IntroductionHello! My name is Denys. I was born and raised in Nigeria, where I'm currently based. I began my journey into 3D art in March 2022, teaching myself through online resources, starting, of course, with the iconic donut tutorial on YouTube. Since then, I've continued to grow my skills independently, and now I'm working toward a career in 3D generalism, with a particular interest in environment art.I originally got into Blender because SketchUp wasn't free, and I could not keep up with the subscriptions. While searching for alternatives, I came across Blender. That's when I realized I had installed it once years ago, but back then, the interface completely intimidated me, and I gave up on it. This time, though, I decided to stick with it – and I'm glad I did.I started out creating simple models. One of my first big projects was modeling the entire SpongeBob crew. That led to my first animation, and eventually, the first four episodes of a short animated series (though it's still incomplete). As I grew more confident, I began participating in online 3D competitions, like cgandwe, where I focused on designing realistic environments. Those experiences have played a huge role in getting me to where I am today.Getting Started Before starting any scene, I always look for references. It might not be the most original approach, but it's what works best for me. One piece that inspired me was a beautiful artwork by Calder Moore. I bookmarked it as soon as I saw it back in 2023, and luckily, I finally found the time to bring it to life last month.BlockoutThe goal was to match the original camera angle and roughly model the main frame of the structures. It wasn't perfect, but modeling and placing the lower docks helped me get the perspective right. Then I moved on to modeling and positioning the major structures in the scene.I gave myself two weeks to complete this project. And as much as I enjoy modeling, I also enjoy not modeling, so I turned to asset kits and free models to help speed things up. I came across an awesome paid kit by Bigmediumsmall and instantly knew it would fit perfectly into my scene.I also downloaded a few models from Sketchfab, including a lamp, desk console, freighter controls, and a robotic arm, which I later took apart to add extra detail. Another incredibly helpful tool was the Random Flow add-on by BlenderGuppy, which made adding sci-fi elements much easier. Lastly, I pulled in some models from my older sci-fi and cyberpunk projects to round things out.Kitbashing Once I had the overall shape I was aiming for, I moved on to kitbashing to pack in as much detail as possible. There wasn't any strict method to the madness; I simply picked assets I liked, whether it was a set of pipes, vents, or even a random shape that just worked in the sci-fi context. I focused first on kitbashing the front structure, and used the Random Flow add-on to fill in areas where I didn't kitbash manually. Then I moved on to the other collections, following the same process.The freighter was the final piece of the puzzle, and I knew it was going to be a challenge. Part of me wanted to model it entirely from scratch, but the more practical side knew I could save a lot of time by sticking with my usual method. So I modeled the main shapes myself, then kitbashed the details to bring it to life. I also grabbed some crates from Sketchfab to fill out the scene.Texturing This part was easily my favorite, and there was no shortcut here. I had to meticulously create each material myself. Well, I did use PBR materials downloaded from CGAmbient as a base, but I spent a lot of time tweaking and editing them to get everything just right.Texturing has always been my favorite stage when building scenes like this. Many artists prefer external tools like Substance 3D Painter (which I did use for some of the models), but I've learned so much about procedural texturing, especially from RyanKingArt, that I couldn't let it go. It's such a flexible and rewarding approach, and I love pushing it as far as I can.I wanted most of the colors in the scene to be dark, but I did keep the original color of the pipes and the pillars, just to add a little bit of vibrance to the scene. I also wanted the overall texture to be very rough and grungy. One of the biggest helps in achieving this was using the Grunge Maps from Substance 3D Painter. I found a way to extract them into Blender, and it helped.A major tool during the texturing phase was Jsplacement, which I used to procedurally generate sci-fi grids and plates. This was the icing on the cake for adding intricate details. Whenever an area felt too flat, I applied bump maps with these grids and panels to bring the materials to life. For example, both the lamp pole and the entire black metal material feature these Jsplacement Maps.Lighting For this, I didn't do anything fancy. I knew the scene was in a high altitude, so I looked for HDRI with a cloudless sky, and I boosted the saturation up a little to give it that high altitude look.Post-Production The rendering phase was challenging since I was working on a low-end laptop. I couldn't render the entire scene all at once, so I broke it down by collections and rendered them as separate layers. Then, I composited the layers together in post-production. I'm not big on heavy post-work, so I kept it simple, mostly tweaking brightness and saturation on my phone. That's about it for the post-production process.Conclusion The entire project took me 10 days to complete, working at least four hours each day. Although I've expressed my love for texturing, my favorite part of this project was the detailing and kitbashing. I really enjoyed piecing all the small details together. The most challenging part was deciding which assets to use and where to place them. I had a lot of greebles to choose from, but I'm happy with the ones I selected; they felt like a perfect fit for the scene.I know kitbashing sometimes gets a negative reputation in the 3D community, but I found it incredibly relieving. Honestly, this project wouldn't have come together without it, so I fully embraced the process.I'm excited to keep making projects like this. The world of 3D art is truly an endless and vast realm, and I encourage every artist like me to keep exploring it, one project at a time.Denys Molokwu, 3D Artist

