Cinematic night render of a rain-slicked city street with volumetric lighting and wet-surface reflections — 48-hour production challenge
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48 HOUR — MIDNIGHT RUN

3D Animation · Blender Cycles · DaVinci Resolve · Speed Challenge

A personal project built around a deliberate constraint: 48 hours from blank viewport to final graded output.

The brief was self-imposed — create a cinematic night drive sequence using any shortcuts necessary, but deliver a complete, polished piece within the time limit. The scene was assembled in Blender using kitbashed vehicles and environment assets. The Shakify addon was used to generate realistic handheld camera movement across the animated sequence. Lighting was built around wet-surface reflections, volumetric street lighting, and motion blur to sell the sense of speed and atmosphere.

After rendering was complete, the final output was colour graded in DaVinci Resolve rather than After Effects — adding vibrancy, contrast adjustments, and tonal shaping to push the render from technically competent to cinematically convincing. The 48-hour constraint forced prioritisation decisions that a longer timeline would have made optional: which details earn their render time, which shortcuts are invisible to the viewer, and where polish matters most.

YEAR

2025–2026

TOOLS

Blender (Cycles), Shakify Addon, DaVinci Resolve

ROLE

Sole artist

CONTEXT

Personal — 48 Hour Challenge

PROCESS

Blender viewport showing the kitbashed city environment — modular street assets and vehicle placement in blockout stage

01

BLOCKOUT

Scene assembly using kitbashed vehicles, street assets, and environment pieces in Blender. The 48-hour constraint demanded efficient asset selection over custom modelling — the creative decision was composition and atmosphere, not polygon-level detail. Camera path was roughed out to establish the driving sequence before any lighting or material work began.

Night scene lighting — street lamps, headlights, and wet-surface reflections creating naturalistic urban atmosphere

02

LIGHTING

Night scene lighting built around practical light sources — street lamps, headlights, shopfront glow — to create a naturalistic urban atmosphere. Wet-surface reflections on the road surface were critical for selling the environment. Volumetric fog and light bloom added atmospheric depth without excessive render time.

Blender Cycles render output with Shakify camera animation — full animation sequence in progress

03

RENDER

Full animation rendered in Blender Cycles with the Shakify addon providing realistic camera shake and handheld movement. Render settings were balanced against the time constraint — sample counts, resolution, and denoising thresholds were tuned to deliver the best possible quality within the available hours.

DaVinci Resolve colour grading — contrast curves, colour temperature adjustments, and selective saturation

04

COLOUR GRADE

Final grading in DaVinci Resolve: contrast curves, colour temperature adjustments, and selective saturation to push the render toward a cinematic look. The grading stage transformed a competent 3D render into something that reads as footage rather than CG — the difference between technical output and cinematic storytelling.

OUTCOME

Cinematic frame — rain-slicked street with volumetric headlights and wet-surface reflections
Surface reflection detail — city lights pooling across rain-slicked tarmac with sodium streetlamp glow
Motion frame — vehicle in motion with selective blur and neon signage reflections streaking across wet road

The 48-hour constraint proved that speed and quality aren't opposites — they're a prioritisation problem. Every shortcut taken was a design decision about where craft matters and where efficiency serves the work better. The final piece doesn't look like it was made in two days, which was the point.