Nokia 6233: An Interview with Besiki Mjavanadze

About Besiki Mjavanadze

Hi, my name is Besiki Mzhavanadze. I am 23 years old and I come from Batumi, Georgia. I started working in CG back in 2003. I moved to Tbilisi, Capital of Georgia in 2006 and have been working here ever since. I work for Orange Graphic LLC now. My job is modeling and rendering.

The Interview

cebas: What was your inspiration for the Nokia 6233?

Besiki: This image is not a commercial. I just wanted to make the model and renders look as real as I could. You decide if I succeeded or not. ;)

cebas: What software did you use to create Nokia 6233 and why did you choose it?

Besiki: I used finalRender for this project. In my opinion, finalRender is one of the best renderers on the market. It's easy to tweak, flexible in terms of materials, and really user friendly.

cebas: How did you apply finalRender to achieve the desired effects?

Besiki: I used finalRender Advanced materials for all the objects in the scene. fR-Advanced materials are very flexible and easy to use. I also used fR-Rectangular Light and the new fR-Displacement modifier for complex detail.

cebas: What features helped you achieve your goal and why?

Besiki: Global Illumination and shaders. These are the strongest features of finalRender in my opinion. I mean, the ease of use and user friendliness of the product helps you achieve the desired result in a minimal amount of time and with minimum effort. You can play around with the settings and make a lot of tests as finalRender is really fast.

cebas: What was the most difficult aspect of this project and how did you solve it?

Besiki: The most challenging and difficult part of the project was depth of field. At first, I was going to create the effect in post, using Depth channel, but since the project was not a commercial and I had plenty of time, I decided to use the finalRender camera depth of field effect to achieve a realistic result. Of course, render times exploded, but I am satisfied with the result.

cebas: Can you take us through a step by step overview of your workflow and pipeline?

Besiki: The first step was finding as many references of the model as I could on the net.

As for the glasses and headphones, I took reference pictures of them myself.

After collecting all the references, I started modeling the phone using 3ds Max standard poly modeling tools. The modeling process lasted for three days, as I was working in my spare time.

I then unwrapped all the models that I was going to put textures on.

All the texturing was done in Photoshop.

All the materials in the scene are fR-Advanced. It is easy to use, easy to set up, and I achieved the desired results after several test renders. fR-Fillet shader helped me a lot too!

Then I went on to the lighting. GI and fR-Rectangular Light are used in this scene. I wanted to have a window like effect in the reflection, so I modeled something like a window and put it in front of the rectangular light.

There is also an HDRI image used for reflection and lighting.

For additional realism, some post work was done in Photoshop including some color correction, leveling, and film grain.

cebas: What projects can we expect from you in the future?

Besiki: I am expecting a lot of activity soon. Orange Graphic LLC is working on various projects at the moment. One of them is a character animation project that I will hopefully have a chance to show you. :)

cebas would like to personally thank Besiki Mjavanadze for participating in cebas' "The Making of..." Artist Interview Series. Stay tuned for more inside information from some of today's most talented artists.

If you want to see more of Besiki Mjavanadze's fantastic work, CLICK HERE!