Floyd Bennett Field is a massive piece of federal property in Marine Park, Brooklyn, a floodplain that’s regularly deluged since Hurricane Sandy. Noah Martz, a Brooklyn Law School student, has an idea for how to use it that has Reddit talking. What to do with Floyd Bennett Field (FBF) has long perplexed planners, and the site now finds itself entangled in an online tug of war match between competing architectural ideologies.  “Hero Village” is the name of Martz’s land use proposal for the former airfield. It would bring approximately 20,000 residential units designated for NYPD and FDNY officers, and EMTs to the 1,300-acre plot. The design is “inspired by President Trump’s vision to build beautifully again,” Hero Village’s promotional video states. “Mr. President, it’s time for New York to truly back the blue,” the video concludes.  Martz regularly makes appeals to “MAGA YIMBY” and “neotrad” accounts on X (formerly Twitter) to drum up support for the proposal through the Hero Village NYC X account, which arrives amid other traditional propositions for New York. Penn Station’s revival, for instance, could very well yield a neoclassical design. It’s safe to say trad architects and their sympathizers feel emboldened by this president. “The idea for Hero Village came from witnessing firsthand how increasingly unaffordable New York City has become, especially for those who protect and serve the city,” Martz told AN. “Today, over 52 percent of NYPD officers live outside the five boroughs, largely due to high housing costs. At the same time, the city faces a chronic shortage of new housing construction, especially larger, family-sized units. Hero Village is a response to these problems.” The proposal however hasn’t been without criticism from other very online interlocutors. Traditional loft buildings would line Hero Village’s main thoroughfare, supported by a cyberlink rail system. (Courtesy Hero Village) “In reality, there are much more efficient ways of building density, even if you want to add facade articulation in the unclear ‘historic’ style described in the post,” said AN contributor Ryan Scavnicky, author of Architecture and Videogames: Intersecting Worlds. As a professor at Marywood University, Scavnicky studies internet subcultures and how architectural ideas proliferate on social media. “Critiquing the proposal itself—it’s in a floodplain, its inefficient layout—are moot points because this proposal is just using architecture as a medium to sway political power,” Scavnicky added, with emphasis. (Anti) Co-op City? The FBF Shelter Complex, otherwise called the Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center at FBF, was established at the South Brooklyn airfield in 2023 for migrant families inside shuttered aircraft hangars. By December 2024, there were at least 850 children living in the complex and attending New York City public schools. The complex was shut down in winter 2025 by New York City Mayor Eric Adams—teachers have since raised grave concerns over displaced migrant family welfare.  Hero Village was rolled out in the months after the Adams administration evacuated the FBF Shelter Complex. Its proposed architecture takes cues from Poundbury, a master planned community in the U.K. “endorsed by King Charles III,” Martz said, but also places closer to home like Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Brooklyn Heights. The Cumberland Street development near Barclays Center and Gateway Estates in East New York are other precedents Martz pointed to.  A cyberlink rail system would support Hero Village, with a direct connection to the 2/5. (Courtesy Hero Village) The main drag at Hero Village is a north-south thoroughfare lined by the kind of loft buildings you’d see in Soho or the Garment District of Manhattan. A cyberlink rail system would shuttle the main axis, which terminates at a monumental obelisk. This rail line would connect Hero Village denizens to the Flatbush Avenue–Brooklyn College (2/5) subway stop. The cyberlink rail system itself is inspired by Elon Musk’s Hyperloop and Tesla’s Robovan. In the future, “advanced tunneling technology” could extend the 2 Train down Flatbush Avenue, connecting Hero Village with New York City, Martz posited. Martz drew up the master plan himself in Google Sketchup, he said, which took “over a year.” He then hired a rendering studio for the final graphics. Every street at Hero Village would be named after an NYPD or FDNY officer killed in the line of duty.  “I believe it’s essential to create places that also serve as spaces of reflection and remembrance,” Martz said in regard to the obelisk and the street names. He added: “The idea of an obelisk as the central memorial was inspired by its deep historical significance in American public spaces. One of the earliest examples dates back to Williamsburg, Virginia, where an obelisk was erected to honor those who opposed the Stamp Act of 1765.” Martz finds inspiration from obelisks erected after the 1765 Stamps Act rebellion. (Boston Public Library/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0) “Obelisks are now common markers of solemn remembrance, particularly for fallen service members,” Martz continued. “Hero Village will include several other memorials within park spaces and community centers dedicated to those who have given their lives in service to New York.” To mitigate flooding, Martz alluded to an unlikely example: Co-op City in the Bronx, which was likewise built on marshland. “There is ample precedent for successful residential development in flood-prone areas,” Martz noted. “While Hero Village differs significantly in style [from Co-op City], this precedent shows the feasibility of development with proper mitigation measures.” Martz does have misgivings about the comparison, however. “I am strongly opposed to the modernist ‘tower in the park’ planning approach championed by Le Corbusier, which shaped developments like Co-op City,” Martz replied when asked about his philosophy. “While Co-op City successfully provides a large number of affordable housing units, its 1960s-era design reflects a deeply flawed urban planning philosophy. The development suffers from an inefficient use of land, a lack of street-level connectivity, and an absence of human-scale, mixed-use environments.” “By contrast,” Martz continued, “Hero Village would deliver more housing on a smaller footprint through thoughtful design and land use. It emphasizes traditional urbanism with walkable narrow streets, mixed-use buildings, human-scaled architecture, and a transit-oriented layout that supports both residents and the broader community.” The main thoroughfare would terminate at a monumental obelisk. (Courtesy Hero Village) The North Forty Natural Area would be preserved and existing aircraft hangars would become museums and event spaces at Hero Village. Daycare centers, supermarkets, and playgrounds would abound. Martz elaborated Hero Village would incorporate best practices from New York’s East Side Coastal Resiliency Project. This means Hero Village would have a resilient seawall and ample park space which is not only “an aesthetic feature,” Martz said, but also “a core piece of flood protection infrastructure.” A Ruinous Ideology? Today, Martz is actively courting the Trump administration to help make Hero Village happen, but also New York City Councilmembers including Inna Vernikov, and Mayor Adams. He’s written letters to U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and NYPD and FDNY union associations. The promotional video for Hero Village congratulates Trump for his “stunning victory.” Floyd Bennett Field is in proximity to Councilmember Vernikov’s South Brooklyn district. Today, Vernikov is a polemic figure—she recently made headlines for showing up to a Brooklyn College protest “with a gun visible in her hip,” but she was later cleared of the “illegal gun charge.” Hero Village has publicly asked for Vernikov’s support on social media. Still, Martz affirmed he thinks Hero Village could garner bipartisan favor. “In March, a joint task force was launched to explore how underutilized federal land can be repurposed to increase housing supply and reduce costs across the country,” Martz added. “Utilizing [FBF] to provide housing for those who have dedicated their lives to public service is a logical and moral use of the site. It’s a bipartisan solution, one that should unite local, state, and federal officials.” Scavnicky however sees cracks in this logic: “In an attempt to woo Trump, Musk, and their base constituents, it seems almost like just an attempt to get their attention,” he said of the plan. “The proposal does create affordable housing for the working class, yet only members of the working class who serve the crown, err, I mean the state are worthy of purchasing units [sic].” “This X account wants to get retweeted so badly that they are willing to create architecture that betrays the needs of the people,” Scavnicky continued. “But more importantly, it serves as a fine example of an ideology’s inherent class discrimination through reasoning: Why wouldn’t these politicians support this project if it was for everyone instead of just for cops and firefighters?” Hero Village takes inspiration from Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, and other historic neighborhoods. (Courtesy Hero Village) Renderings of Hero Village are similar to another recent proposal for FBF shared last March by Eli Lever, a local real estate developer. Lever’s design calls for much larger proto-Hausmannian courtyard buildings, as opposed to Martz’s brownstones. The Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy (JBRPC) has also proposed a climate hub for the grounds, a decidedly different use from the housing ideas. When asked about who will be eligible to live in Hero Village, and whether or not it’d be open to teachers and social workers like Co-op City, Martz replied: “These details are still being developed. The proposal has only recently been made public. The current focus is on generating community interest and gathering feedback.” Scavnicky cautions against attempts to look to the past to inform the future. “The need for architecture to uphold some image of an ideal past is a ruinous ideology, as can be seen in any American suburban house with fake storm windows,” Scavnicky elaborated. “This is inefficiency in service of the image—all when we should be looking toward new ways of living rather than romanticizing the past. And it’s not just about aesthetic treatment—the architectural plan of the proposed city is also an exact duplicate of an older world that doesn’t, to me, deserve to be recreated with such monotony.”

