Behind the Scenes: Bianchi House

by · BlenderNation

Discover Mateusz Kapusta's architectural visualization journey, where he brings the iconic Bianchi House by Mario Botta to life in a stunning 3D recreation, set amidst the breathtaking views of the Swiss-Italian Alps.

INTRODUCTION

Hello, I am Mateusz Kapusta, a self-taught 3D artist from Poland. I am a landscape architect to a degree. Professionally, I create architectural visualizations. And as a hobby and to improve my own skills, in my free time I recreate well-known and not so well-known buildings in Blender.

INSPIRATION

The inspiration for my work came from a photo by Alo Zanetta of the iconic Bianchi House building in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland, designed by the famous architect Mario Botta. 

I thought it would be an interesting challenge to try to recreate this building in Blender. Especially as it is located in a truly remarkable setting nearby Lake Lago di Lugano with a view of the mountain peaks of the Swiss-Italian Alps. 

PROCESS

Hardware Used

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
  • RAM: 64Gb 3600Mhz DDR4 Ram Memory
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090

Software

  • Blender 4.2
  • Gaea 2
  • Adobe Lightroom
  • Addons: BlenderGIS, Geo-scatter, Poly Haven Asset Browser, Grassblade, Auto-Building

References

Before starting work, I always start by looking for graphic materials, photographs, and architectural plans that will help me to recreate in a realistic way the building and its surroundings while preserving the spirit of the place.

Modeling and Texturing

I started modeling by recreating the environment. I used the free BlenderGIS plug-in for this, which allows you to download the terrain model and satellite map directly into Blender, which makes the work very easy and quick.

This is what the terrain model looks like directly from BlenderGIS. I always try to import a slightly larger area because I don't yet know what the camera position will be and what will be visible from it. 

Then, in order to add more detail to the terrain, I decided to import it into Gaea, a program that allows fast, non-destructive terrain modeling. To import the terrain model from BlenderGIS into Gaea, I created a very simple heightmap and rendered it as a texture, which I used in Gaea.

In the next step, I imported the image into Gaea, added more detail to it using the erosion function, and created a preliminary texture.

Then I imported the terrain model from Gaea into Blender, and I created the target texture by mixing the texture from Gaea, the satellite map from BlenderGIS, and the rock and snow textures from Poly Haven.

The next step was to model the building itself. There's nothing complicated here; I used photos and plans and just recreated a relatively simple block.

Frame Selection and Lighting

In my work, I always consider the choice of camera and lighting as closely related elements. For this reason, I only set up the lighting at the frame selection stage. 

When I'm doing personal projects, I also force myself to present them with just one carefully chosen shot that presents the whole project in the best possible way. This helps me to squeeze as much as possible out of a single frame, rather than chipping away at several less polished shots.

In this case, I opted for a relatively narrow vertical shot in order to immediately focus the viewer's eye on the main subject while giving space to the sky. 

The lighting, on the other hand, is the usual HDRI from Polyhaven: kloofendal_38d_partly_cloudy_puresky with a slightly bumped up exposure.

Environment

In the final stage, I took care of finishing the whole environment with vegetation, buildings, boats, and people. To do this, I divided the terrain into 2 separate objects: 1 plan with the building and trees close to the camera, and a further plan representing the rest with the lake, town, forest, and peaks. 

To finish the 1st plan, I used trees from the 3D shakers and forestation library. Which, in my opinion, are the best-made tree models available in Blender? I manually spaced all the trees on the 1st plan, as this gave me the most control over the end result.

Here you can see what an illusion the trees in the foreground are, many of them levitating in the air and not touching the ground at all, but the end result is most important. 

I wanted to achieve the effect of early autumn, when the leaves of the trees are just beginning to discolor, and although it is not very visible in the final render, I made some of the leaves on the trees more yellow than others. 

The visible people standing on the terrace, on the other hand, are simple images as planes downloaded from the mrcutout website.

For the further plan, I used the 3D models of sprues from the Grassblade addon and the quickly generated 3 building types from the Auto-Building addon.

Which I placed in the scene using the Geoscatter addon, which is very good for placing multiple objects in the scene. This is what the plan looked like in the end.

Post-production

This is what the raw render looks like from Blender. 

I did the post-production in Adobe Lightroom, but it is simple enough that it can be done in any similar program. In addition to the usual color correction, I applied 3 masks. First, I increased the exposure of the building to make it more eye-catching.

Then I used a gradient mask to darken the foreground and then applied a mask to the sky and increased the clarity to bring out the blue tones and clouds.

RENDER: Bianchi House

Thank you for checking out my article. Don’t hesitate to ask any questions on my social media. Have a great day!

About the Artist                       Mateusz Kapusta is a self-taught, arch-viz artist from Lublin, Poland.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

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