Jordi Sans Gassó: From Student to Pro
Lightmap interviewed Jordi Sans Gassó on his experiences as a 3D Artist in Spain and how his work has benefited from HDR Light Studio’s educational and Indie licenses.
Since he was a child Jordi Sans Gassó has had two opposing interests: a love of the natural world and an enthusiasm for video-games.
Born in Terrassa, Spain, Jordi went on to study Photography and Digital Creation at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. “That degree was a kind of mixture of my two passions: nature photography and the capturing of reality in a virtual world, like in a video-game.”
Jordi studied concept art and character creation for video-games too, but soon realised he was more interested in the photographic side of CGI. “I believe that the photographic side can be much more artistic and personal, whereas video-game work usually requires you to work in big teams.”
Whilst studying, Jordi purchased an HDR Light Studio educational license. “It was important for me to get used to the maximum number of tools to learn and improve on something which I like and enjoy. Educational licenses allow rookies to have access to these important tools. The license was an affordable price for a person studying something related to CGI. As a rule, CGI studies are very expensive.”
Following his interests, Jordi used HDR Light Studio to light realistic projects.
“The software helped me in my studies because it allowed me to apply a lot of real studio photographic lighting techniques but in the virtual world, without any kind of limitation. The purpose of generating a good CGI is to try simulating the reality. With HDR Light Studio you can simulate the best photographic studio set to illuminate any type of scene.”
Jordi has recently started working as a freelancer and signed up for HDR Light Studio’s new Indie license.
“The hardest part of being a freelancer in Spain is the ability to take on large projects. Most of these go to the big studios. And Spain is one of the biggest video game consumers in the world, so the majority of the 3D industry is saturated by that sector.”
With an Indie license, CGI artists with a revenue of less than $100K can have access to all the functions of HDR Light Studio along with plug-in connections and full email support.
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Jordi explained to us why he had chosen to purchase our Indie license:
“I was evaluating what tools were necessary for my work and I decided to buy some licenses assessing two factors: the end use and the price of the license. With Lightmap’s Indie software bundle you can have access to professional software for an affordable price.”
Jordi was tasked with producing beer bottle renders for Cervezas La Verbena, a brewery in Madrid.
“They asked me for some images where the labels stood out. Initially they were thinking of photos in the studio, but I suggested making these images in CGI. I made this decision because lighting bottles is a complex matter and using HDR Light Studio gave me unlimited lighting options with no kind of unwanted reflections.”
Along with studio work, Jordi is working hard to develop his artistic portfolio, with a current focus on automotive renders. It was this image of the Mercedes SLS GT-R that first caught Lightmap’s attention:
Jordi used a combination of tools for this project: 3ds Max and V-Ray, as well as HDR Light Studio. Lighting the image was the trickiest part for Jordi and that is where HDR Light Studio came in handy: “It was very difficult to illuminate so many shapes with so many types of reflection without generating a chaos of lights. In this particular case I made three different types of lights with HDR Light Studio that were mixed later in postproduction.”
HDR Light Studio is helping Jordi make better quality images faster. “HDR Light Studio helps me light scenes in a quick and intuitive way. In addition, the preset library is fantastic to simulate any type of studio lighting on the go. The point of having integration with the interactive render of V-Ray allows me to do the lighting much faster without quality loss. There is no doubt that the subsequent high-quality render is much better than you could achieve with other software on the market. “
Lining up professional and personal projects with an interest in building a broader portfolio, Jordi seems to be following his own advice to artists like himself:
“Experiment with all the tools you can find and have patience because many programs are complex and require time to get results. Don’t give up!”
Be sure to check out Jordi's Behance to see more work from him.