Behind the Scenes
The studio was hesitant to venture outside of their all-Apple ecosystem. It quickly became clear that we needed more horsepower to render growth, shading changes, and depth at scale.
My brief Hackintosh experiment (dual NVIDIA GPUs, twin PSUs) proved unstable, so I built a custom workstation: an AMD ThreadRipper, quad-GPU server: a night-and-day difference.
The ability to render overnight passes fresh for team and client reviews every morning was game-changing.
With the pipeline in order, we could start to make some moves. Animating growth meant evolving both geometry and materials. Stems and branches needed to lengthen, and surfaces had to shift from waxy young greens to fuller, more complex textures. I looked to nature for my inspiration. Taking regular trips to Hampstead Heath park with my DSLR to capture leaves, bark and flower blossom references.
For rendering, we debated Redshift vs Corona render engines. Corona, often used in arch-viz: brought a unique light quality we loved for this subject. Soft highlights, honest shadows, and a gentle roll-off that helped the botanicals feel photographed rather than illustrated.
