Derangula Lakshman

3D Artist with 3+ years of experience creating high-quality 3D assets, cinematic lighting, and realistic visuals for short films and VR projects. Proficient in Maya, Houdini, Blender, V-Ray, and Unreal Engine 5, with expertise in modeling, lighting, look development, rendering, and real-time workflows. Increasingly works as a 3D AI Artist, building AI-assisted Blender pipelines with ComfyUI and generative tools (Midjourney, Stable Diffusion) for concept, texture, and AI-driven model generation, then finishing every piece by hand in lighting and look development.

Passionate about building visually compelling environments and collaborating with creative teams to deliver high-quality digital experiences.

Lighting Artist & 3D Artist - Freelance - India & USA

(2022-12)

• Built and refined cinematic light rigs in Maya and V-Ray, using color theory and exposure control to hit mood-driven, shot-ready looks.
• Led LookDev passes across productions, evaluating shaders and materials under varied lighting to keep PBR consistency across all shots.
• Configured HDR/IBL lighting for interior and exterior scenes, achieving photoreal V-Ray render quality across productions.
• Built real-time lighting in Unreal Engine 5 (Lumen, ray tracing), speeding up virtual production and previz iteration.
• Used UE5 Sequencer and Movie Render Queue to turn real-time scenes into final-frame renders, removing the need to relight for compositing.
• Managed V-Ray render settings (GI, sampling, denoising, AOVs) to deliver clean, pass-ready packages to post-production.
• Kept light rigs consistent against LookDev targets across shots, cutting compositing revisions through editorial cuts.
• Modeled and textured 3D assets for client and VR projects, optimizing poly count, UVs, and texture resolution for real-time budgets.
• Used Houdini for procedural modeling and simulation tasks, and Blender for supplementary modeling, retopology, and asset preparation.
• Built AI-assisted Blender pipelines (3D AI Artist workflow) using ComfyUI and AI Designer / AI Model Generation tools to scaffold camera rigs, materials, and render automation for product and environment turntables, then finished each piece by hand in lighting and render QA.
• Incorporated AI-assisted tools (generative concept/texture references, AI upscaling) into the pipeline to accelerate look development and iteration.
• Presented lighting and material variations at production milestones, iterating with directors and cinematographers to reach approval.
• Created shot-specific LookDev sheets documenting approved materials, lighting, and render settings as the studio reference standard.
• Calibrated real-time Lumen lighting against offline V-Ray renders to verify parity between previz and final-frame output.

M.F.A. - Animation & Visual Effects; Focus: Cinematic Lighting · Look Development · Real-Time Rendering · Virtual Production - New York Film Academy (2024 - 2026)

B.A. Honours - Design & Animation - Stargate College of Design & Animation (2019 - 2022)