In this short tutorial I want to show you 5 short steps to make a render like this

Let’s start 1.First of all references

Many references help you get a clear idea of ​​what you want to represent. For example, for this Still Life I was inspired by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin a famous painter who made a lot of still lives. I love his colors, his palette, composition and lights.

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin

At the beginning, I usually set my blender project so that I always have some reference at sight.

2. Work with simple shapes

If our goal is a static render, a fixed or moving image, we should ask ourselves "what can I see in the camera?" what my virtual camera shows. Simple,right?

It is always better to have a general idea of ​​the spatial encumbrance of the whole scene, so as to understand where to go to increase the level of details and where to leave less care. I use this method in all my static renderings and I think it's a good workflow

3. PhotoScan In the last two months I've focused on this technique and I find it very efficient to render photorealistic images. You can use open source or commercial software.

For this work I used Photoscan and Zbrush for retopologize with the Zremesh and Dynamesh tools.

Always in Zbrush I generated the normal and diffuse maps of the objects.

You can find my more detailed tutorial HERE 4. Composition with lights A good habit is to use Blender's composition light d. I usually choose an element that is in focus or that is at the center of the intersection lines. Sometimes a cut of light like here can solve the composition and have a narrative function in your render. For this cutting of light I thought of a painting by Caravaggio where the light guides the reading of the work.

5. Post processing You can implement the photorealism of your render with simple tricks like Glare, Depth of Field

( a gray scale map ) or using Lens Distortion

. this in my usual approch to a render.

HERE you can download 3d photoscan book I used in this render

https://gumroad.com/l/gkUuk

You can watch more videos and tips on my channel.