New dbox website is live.

[Neilg]

http://dbox.com/

Instead of having a client focused website, we've decided to try and create a complete biography and document of everything dbox has ever done - including all our fashion, photography, design & branding work. There's a new post every day, and right now we have a further 200 posts already lined up in the system ready to go on top of the 400 or so already there.

Everything is tagged, so for example if you just want to see the 3d you can use http://dbox.com/tagged/cgi
http://dbox.com/tagged/behind-the-scenes has some great anecdotes from the founders. you can take a little journey through the tags

We just released an interview with CGarchitect here -

http://www.cgarchitect.com/2015/01/dbox2015


And a post in image uploads is no good without images: (a small random sample from the hundred or more already on the site)













vray used on everything apart from the 1996 showreel in the first post.

[cheerioboy]

fantastic stuff, thanks for sharing

[glorybound]

You guys nailed the people; I avoid them like the plague. Along with the people, everything else looks awesome.

[rivoli]

impressive collection of work.. really enjoyed the behind-the-scenes posts too.

[Nicinus]

The black ballerina is stunning. Well, all of it is really.

[Pixelcon]

It's about time for a new site And a bold move at that with the new style. I'm impressed by the amount of non-cg work on there as well.

[Neilg]

The black ballerina is stunning. Well, all of it is really.

This was only my second photoshoot but she was amazing to work with. For a lot of her poses she had to swing into them from standing, hold them briefly for enough time to take the shot and then come out. nailed every one within a couple tries, kept wanting to try and improve on them, giving us great new ideas to try. really inspiring model to work with - that photoshoot wasn't going to look anything like that until we met her and realized we had to work with her strengths and start coming up with some bold poses.

This is probably my favorite pose she did. 5th or 6th attempt, nailed it.

[Vizioen]

These are all just insane. The atmosphere, the lighting, the materials,...Also the integration of the people is nice! You have to give us some pointers Are these stock images? Do you hire models for all the images?

[tricky]

Excellent work Neil - ballerinas are going in all our images from now on.

[Neilg]

You have to give us some pointers Are these stock images? Do you hire models for all the images?

no, just the ones where they're the focus and we have a couple of people that tell a story through a small series. If there are more than a couple then it's either stock, and maybe people who work at dbox in the fg (if a new employee wants to, they can sign a model release)
There's no secret but time. Carefully trying to find people that look like they belong - our process is usually to take the cg image with no people and start sketching stick figures over it - keeping the composition in mind. getting a good flow of people through the space, coming with ideas for how they can interact with the space (this person is looking/touching something etc), then we go through every single person in our library trying to find the most appropriate ones that match. we'll probably bring in 60-100 for 15 that were sketched on, and while whittling that down we'll end up getting rid of a couple of the position ideas that just aren't working (or make a note to use someone in the office - who we can get picking something up with their hand in the right place and the lighting much closer)
once they're in in a question of adding curves adjustment layers - shitloads of them, with hand painted masks. one general one to level them in, one that tints and darkens the shadow parts, one that lightens and tints the bright parts - you cant change the direction of light, but you can emphasize it or tweak it closer to the tones of the rendered light.
Shadows are much the same affair. a skewed copy of the person, but a lot of brushing and wacom use.

Largely we try and avoid taking on jobs that need people unless they up the budget, doing a good job takes a day minimum, maybe two.

[Vizioen]

no, just the ones where they're the focus and we have a couple of people that tell a story through a small series. If there are more than a couple then it's either stock, and maybe people who work at dbox in the fg (if a new employee wants to, they can sign a model release)
There's no secret but time. Carefully trying to find people that look like they belong - our process is usually to take the cg image with no people and start sketching stick figures over it - keeping the composition in mind. getting a good flow of people through the space, coming with ideas for how they can interact with the space (this person is looking/touching something etc), then we go through every single person in our library trying to find the most appropriate ones that match. we'll probably bring in 60-100 for 15 that were sketched on, and while whittling that down we'll end up getting rid of a couple of the position ideas that just aren't working (or make a note to use someone in the office - who we can get picking something up with their hand in the right place and the lighting much closer)
once they're in in a question of adding curves adjustment layers - shitloads of them, with hand painted masks. one general one to level them in, one that tints and darkens the shadow parts, one that lightens and tints the bright parts - you cant change the direction of light, but you can emphasize it or tweak it closer to the tones of the rendered light.
Shadows are much the same affair. a skewed copy of the person, but a lot of brushing and wacom use.

Largely we try and avoid taking on jobs that need people unless they up the budget, doing a good job takes a day minimum, maybe two.

That's a good explanation, I work in an architectural firm and they don't allow me that much time, sometimes I even have to create the whole image, 3D, render and post in 1 day, all by myself so it's really a bit of a rush job, if I'm lucky I get 3 days. I also curve adjust, tint, shadow paint, but I think the lack of time prevents me from really getting it right. Where do you get the stock images from? I have a big library (+-2800 people) but most of them are free, except for a few from doschdesign.