track of, especially if you're new. Here's some tips for getting the most out of these lessons:

Slow down the playback

Our video player has the ability to slow down play back speed to 0.75x or 0.5x. This can be very useful for catching every detail of the workflow.

Watch each video twice

I highly recommend this approach to get the maximum informational value out of each lesson. Watch once for a broad grasp of the workflow, concepts, and techniques. You don't even need Blender open for this. Great for a commute or while you're prepping dinner. Also speed up the playback to save time!

Then watch through a second time with Blender open to follow along. Having an idea what's going to happen next will enable you to track the information much better.

Depending on how comfortable you are with Blender, you could even watch the entire chapter once before the second viewing.

Optional Pre-requisite Courses

Though this course is designed with Beginners in mind, it still assumes you're at least familiar with Blender's UI and basic concepts about 3D creation.

If this is your very first time opening Blender, it might be best if you watch some of these courses first:

Want to learn more like this?

If you like what you saw here, consider watching this course next:

Animation Materials Modeling Rendering