Sebastian Fok — 3D, Motion & Design

Tokyo, in the rain

A backstreet built from scratch in Blender using projected photographic textures for realistic detail. Emissive signs, lanterns, and lightboxes bring the scene to life, while wet pavement textures, rain, glow, and Photoshop color grading create a moody atmosphere.

Rainy Tokyo backstreet — finished portrait render — Finished piece — modelled, lit and graded

Starting from real places

Before modeling, I gathered straight-on photos of Japanese storefronts to use as projected textures. These became the realistic shop fronts, faded shutters, and neon-lit backstreets. Layering simple geometry with these textures added depth while capturing the quiet, cluttered atmosphere of a late-night in Japan.

Reference — Tokyo backstreet neon — Main signage photo

Reference — wet street at night — Small shop front

Reference — konbini corner — Simple library storefront

Reference — street layout and clutter — Raw and dirty restaraunt to compliment the garbage assets used

Reference — FamilyMart signage — Family mart signage & typography

Photographs, projected onto boxes

The facades aren't modelled in detail they're simple blocks with photographs projected straight onto them with the method being taken from a youtube tutorial by Max Hay. The process is simple: take a flat reference of a storefront, project it onto the box, and you get believable frontage for almost no geometry. The FamilyMart is exactly this: one photo, one box. If it a light, add an emission and if its a window, lower the alpha on the Principled BSDF node to keeping the image texture and the whole scene looking a bit more real.

FamilyMart photo projected onto 3D box geometry in Blender — Same photo, projected onto the 3D box

Blender viewport — shopfronts textured with projected reference — Every shopfront: reference projected flat onto blocks

Faking a deep city

Instead of modeling an entire city, I layered building assets by Max Hay throughout the background to create a dense skyline. A Volume Scatter adds atmospheric depth, while the fixed camera angle sells the illusion, making the scene feel much larger than it really is.

Blender viewport from the side — background towers are separated building blocks pushed far back — Side view — the background skyline is a few big blocks, spaced far behind the street

Blender viewport render of the assembled street from the camera angle — From the camera — the same blocks read as a full skyline

The Tokyo street scene open in the Blender workspace — The scene in the Blender file

Before the grade

Straight out of Blender, the image feels flat and a little too clean despite going through a bit of compositing. The mood was further emphasized afterwards in Photoshop with a colder color grade, film grain, and a rain texture. These details transformed the scene from a simple 3D render into something that feels like a real photo taken in the rain.

Tokyo street — raw Blender render before post-processing — Raw render — straight out of Blender

Tokyo street — final render after Photoshop grade — After — colour grade, grain and rain added in Photoshop

The staircase room

Same discipline, different mood — an underground stairwell instead of a street. Set-dressing the room piece by piece, mixing practical light sources with the dark, pushing tile and concrete textures until they hold up close, and shooting it through a fisheye to make the space wrap around you.

Staircase room — portrait render — Final render — light pass finished in Photoshop

Staircase room — landscape render — Landscape framing

Built, not generated

No AI in these images: every scene starts as grey blockout geometry and gets there one pass at a time — modelling, projection, emission, lighting, grade. These are real iterations from along the way, kept as proof of work.

Staircase room — early iteration — Staircase — iteration 01

Staircase room — mid iteration — Staircase — iteration 02

Staircase room — late iteration — Staircase — iteration 03

Viewport breakdowns

Screen recordings straight from the Blender viewport are coming here — wireframes, the projection setup, and the lighting rig, shown as they actually exist in the file.

Tokyo street — viewport recording, coming soon

Staircase room — viewport recording, coming soon