How do I create interior concept art?

In this short article I am going to explain to you how I created the image below. I will describe the process by talking my methods and the software.

Blueprint

It all starts with a briefing by the client. This is usually a written document or short email that states the specific requirements for the content. Ideally it also includes any technical information about the image I should know about.

I will use the brief as a blueprint, reading it carefully and taking notes. At this point it's important to highlight keywords that describe narrative, emotion or mood and any technical information.

This is to establish a good understanding what the client wants, but also to distill crucial information into a debrief for the client to confirm. Most importantly it's the blueprint for my research and this is ususally where the first ideas and images start to form in my head.

Sketching

Usually I start by making rough sketches in my sketchbook. They are meant purely to get the ideas out fast.

If I see a sketch I like I will take it to a 3D program as soon as possible. For this particular image I used Sketchup, which is free and very easy to use. Sketchup is great for architectual design and interior layouts. The modeling is extremely basic, which is perfect to focus on proportions, shapes and choosing a suitable camera angle.

Sketchup has some cool shaders that allow you to quickly change the look of your 3D scene into a line drawing. And it comes with all kinds of styles that allow you to emulate hatching styles or even textured canvas.

Once I'm happy with the general layout of the scene, I will make a screenshot and then bring that into Photoshop. At this point the foundation is set and I can continue by to the next crucial step.

Reference

By using the list of keywords I wrote down earlier I can start hunting for reference images. Gathering reference essentially means finding images of stuff I want to see and use in my image. This can be close ups of textures, patterns, images of furniture, examples of interesting lighting, moods, color palettes and more.

I will often use Google but I would recommend everyone to use Pinterest. It has the best algorithm for finding relatable images. Not to mention it's an absolutele treasure trove if you come across an unexpected image and decide to dig a little deeper.

All images I find are placed in a folder. I tend to organize my reference for projects usually in three minimum categories; mood, textures and objects. If I'm dealing with complex projects I tend to expand this with more categories.

It's very important to stay organised and I would encourage anyone to keep a hard drive full of reference ready at hand. This saves a lot of time and will help you quickly pick and choose elements for your painting!

Ready-made assets

When I made this particular image, I made good use of Sketchup's online 3D Warehouse. It holds a huge collection of models that are free to use. Any useful models can be directly downloaded and placed into your 3D scene.

I like to use ready-made assets as they save a lot of time. That way I won't have to model things myself and it help me bring a scene to life. Today that's very common and you can find tons of websites selling 3D content or offering them for free. I recommend checking out CGTrader or Sketchfab

Now that I have all the basic geometry replaced with more defined models, I do a quick paint-over in Photoshop. This is where the picked reference comes to play, as well as any other last minute ideas. I combined the sketch and reference in a single sheet and showed it to my client.

Rendering

Once the client approved my sketch and indication of reference, I proceeded to export my Sketchup scene to Keyshot. This is where I adjusted any materials on my models, simply by dragging and dropping material shaders on top of specific parts of any objects in my scene.

I also figured out how to enable different HDRI's to create various interesting ambient lightsources and then added my light sources. I remembered from a previous project that you could also download various light profiles, called IES. These too could easily be uploaded into a scene like a regular area light or point light, and mimick different real-world light profiles such as candles or spot lights.

Keyshot allowed me to create quick ideas and variations, which I could then send to my client for evaluation. I create one iteration that the client specifically asked for. I'll usually add two alternatives to show my own ideas or opinions.

Eventually the last image was picked and I got the green light to proceed. From here on it's one last stop into Keyshot to grab some important tools.

Final preparations

The last step in Keyshot is rendering out a variety of output maps. Nowadays you can have output maps for virtually any kind of purpose. These are used to isolate objects by using them as masks or channels in Photoshop. It will save you a lot of time from manually creating selections.

As you can see below I made two kinds of output maps : A material / object output for all objects and a separate one for the room. This helps me to quickly separate objects and make layer masks. In the second image you can see output maps is a normal map, which calculates the angle of surfaces, and is extremely useful for textures or lighting and shadows.

During the painting process, you may want to add or remove something in your 3D scene. If that is the case, make sure you don't change the camera angle. Any new renders you create will generate new output maps.

If you already started painting in Photoshop, your new renders will not match up to your existing output maps or image in Photoshop. This will seriously slow you down in the process, so make sure you stay organized and prepare everything in advance before you do any serious work in Photoshop.

Below you can see some textures I added in Keyshot. Testing and changing these kind of elements is fairly simple. Like cooking, I want to have a plan and prepare anything beforehand. I like to add or change some things during the process, but I will make sure I don't work destructively.

The same goes for any overpainting or other textures. I can simply drag them on top of the scene or an object and make any adjustments, before masking out the parts I don't need. This is where the output maps play a valuable part.

From here it's a process of adding tetures, adjusting colours, shadows, light, values and trying to get rid of the most obvious parts that stand out as 3D. Eventually I made several adjustments that led to the final image.

If you found this article interesting, please do check out my gumroad page! I'm offering the high resolution PSD file for FREE ( or leave a tip! )

Visit my website https://www.michielvdheuvel.com/ to view the high resolution file and more recent work in my portfolio!