I couldn’t help but be excited when the rendering finished. The glass material was beautiful (in a synthetic/computery kind of way) and finally looked like glass. I thought to myself, DAMN those are some sexy bottles.

I had gone from this:

...to THIS:

Ok, so the bottles weren’t really that sexy. To be honest, they were fairly non-descript. What I was excited by was the rendering. I just couldn’t understand why my transparent materials just didn’t look right. After much googling, I finally found that the answer was to change the index of refraction (for glass, about 1.5.)

This was a small discovery, but it was the kind of thing I hoped to get out of doing freelance work. In architecture school I learned a wide variety of skills that often get neglected in a professional setting. Doing little side projects is the perfect way to maintain and expand this skill set. Although I have many personal projects, I don’t always have the best follow through, so I looked beyond my own little pet projects to see if I could help with other people’s projects. I may let myself off the hook too easily, but would never slack off on someone else's project. By doing freelance work I force myself to continue to learn and stay productive.