Brads Request

A friend asked me if I’d build him a 3D scene. We met while I was teaching classes on 3D modeling, animation, and VR content creation at a cooperative workspace called Hexlab. He taught 3D printing and CAD and ran the online community. One day he pulled me aside and showed me a laser cut 3d wood engraving of a small scene. It contained an old Ford Model T in front of a brick meat market with decor and vegetation. “I think I can remake this, but i need a scene”, he said. We went over geometry types, and object collections, object density, contrast of detail, scene depth, and a slew of other things. As a result, we settled on this.

A New York inspired neighborhood scene with variable detail and all in real world scale. I used Unreal Engine player pawns as the mannequins. However the entire scene was constructed in blender3d. At the low end the scene is just over 500k polys. In contrast, with subdiv on the buildings, vehicle, and mannequins, the scene reaches above 6 million. Render time: 5min. Resolution: 4K. In total, I rendered 3 camera angles. The top imge being the one selected for the experiment.

When I get an image of the final wooden carving, Ill be sure to post it. Trying the first few times was promising but had significant flaws that needed to be fixed in the scene. Extremely small crevices allowed the laser to read an infinite depth causing deep lines in the final carving. Check out Blender3D here!