Save this picture!VARID A VR-AR Toolkit for Inclusive Design.. Image © Foster + PartnersOver the last decade, architectural design has relied on 2D methods of representation, such as elevations, sections, and floor plans, paired with digital renderings of 3D models. While these tools are essential to convey geometry and intent, they remain limited by their two-dimensional format. Even the most realistic renderings, created through programs like SketchUp, Revit, or AutoCAD, still flatten space and distance the viewer from the lived experience of a project. Recently, architects have begun to explore immersive technologies as a way to bridge this gap between drawing and experience, offering new ways to inhabit and assess spatial proposals.What are AR, VR, and MR?Extended Reality (XR) can be classified into three main types: Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR), each offering varying levels of immersion in digital environments. At one end of the spectrum, AR enhances the real world with digital content, while at the other, VR fully immerses the user in a completely virtual environment, blocking out the physical world. MR lies between these extremes but is essentially a more detailed classification of AR based on the type of display used. Their research proposes the following classification: Class 1 display refers to monitor-based systems, where users view the real world through a screen equipped with a camera that captures the environment and overlays digital information, such as in the Apple Vision Pro, which uses passthrough cameras. In contrast, Class 2 and 3 systems use head-mounted displays (HMDs) with see-through lenses that superimpose 3D models onto the user's view, like the Microsoft HoloLens. In 2020, Trimble combined the HoloLens with a hard hat, creating the Trimble XR10, which makes this technology usable in the construction site. For clarity, this text will refer to Class 1 systems as AR and Class 2 and 3 systems as MR moving forward. Related Article Using Augmented Reality In Bamboo Architecture Save this picture!How do Users Perceive Space?Architectural design is not only about defining space, but also about anticipating how people will perceive and move through it. The way users interpret a space depends not just on geometry, but also on intuition, their individual knowledge, and experiences. Kevin Lynch described this as a space's "legibility," or how easily it can be understood and organized mentally, while Ittelson (1978) emphasizes how users explore, categorize, and systematize spatial elements into a coherent whole. The user first explores an area to orient themselves and move around, then they will develop a taxonomy of the space elements to mentally organize it, and finally, they put everything together into a system that tells the brain why things are happening and how they relate to each other. Research suggests that immersive environments such as mixed reality can simulate this faithfully, allowing architects and clients alike to engage with a design not as an abstract plan, but as a place to walk through, observe, and interpret.Save this picture!Which One Improves Design Understanding: 2D Drawings or MR?Based on the above, a study made by the National Taiwan University in 2021 explored this topic by conducting an experiment where participants were brought to a room and were divided into two groups. The first would analyze an interior design proposal of the space using printed architectural drawings and colored renderings. The second group was asked to do the same but only used the explorable MR 3D model seen through an MR headset, in this case: The HoloLens. After the exploration was done, users would sit down, and researchers would ask questions about the space. For example, the general understanding of the elements in the architectural program, how well people perceive length and sizes of objects, perception and understanding of textures and materials, and knowledge of demolition or renovation of specific elements. A total of 42 people participated in the research, with an average age of 26 years, various ranges of architectural drawing understanding, and from diverse cultural backgrounds, including Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. The results shed light on several topics for architects looking into implementing this technology in their work.Save this picture!First, the study suggests that MR technology allowed users to understand around 85% of the overall design proposal compared to 2D methods (which allowed participants to obtain only around 75% of the information). At the same time, they also concluded that MR does not fully replace 2D; in fact, it's about balance. Both MR and 2D are suitable for identifying spaces and general layout, identifying where activities can be performed, and identifying heights. However, 2D plans are especially good for specific measurements of the space (Length and width), understanding the demolition plan, and identifying countable elements in the design, like the number of lamps, switches, or sockets. On the other hand, MR was better for understanding how elements in the space interact with each other (Like if the columns were wrapped by a specific material). MR  was especially useful for quickly identifying the specific materials and textures of the design and visually understanding size in terms of width, and mentally perceiving certain properties of materials like roughness, smoothness, warmth, or coldness.Save this picture!How Can We Integrate MR into our Current Design Review Workflows?MR has the potential to facilitate inclusive and interdisciplinary collaboration by bridging the gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders. Clients or end users with limited experience in reading architectural drawings often struggle to visualize how a space will look or function. AR, especially through Mixed Reality headsets, can mitigate this by allowing them to engage with the space intuitively. Given the transparent property of the MR lenses, non-architect users can experience the spatial and material qualities of a design proposal directly on-site, making it easier to identify potential issues such as circulation conflicts, scale misinterpretations, or material inconsistencies. This allows them to give feedback that is grounded in their own perceptual experience rather than abstract interpretations. This can help to democratize the design review process and can lead to more informed, client-centered decisions. For architectural teams, combining MR with traditional tools might mean that their detailed technical evaluations (e.g., clearances, counts, and demolition plans) are complemented by a richer experiential understanding from the client, which can lead to more holistic and user-validated design outcomes.Save this picture!This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: What Is Future Intelligence?, proudly presented by Gendo, an AI co-pilot for Architects. Our mission at Gendo is to help architects produce concept images 100X faster by focusing on the core of the design process. We have built a cutting edge AI tool in collaboration with architects from some of the most renowned firms such as Zaha Hadid, KPF and David Chipperfield.Every month we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and architecture projects. We invite you to learn more about our ArchDaily Topics. And, as always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us.

