3D Modeling · Art Direction · Product Film · Cinema 4D · Redshift · Higgsfield

Some objects don't need reinventing. They just need to be seen properly.

The Flip Top Desk Lamp — designed by Richard Carruthers for Leuka in the 1970s — is one of those objects. Clean geometry, visible function, nothing that doesn't earn its place.

I wanted to rebuild it from scratch in 3D and produce a luxury product film around it. This is how it happened.

Brand Research & Art Direction

The starting point wasn't the software. It was the brand.

Before opening Cinema 4D, I researched Leuka's existing advertising — what they'd already published around this lamp, how they'd positioned it, what tone they used. The goal was to understand the message the piece was meant to carry, and build a film that felt like a tribute to it.

Once I had that, I created a moodboard: textures, colors, visual references, and a selection of films and campaigns that could inform the direction. Three words emerged as the creative filter for every decision that followed: Clean. Elegant. Simple.

Moodboard & Visual Direction

The moodboard organized into four blocks: lamp references, scene references, textures, and color palette.

Orange #FF841F was non-negotiable — it's the lamp's identity. The scene — walnut table, bouclé armchair, off-white background — was defined here before a single polygon was modeled. The decisions happen on paper. The software executes them.

3D Modeling in Cinema 4D

With the visual direction locked, I started modeling in Cinema 4D.

First pass: everything in white, no materials, no color — just geometry. Every component modeled separately: the L-shaped body, the cylindrical shade with its ventilation slots, the Edison bulb with the tungsten filament, the chrome screws, the armchair, the table. Built independently from the start, because the film concept required each piece to animate on its own.

Once the geometry was solid, I applied shaders and materials — soft-touch coating on the body, real glass IOR on the bulb, walnut grain on the table. Then rendering began.

To enhance the renders and cut down on rendering time significantly, I used Crea — an AI-powered render enhancement tool that improved quality without going back into long Redshift cycles. The final renders came out at 4K.

The lamp's light signature — curved stripes of warm shadow cast through the ventilation slots — became the visual thread running through every render and every scene in the film.

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Texturing, Shaders & Renders

Once the geometry was complete, the personality of the object started to appear.

The most critical material was the soft-touch coating on the lamp body. Too glossy and it reads plastic. Too matte and it loses depth. The right finish lives in the tension between both — the same tactile quality as the real object.

Each element had its own treatment: matte soft-touch on the body, warm orange on the shade interior to catch the bulb's glow, real IOR glass on the Edison bulb, chrome on the screws, bouclé fabric on the armchair, and walnut grain on the table.

The lamp's light signature — curved stripes of warm shadow through the ventilation slots — became the visual thread running through every render and every scene in the film.

All renders at 4K · Redshift · 2700K warm amber. Final output enhanced through Crea to sharpen quality and cut render time significantly.

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Product Poster Design

The renders were strong enough to hold a campaign on their own. So that's what I did.

Taking the hero render, the lamp in orange over the walnut table with the bouclé armchair in the background, I composed a product poster that could work as a standalone piece. The design language follows the same rules as the film: clean layout, generous white space, the orange doing all the heavy lifting.

Typography: spaced uppercase, geometric sans-serif. No decoration. The object is the star.

The poster closes the static campaign. Model, renders, and a print-ready graphic piece that frames the lamp the way it deserves to be framed.

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Tools: Cinema 4D · Redshift · Crea · ChatGPT · Nano Banana · Higgsfield · After Effects

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Lucía López · Senior Graphic & Motion Designer · Chin.arte Studio · Dublin 2025chinartestudio.com

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