Sebastian Fok — 3D, Motion & Design

Project

Year

2025

Role

3D, Environment, Lighting

Tools

Blender, Photoshop

Overview

Photoreal spaces built by hand in Blender — a rainy Tokyo backstreet and an underground staircase room. Both lean on projected photographic textures, emissive signage and obsessive lighting to make geometry that is deliberately simple read as a real place.

(01)

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

(02)

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. I added an emission shader to lights and simply lowered the alpha on the Principled BSDF node for windows 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

(03)

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 of a full city, 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

(04)

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

(05)

Staircase room

Set-dressing the room piece by piece, this project was to help practice texturing, scene building and compositing.

(06)

Process

Every scene started as grey blockout geometry slowly adding textures, lights, and props to build up the final composition. The staircase room was a great exercise in lighting and compositing, with a focus on creating a comforting yet eerie interior space. Most props were downloaded from BlenderKit.

Staircase room — No Textures — Staircase — Designing Interior

Staircase room — Added Textures — Staircase — Texturing and Materials

Staircase room — Lighting and Props — Staircase — Lighting and Props

(07)

Texturing

Ambient occlusion was used to add subtle darkening where objects meet and in tight crevices, simulating the way dirt and shadows naturally accumulate in areas that receive less light. This technique enhances realism by giving surfaces more depth, making the environment feel more real, dirty, and lived-in. Procedural noise textures were also created to add subtle colour and roughness variations, creating natural-looking dirt, stains, and weathering that prevent surfaces from appearing flat and boring.

Ambient occlusion map for the staircase room — Staircase — Ambient Occlusion

Procedural noise textures for the staircase room — Staircase — Procedural Noise Textures

(08)

Lens as mood

The final render incorporates a fisheye lens effect, colour grading, and post-processing to enhance the atmosphere of the environment. The fisheye distortion exaggerates the scale of the space and creates a subtle sense of unease, while the cooler colour grading and reduced saturation reinforce the eerie, abandoned aesthetic. Together, these techniques create a more immersive and unsettling environment that better communicates the intended mood.

Staircase room rendered with a standard rectilinear lens — walls straight, framing even — Original Render

The same staircase room with a fisheye lens and cold hazy colour grade — Fisheye + grade

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