Spencer Magnusson

Hospital Morning

February 2023

"We met the family at the hospital; the baby almost drowned. Tests came back with 'brain dead.' The nurses recorded the time. One visitor whimpered, 'Why would God take him?' I remember the mother, laying in a fetal position, crying uncontrollably for her boy. And yet, somehow, I only felt peace."

Created with Blender, rendered in Eevee. No AI. No filters.

Painterly CG render of a mother laying on a hospital bed beside her baby, with the morning sun

Shared at the 2024 Blender Conference in Los Angeles (re-recorded at home).

I first created the scene like anyone would in 3D: with realistic assets, posing, and lighting. After experimenting with a few camera angles, I settled on an overhead tilt.

CG render of a mother laying on a hospital bed beside her baby

I baked the render in Blender Cycles to a vertex group. This gave me all the shader and lighting information from a render, while allowing the flexibility to paint my own colors as needed.

CG render of a color map of a hospital scene

With the help of Python, I generated a flowmap to represent how these colors "flowed" towards each other. This affected the rotation of brushstroke instances.

CG render of vector flowmap of a hospital scene

Geometry nodes instanced the brushstrokes, rotated and scaled them, and passed along the color data to the brushstroke shader.

Closeup CG render of a mother laying her hand on her baby