In the office we always had a problem when creating generic casino designs since there was always a high volume of such briefs. Stock images can only take you so far without having to repeat the same imagery. We needed a solution to create varied generic banners, efficiently.
My idea was to create 3D assets that would be easy to reproduce in different angles and lighting, thus having unlimited options and keeping the designs uniform.
Goal
Create 3D assets of generic casino elements for general use.
Design Process
- As any good designer would, I start by looking for inspiration from competitor sites, modern trends and artistic portfolio websites. I save images that I like and create a mood board. This helps me stay focused on my vision and at the same time keeps me inspired.
- Depending on the project, I sometimes pull out my pen and paper to sketch ideas. With the constant technology improvements and innovation, still nothing beats physical mediums. It is a sure and quick way to try new concepts and understand the design.
- After drawing a few concepts and getting them approved, I turned over to Blender to churn out these aforementioned generic casino assets.
- After the assets were modeled, they were rendered in different angles with a transparent background. I chose Evee from Blender’s choice of rendering engines, for the sake of speed. This was for my colleagues who either didn’t have the knowhow or time to render in 3D. The renders and finished models were shared in an online library for the team to use. This helped ease the repetitive generic work while keeping the imagery diverse.
Conclusion
I recognized a solution for a problem prevalent within the office that slowed down production and got a few designers annoyed. During my down time and with the approval of the design lead, I took the initiative to create a 3d asset library available to everyone for their projects.
For this project I made use of:
- Blender to create and render the 3d models.
- Illustrator for some elements that I imported into Blender.
- Photoshop in the final stage, to combine all the elements and create the JPG banners.