EET AMARU ZEAS AND HIS INCREDIBLE CAR RENDERS

EET AMARU ZEAS AND HIS INCREDIBLE CAR RENDERS

Following the Hum3D Car Render Challenge, we decided to talk with Amaru Zeas, who created a unique piece of art for his contest entry, “Going Home”.

Art by Amaru Zeas

Since I was a little kid...

My name is Amaru, and I’m a senior 3D artist based in Seattle, US. Currently, I’m working as a senior 3D artist at Amazon Game Studios. I’m originally from Cuenca, Ecuador. My friends, family and especially my wife know my biggest passion is doing 3D art.

Since I was a little kid I always dreamed of doing 3D art for movies, advertisements or video games. I came to the US to make my dream come true and, so far, it has been just amazing. I still remember that, when I was in 3D Art School, I’d go to the library and spend several hours reading and looking through 3D Artist Magazine. I told myself, "Someday, I’ll have my work published here." Now, after working in 3D art for 8 years, I’m happy to say that my work has been published in that magazine several times.

I spend a good amount of my free time engaged in personal projects, which I approach with a lot of dedication and passion.

My background in the industry has been everywhere from working on commercials and live action to video games like Forza Motorsport, as well as architectural visualization and Hololens. Now I’m back working on games once more, at Amazon Game Studios.

Art by Amaru Zeas

"I used more than 500 textures in this scene. To be honest, without Substance Painter it wouldn’t have been possible to do it within the deadline I had"

The Ferrari Dino 246 F1

I’m a huge fan of Formula One and, of course, I follow Ferrari. That’s why I wanted to model the Ferrari Dino 246 F1. I always say making 3D art tends to be time-consuming, but adding a story to a still render is particularly challenging.

For the challenge, I wanted to do something that reminds us that Ferrari has been racing for so many years. After finishing the car I started thinking of things like the characters and environment I could use to support the Ferrari. The story is simple; a racer is just chilling after a long day of racing. Why the environment? Well, I wanted to add some humor, as we know a Formula One race car will never be at a regular gas station.

Art by Amaru Zeas

I used more than 500 textures in this scene. To be honest, without Substance Painter it wouldn’t have been possible to do it within the deadline I had - so thank you, Allegorithmic, for creating such amazing tools for us. Before I started working on my project, I knew I was going to need a lot of detailed textures and shaders. Substance Painter was just fantastic, helping me to create excellent 8k textures really quickly. Substance Painter is also great at exporting the textures exactly as you want them, and that’s a huge help because, when you work on a project with more than 500 textures, organization and naming convention is key.

Courtesy of Amaru Zeas

Courtesy of Amaru Zeas

Courtesy of Amaru Zeas

Courtesy of Amaru Zeas

Courtesy of Amaru Zeas

Courtesy of Amaru Zeas

Courtesy of Amaru Zeas

Adapting to different domains

One of the things I love about being a CG artist is that you have the chance to do anything you want. I’ve been working on a bunch of different types of project so that I can practice and improve my skills. I tend to add a lot of artistic touches into my renders while keeping the essentials to make the image credible. I really enjoy creating vehicles and environments.

My first project with Substance Painter

I still remember my first project using Substance Painter really well. It was fan art of the most recent Mad Max movie. Before using Substance Painter, I pretty much created all my textures using photographs and painted them in Photoshop. Well, that was a laborious, painful process. Just before working on my Mad Max project, I did some research on new tools to help me create faster textures. I found a few options, but when I saw some YouTube videos on Substance Painter, I couldn't believe how easy it was to learn the basics! Since then I’ve never stopped using it. I even introduced it to the small studio I was working for, teaching my team how to use it.

Art by Amaru Zeas

The next step

I have used Substance Source and I think it's great to have a ready-to-go materials library built into Substance Painter. I’ve used those materials pretty often as a basis to create my own. I haven't yet used Substance Designer very much, but that’s definitely something I’m planning to do. At work (Amazon Game Studios), our team used Substance Designer and I was amazed by how much power it gives us to create our materials and textures

Courtesy of Amaru Zeas

Art by Amaru Zeas