Gbangs Giles’ images make me smile. There’s something about the light that makes me feel...soft-hearted. While there’s nothing overtly emotional in his images (they are mostly interiors and exteriors of architectural renders often without any people in the scene), his images somehow convey the sense of having a good day. No, it’s the sense of having the perfect day.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Gbangs’ renders are so photorealistic but the photorealism alone does not account for the feeling that the images convey. The designs, of course, are stunning in themselves but even the best designs can appear cold and lifeless. Pat has a trademark-able light that humanizes empty rooms, softens industrial facades, and naturalizes futuristic forms.
Exhibit C:
How does Pat do it? Well, there’s no explaining the Gbangs magic but we can gain some insight into the method, with our own render farm having some part in it.
The main reason that Gbangs works with GarageFarm is integration. “I really like the way the app seamlessly integrates with 3ds Max. I love the way it tells me in advance if I have incorrect settings. I also find the newsletter really informative,” said Pat.
This seamlessness between 3ds Max and GarageFarm gives Gbangs a level of creative freedom that he wouldn’t have if he didn’t use an online render farm. “Being able to send the rendering duties away to GarageFarm is a life saver. As part of our more boutique service, I am personally touching every image that we create. It would not be possible for me to do that if my workstation is rendering,” said Gbangs.
Patrick has learned to value this freedom because of his contrasting experience back when he was still a visualizer for another studio. “At my previous studio we had our own in-house render farm, and it's really not worth doing it yourself. Quite frankly I found having an inhouse render farm painful to set up and difficult to maintain, and I wasn't even the one doing it,” said Patrick.
Outsourcing the rendering process to a cloud render farm, as Gbangs learned, leads not only to saving time on current projects but also to gaining time to do others. “It's been a real game-changer. It means that we can easily contribute to much larger projects. It also means that we can afford to experiment a little more with animation and new technologies.”
This freedom also isn’t just creative; it’s also practical. Pat recalls an instance where mistakes in the settings could have cost him a lot both in money spent and time lost had they not been caught by GarageFarm’s support team. “I had made some catastrophic incorrect adjustments within the render engine that were going to cause an absurdly long rendering time. Thankfully a professional and knowledgeable person from GarageFarm paused the render and reached out immediately to explain the issue. They guided me through exactly what the problem was and how it could be rectified.”
Circling back to Gbangs’ deft touch, particularly with light, perhaps his personal history partly accounts for it. He grew up and started his career in Australia, where sunlight suffuses the wide sprawling expanses of reds and browns in places like Uluru. But these days, his home is more than 16,000 km away in Central Portugal, where he lives with his partner Filipa and their son Tiago. Here, sunlight dances with the aquamarines of the sea and the soft pastel hues of the brick-roofed structures along the coast.
His 25 years of experience with architectural 3D must have something to do with his magic as well, along with his unique history of collaborating in highly emotive fields of creativity like music, film, and theater.
Patrick got his start with 3D studying at Architectural Technology at Los Angeles Trade Tech. He then moved back to Australia to work at MJA Studio joining childhood friend and multi-award-winning Architect James Thompson, who gave him direction when it came to the nuances of architectural design. It was also James who dubbed Giles “Gbangs.” After 4 productive years at MJA, Giles co-founded Gbangs Architectural Illustrations.
Gbangs sees how it’s such an exciting time for 3D art. NFTs and the metaverse have legitimized 3D art and it’s only becoming more and more mainstream. Twenty years ago, 3D art was so niched that only a handful of people were legitimate sources of knowledge if you wanted to learn to do it. Information was limited. But now, Gbangs sees being a 3D artist as something as mainstream and financially rewarding as being an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor, etc. In other words, 3D artists are starving artists no more.
In the near future, Pat will continue his archviz work, delivering high-quality still and moving images for new and returning clients. In the time that he saves by rendering with GarageFarm’s cloud render services, Gbangs toys around with ideas for non-commissioned work, like interpreting scenes from nature and from pop culture via the ancient art of moledro. The Beatles’ iconic crossing of Abbey Road portrayed as four stones stacked together? Yes, please.
To view more of Gbangs’ work, check out his website, Facebook, and Instagram.
