“Artistically or Professionaly speaking?” – Interview with Matt Guetta

Matt Guetta is a CG and 3D Architecture Visualization artist based in France. Starting 3D as a hobby, quickly has become fascinated by the subject. In 2009, decided to re-orient his career towards 3D CG, and focus on learning V-Ray in order to become a lighting/rendering artist. Becoming known too with is Architectural Visualization blog which provides free V-Ray tutorials mattguetta.com

For how long are you in 3D Art and what was your first work?

I’m really invested in 3D since 2009. I’ve began 1 or 2 years before but it was not done seriously, it was most a hobby. At this time I was working a lot as a webdesigner and I wasn’t thinking that 3d will be my main activities. So in 2009 i’ve decided to reoriente my carrer and become a lighting/rendering artist. So i’ve work at home to learn V-Ray and 3dsMax, the book of Francesco Lengrenzi helps me a lot and I have to say that it’s still not far from my desk.

How important is it for you?

To me 3d is a mix between a passion and a job so I can work 15 hours a day without being tired of it. Beside of working, I’m always following other 3D artist on twitter, reading forums, news and articles… it’s really important to me to stay in touch with all that happens in the industry.

Is it your primary activity or is there anything else that you do for living?

3D is my primary activity from little bit less than 2 years now. I’m currently working in an architecture firm, JPGomis Architecture, and i’m about to move for another. I’m also teaching V-ray in a little 3d school.

What are your main source inspirations at this moment?

A lot of things! Always reading and watching stuffs about 3D and architecture is probably my main inspiration. This is a sort of accumulation that help me, seeing a lot of things really helps to work faster. There are also some very good artist like Bertrand benoit, Peter guthrie, Alfa Smyrna… Watching their work helps me a lot to get better. I’m really fascinated by their work!

B1 & B2 Project

In what consisted this project? Talk us a little about it.

B1, b2 and “House in the South of France” is the same architectural project. It’s a simple rehab of an old house. B1 is the first floor, kitchen was the main purpose and the idea was to get closer and closer in the image. In the first one you can sell the whole room. Second, only the kitchen and thirdly, a detail. I’ve try to do the same in each floor, from what you see when you come in to what you’re going to do inside the room.

This image looks very detailed. Do you prefer your objects to be as precisely modeled as possible before beginning the texture process, or do you heavity rely on textures to add details to the objects?

Modeling is very important for lighting purpose. Texture can really help to add little details but to me modeling is the priority, so definitly modeling! And as i always begin to compose images with a kind of Clay shader to adjust lighting, field of view… I need modeling of the whole scene to be almost done before beginning to really work on texture and else.

Do you have habit or necessity, of always giving your personal touch on the images that you produce for clients?

Archviz artist are kind of “architect’s mind drawer” and as we need to interpret what’s in architect’s mind we can’t do anything else than add our personnal touch. And i’ll add that trying to get the realistic render (the goow word should be believable) is not the purpose but a kind of necessity. Our work is to build architecture stills so we need it to be realistic because it’s architecture. The main creativity is the way you shoot and light it. When you see the work of Peter Guthrie, you can see that he’s a good photograph before being a good 3D artist and you can recognize his work at the first look.

What do you think about post-production and which is the percentage on your works?

It depends of the post! “Photoshop as renderer” is not my typical workflow. Some artist are doing very good job with it, such as my friend Nicolas Richelet, but this is not the way I work. I’ve always think that post-prod needs to be the same for a still and a movie. So i’m doing a lot of but only with a few tools which are mainly pass combinaison and color correction. I never had some objects, detail or anything else. But I have to admit that those colotr correction are really important to me, it can really helps to get a nice mood so I would say something like 25%

Did you decided any of the interior decorations, or do you have people working with you specifically for interior designs?

I’ve made the main part of the interior design for B1 and B2 but usually it’s not the case. It really depends of the project. For this project architect really know the mood he wants but not with specific objects.

Taliesin Mod.Fab

Behind this great project, what part did you liked more to work?

As usual, lighting and shaders. After choosing some FOV, I’m always spending a lot of thime to get a unique lighting. Each stills have exactly the same lighting. At the beginning of the project I was thinkning to make some interiors so I’ve begin to work my indoor ligntinh first, but finally I found better to show it from outside.

What/who was your principal inspiration to move forward with this project?

The fact that Taliesin Mod.Fab is well design, substainble and made by students at the same time was really some points that motivated me. I was in serach of a project, I’ve just type Frank Lloyd Wright on Google images and when I saw it I’ve just think: “it’ll be that one!”

Are you particularly interested in Architecture Visualization?

Yes, but I’m more a 3d artist who’s happy to work for architecture than a guys from architecture who wants to do 3d. When I’ve began to study lighting in 3d I’ve made some interiors views mainly because it was a good learning purpose and because I was fascinated by the work of guys like Benjamin Brosdau.

What advices would you give to all the artist who are currently beggining and building their careers?

Work and read a lot! Also spend a lot of time to watch the work of other artist, so get a google reader, or another rss reader, and each time you see something interesting sucribe to it. Watch forums every day to always see all stills you can and maybe the most important, this rule is personnal, always do something you don’t know. By doing it on each project, you’ll always get better.

First of all, a big thank you to Matt Guetta for the time, speed and availability for this interview and for all the willingness sharing with us some professional content and experiences. Above all, we hope that you continue with the greatest success in your brilliant career.

Official Page :

http://www.mattguetta.com/

Interviewed – Matt Guetta
Still Images – Matt Guetta
Interview’s Final Composition – Tiago Alexandrino