Interview with Stanislav Pyadishev about visualization with Blender and YafaRay

One of the things that I find pleasant to do is showing other people some of the amazing renderings and visualizations we can do with Blender. Today I will post an interview I made with an artist that have been posting some amazing renderings at the YafaRay user forums by the name of suomi. If you hit the YafaRay Gallery, you will find a lot of great renderings made by suomi. During this interview, I will post some of the images created by suomi, showing some of his work. I want to thank suomi to participate in this interview, and give us the chance to know more about his work.

Let`s start with some of the images created by Stanislav Pyadishev, which is the real name of suomi, using Blender and YafaRay. If you want to check out more images made by suomi here is a link to a gallery of his images.

Enjoy the interview.

1 – Tell us a bit more about yourself, and where did the interest to work with computer graphics come from.

My name is Stanislav Pyadishev, I'm 27 years old and I'm currently living and working in Omsk, Russia. Frankly, I don't remember exactly what initially interested me in 3d, it has happened all of sudden. But wait, there was such a thing… I think, it was Silent Hill 3 videogame. I've just fell in love with this horror atmosphere and wanted to make something like that.

2 – For how long have you been working with computer graphics?

I think, since 2004 or 2005. Shortly after I began to render furniture. Then I started working for a furniture company.

3 – And with Blender/YafaRay?

Since 2007 with Blender. About a month later I discovered Yafaray for myself.

4 – “ Why Blender and YafaRay? Have you ever worked with any other software”?

Yes, I worked with 3dsmax and V-Ray. But switched to Blender due to high price for any version of 3dsmax and because Blender works much faster. One day I spent 3 hours modeling a wheelchair in Max, and its viewport was freezing constantly. Then I opened the same model in Blender and there were no freezes. So I duplicated the wheelchair in the same scene and again saw no freezes. And again. After that, I decided to start working completely in Blender.

By force of habit, I ignored Blender Internal and started searching for an external renderer. The main goal was to find easy, qualitative, and open-source or at least free one, if possible. Also, the question of cross-platform usage was very important for me at that moment, because I've just migrated from Windows to Linux. The first one I've found was Indigo. It's fantastic software and very easy to use, but the cost of this is slow rendering speed. Then Yafaray came out of the dark and its light-filled up my desktop. I can't say that I understood it very well from the beginning. Actually, I'm still learning it, but for standalone pieces of furniture, it was really fast to setup.

5 – “ You have some amazing renderings in the YafaRay Gallery and user forums. How do you pick a scene to work with? Are all from commercial projects? Or you create them just to practice?

They are all commercial. My job is to visualize the actual furniture made by our company. I have a couple of projects for myself, but there's nothing to show yet.

6 – “ Do you use any kind of reference in your projects? Like a magazine or a real scene?

Well, I've always liked the images in IKEA catalogs, how they are set up, the lighting, the number of small details in there. So I can say that it's my general source of inspiration while setting up the scene. Alongside that I read a number of interior magazines from time to time. And, of course, CGSociety Gallery.

7 – “ How is your workflow for a typical Blender/YafaRay project?

Nothing special. At first, I make the geometry, then set up lighting, then adjust materials. Phases two and three can switch places, and in most cases, I'm playing with mats first. What I can tell is that I never use the “Clay render” button in Yafaray, because it makes all materials in the scene pure white and the materials in the real-world are never so bright. So if you set up lighting using Clay Render and then apply mats, you could get disappointed, 'cause it turns out too dark.

8 – “ One of the highlights of your images is the level of realism on the final renderings. Do you use some kind of post-production technique? If so, can you tell us more about it?

Slight post-production is always a good idea. Generally, I'm adjusting curves, balancing colors, and washing out defects in GIMP. When the picture needs DOF, I'm doing it in Yafaray directly, not on postpro stage. After that, I may apply some effects like a chromatic aberration or vignetting if needed. There's an individual approach in most cases, and what is good for one picture spoils the others. Here's an example of fast post-production workflow I did for the render done by matchias: http://www.yafaray.org/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3808&start=15.

9 – “ If you could give an advice to less experienced users that still can`t create realistic images, what would you say to them?

Well, I'm not good at that kind of stuff. But if it comes to giving advice… They say “Devil is in the details” and I believe that. Try to be as precise as you can while modeling, setting up light, and materials.

10- “ How people can hire you to create architectural visualization? Are you available for freelance work?

Of course, I am. You can contact me via email suomi696 [at] gmail.com or via Jabber – suomi696 [at] jabber.ru