Chapter No.1

(This is going to be a very long post)

Start of true freelance journey.

At the right time in the right place.

When I was in one of my transitional periods of freelancing life (2016-2022) and subsequent cross-city moves, one of my longer stops turned out to be Krakow (2016-2018). I spent a lot of time at the Academy of Fine Arts (ASP) there. It still surprised me that a university with such a very good reputation didn't have much to do with 3D graphics at the time. Nevertheless, the atmosphere there was incredibly artistic and inspiring. The smell of paints and graphic chemistry wafted through every corridor.

I used to come there for socialize. One day one of the professors asked a question in the space if there was anyone who knew about 3D rendering because he got a question from one of the friendly company. Somehow it worked out that - despite I not being a student there - I applied.

A week later I was already at the first interviews at the company's headquarters and got to meet the boss and other employees, saw their products and what their production process looks like.

Everyone was very nice and a few days later I got my first two .step files to do the recruitment task. They liked them. And so began an interesting journey, in creating production renders in Keyshot and creating a good online communication system in Glip App.

Thesslagreen HeatBox E

Workflow confusion.

It was partly a dream job and partly, a little nightmare. I had to light semi-finished pre-production 3d models from CAD programs. I loved lighting. But there was a mess in those files I was getting. It's not surprising, it's even normal. Constant iterations, constant changes. That's what manufacturing is like. I was looking for a way to preserve the structures of the models so I could manage them in Keyshot - it never worked - not until a year or two later when I switched to Blender.

Thesslagreen HeatBox.

Thesslagreen CoolBox.

Deaf phone of communications.

It was also the first major test for me in terms of the already cranked out way of online communication. I didn't acccpet emails for heavy communications due to the need to optimize production time and solve problems in real time. I relied on the then-familiar Glip Chat App (something like Slack, which didn't have as many options at the time). It was a good choice - however, in addition to good tools, you also need a kind of stability and discipline for such work to make sense. And this is on both sides - the client as well as the contractor. Things were mixed, but also the communication staff sometimes changed, and information to the decision-makers sometimes got lost in the ether. Once again I understood how communication when working remotely is important.

Renders for print catalog and web. Other devices in the AirPack Home series.

Render of Thesslagreen AirTube pipe system.

Illustrations showing various pipe systems.

Miscellaneous.

Below is a piece from a request to design and render (according to dimensions and sketches) a trade show area for the company. It was something new and interesting. It was 2019 - the beginnings of Blender 2.8 which tempted with a redesigned UI/UX and I started to do more and more on it, and this project was one of those that convinced me to get involved in the process of following its development. It obviously gave much more possibilities than Keyshot itself. and it was and also much more "handy" than the heavy and expensive Maya which served to remodel a small element from time to time.

More screenshots. Collection management in Blender wasn't a well-designed thing to begin with, but it offered a lot of interesting functionality that wasn't in Keyshot and Maya in 2018-2019.

Bonus: Prototype of the device being introduced at the time. A test render showing the minimalist design style of new products on which the client has been working.

Chapter No.2

Life's turbulence. Lack of equipment. Blender as the main tool. Remote work on the beach. This is year 2019.

Particle+ projects.

In the following year of work, one of the more important and then introduced devices was the Particle+, a system air purifier with replaceable HEPA filters.

The first early render conecpt in Keyshot, which over time was moved entirely to Blender due to the need to do animation.

The main illustration showing the device and airflow.

Render showing of how Particle+ works in its two different modes. For better visualization purposes, I have used the transaprents shader here .

Test renders more in my own style with more interesting lighting in a more commercial style. Unfortunately, the client did not need this type of images at that point

A simple animation that was needed for the purpose of presenting all the features of the device. Unfortunately, at that time I had a small 13 inch netbook only with integrated graphics card and low-voltage CPU did not even allow including Cycles rendering engine to tun on. The great thing was that Blender already offered a decent EEVEE engine at that time. Of course, the engine has its flaws and the quality deviates heavily, but I was still able to get an image that the client was happy with.

Commercial building project.

Another project I did was building schematics and depicting whole different types of installations that Thesslagreen builds. Renderings I still realized on a small laptop. This was an EEVEE benchmark for me and exploiting every watt of energy offered by the i7-8650u CPU.

Building details.

Production stages.

Clients sketches and my starting point.

References grid.

Viewport view.

House project.

A similar project to the previous one. The challenge was to keep these two very different buildings similar in style and visual quality. Planning such an illustration requires an interesting approach. I used as many boolens as possible to make geometry changes easy and not require constant rebuilding of the structure

Thesslagrees system.

Main Render

Details.

Concpets.

Chapter No.3

Developed methods. Other bournout projects. A look into the future. Pause.

AirPack AP400H- Central air handling unit

Humidifier+ project.