In this week's curated employer highlight from Archinect Jobs, we are featuring five architecture and design firms with current openings in New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami. For even more opportunities, visit the Archinect job board and explore our active community of job seekers, firms, and schools. New York City-based design firm Roman and Williams Buildings and Interiors has three exciting job opportunities: a Sr. Designer, Architecture - Residential with a minimum of five to eight years of experience and is fluent in AutoCAD, an Architectural Designer - Residential with a minimum of two to five years of experience and is fluent in AutoCAD and SketchUp, and a Sr. Interior Designer, Residential with a minimum of seven to ten years of experience and is fluent in AutoCAD, Adobe Creative Suite, and Microsoft Office. The Standard NY Hotel by Roman and Williams Buildings and Interiors.STUDIO V Architecture is in search of a Project Manager in New York City with seven-plus years of...

In this week's curated employer highlight from Archinect Jobs, we are featuring five architecture and design firms with current openings in New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami. For even more opportunities, visit the Archinect job board and explore our active community of job seekers, firms, and schools. New York City-based design firm Roman and Williams Buildings and Interiors has three exciting job opportunities: a Sr. Designer, Architecture - Residential with a minimum of five to eight years of experience and is fluent in AutoCAD, an Architectural Designer - Residential with a minimum of two to five years of experience and is fluent in AutoCAD and SketchUp, and a Sr. Interior Designer, Residential with a minimum of seven to ten years of experience and is fluent in AutoCAD, Adobe Creative Suite, and Microsoft Office. The Standard NY Hotel by Roman and Williams Buildings and Interiors.STUDIO V Architecture is in search of a Project Manager in New York City with seven-plus years of...

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" Chaos has released V-Ray Update 1 (V-Ray 7.1), the latest version of the production renderer for architectural visualization, visual effects, motion graphics and animation.The update makes over 3,100 scanned real-world materials from the Chaos Scans library available via Chaos Cosmos, available as part of all V-Ray subscriptions. At the time of writing, the Maya, SketchUp and Rhino editions have been updated, with 3ds Max, Cinema 4D and Houdini due to follow in the “coming days”. 3,100+ real-world materials from Chaos Scans added to the Cosmos library The headline change in V-Ray 7 Update 1 is that over 3,100 scanned real-world materials from the Chaos Scans have been added to the built-in Chaos Cosmos library.The scans provided include metal, leather, paper, plastic, rubber, and packaging materials. That change is partly a workflow improvement, making it possible to drag and drop materials directly into a scene, rather than having to import them manually. However, it also makes the assets available to all V-Ray subscribers: whereas access to V-Ray Scans is only included in Premium and Enterprise plans, Chaos Cosmos is also available with lower-priced Solo plans. Solo subscribers can load and render the scans, but a Premium or Enterprise subscription is still required to edit the scan data. Currently available for Maya, Rhino and SketchUp and coming soon to other host apps At the time of writing, V-Ray 7 Update 1 has been released for Maya, Rhino and SketchUp.All three also include bugfixes, and smaller feature improvements: notably, a new manually configurable distributed rendering mode, Classic DR, in the Rhino and SketchUp editions. Update 1 will be released for V-Ray’s other actively updated integrations, which include 3ds Max, Cinema 4D and Houdini, “in the coming days”. Price and system requirements V-Ray is available rental-only. Node-locked V-Ray Solo subscriptions cost $84.90/month or $514.80/year; floating V-Ray Premium subscriptions cost $119.90/month or $718.80/year.Enterprise subscriptions cost $598.80/year. You can find system requirements for each V-Ray integration in the online documentation. Read an overview of the changes in V-Ray 7.1 on Chaos’s website Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.