Grillagh Water House, Ireland

[arcren_studios]

This was a personal project we worked on some time ago (rendered with Vray 3.5) to add some content to our website as 98% of our projects are covered under very strict NDA’s.
There are so many exceptionally talented people posting content here that I have always been a bit reluctant to post, but I would be interested to see people’s comments and have some CC on our work as there is always something new to learn and always room to improve.

[fixeighted]

Really good set I think.
I love that dry stone walling...did you place those or MassFx them maybe? Very nice indeed.
And the images are all very lush...fantastic greenery.
My only real criticism is the vignetting, which I personally would tone down a fair bit
So no reluctance necessary...post more

[arcren_studios]

If I remember correctly, as the images are at least a couple of years old, the stones were placed manually over a 10m strip then copied to the different locations to give a bit more control over the overall look of the wall, definitely not the most efficient way of doing it :P
I totally agree, I am indeed guilty of being heavy-handed with vignetting, something I will have to keep in mind for future images.
Thank for your comments and input, I’m happy you liked the images.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Not sure about looking up the south end of a north bound horse?

[JezUK]

I think these are great (I visited your website by the way and think your work is awesome) but for me the scale of the two women in that first image seem out of whack and it also looks like it's the same person in both.

I also find the scale of the horse to be off, it looks too large.
These might be perfectly correct, but I'm just saying how they look to me - maybe if that woman on the first floor was someone else a little taller I think it'd then look more balanced for me.

Also, those steps leading up to the terrace - those look strange in my eyes because they look unsafe (unlikely to be approved to actually exist) and that they don't seem to lead to anywhere (there's a glass pane right in front of it at the landing which doesn't appear to be a door or hinged in any way that I can see) - of course, that may well be exactly as it's designed - again, I'm just giving my view

But I do love the staging of the surroundings, the environment / trees etc... that all looks superb.

Great work, and just giving my views.

[arcren_studios]

Not sure about looking up the south end of a north bound horse?

I’m glad that in 5 images you found the one thing that drew your eye and interested you most, the south end of a horse, to each their own I guess!! :P
But seriously I’m not too partial to the horse model myself (north or south), maybe it would have been better to omit it altogether. A lot of the reference images we found online had an animal in the field and I decided to include one, maybe better if I hadn’t.
But I appreciate the input

[arcren_studios]

Thank you Jez for your kind words, its always nice to hear when people like your work!!

I had to open the scene to check the scale of the people and the horse for curiosity’s sake, the horse is about 1.8m high and from a quick google search the “average” is from 1.4m to 1.8m so this one is indeed large and would, as you say, look better if it was scaled down so nice observation. The more I look at it the more I think it would have been better to not include this horse. The fact that the woman is only 1.6m definitely doesn’t help matters.

This “stairway to heaven” is indeed crazy and I did wonder how they ever passed planning permission since if I remember correctly from working as an architect in Ireland many years ago steps over 600mm need a handrail! I just hope whomever lives there doesn’t have children running around! I’m attaching a screengrab of the actual real staircase.

Thanks again for your nice comments, your observations and input, all are greatly appreciated

[JezUK]

I appreciated you posting these because your work is very, very good and these highlighted for me, that even though work can be very, very good, all it takes is just one or two things to not be right, and those one or two things can pull the whole imagery down (for me).

Also those stairs, that have been crafted perfectly by you, you've done absolutely nothing wrong, yet our own life experience tells us something is wrong with them because we can see they don't look safe and I've never seen stairs like that before! (with no handrails and nowhere to go!) So through no fault of your own, the images can 'fail' in some sense because of things like that.

By the way, personally, I like the horse being in the compositions (and even its orientation relative to the camera didn't bother me) - just its scale.

And I loved the absolute lack of any repetition anywhere - no tiling issues, lots and lots of randomness.

Finally, the vegetation - that can take a long time (for me to get right and even then I fail) - yours looks perfect.

Great work - genuinely! (but not your best work, when I visit your website, if I'm being honest).

PS - please don't tell me you knocked this all up in a couple of days........

[OPEN_RANGE]

OK I hope my comment did not offend you. the horse did kind of draw my eye and then it's orientation...

The images all have a very lovely quality. HDRI lighting? The vignetting is a bit heavy but maybe that is what contributes to the pleasant overall feeling? I really like the very subtle and minimal use of DOF. Quality of modeling and materials is all great and the architecture is cool which helps. Surrounding vegetation, gravel and site stuff is also very nicely accomplished.

I would eliminate of all the people except for maybe the person sitting inside the window in #3, they are all distracting and unnecessary. People almost never appear in professional real estate or architectural photography unless it's a public project like hotel, school, airport etc. The vibrant orange of the rusted walls is pretty intense. Shift it away from orange towards desaturated redish/brown it and maybe a bit darker?

Regardless all very impressive as is.

[Pixelcon]

Ah I watched this episode of Grand Designs recently Nice!

[fixeighted]

LOL that is a mad staircase indeed....I mean, what were they thinking?
Is it meant to be a viewing spot...or did they just forget to put an entrance?....just weird.

[arcren_studios]

Thank you again Jez for your kind comments!

The stairs are indeed strange, and I just finished watching the episode of Grand Designs that Pixelcon mentioned, which I wish I had known about years ago when we actually made the images, but the lack of handrail or the apparent uselessness of the stairs was never addressed. I was considering deleting them or adding a handrail, but for correctness’ sake I think I will leave it as is, but I completely agree with your point that it immediately makes you feel something is wrong with the image.

I have to admit I wasn’t too disappointed with how the vegetation turned out, but for me I always struggle with adding people and am hardly ever happy with the result, and I really don’t like to add them in post mainly because I’m so bad at that.

I would be interested to know what in your opinion is our best work, maybe I will post it here to see people’s opinion and have some constructive criticism because there is always more to learn, and there are a lot of talented people posting here with vastly superior skills and knowledge than I possess.

[arcren_studios]

Open Range, absolutely no offence taken whatsoever with your comment, I found it quite amusing and my response was purely in jest, maybe I need to work on my sense of humour as well as my ability to add convincing people to renders!! :P

The lighting is actually vray sun and sky to have some more control over shadows and light direction, with a dome object with a sky to have more artistic control over the cloud position.

I will have to be careful in future with vignetting as fixeighted also commented that maybe it was a bit too much, and I do agree.

Maybe I in retrospect I did add too many people, and that is something I have to work on and improve, but as an architect to me people are important in all architectural images to bring life and even a sense of scale and sometimes a story to an image, after all architecture is about creating spaces for people to experience, but that’s just my opinion and I may well be wrong.

The vibrant orange colour I think is very close to the actual material, I tried to make sure of that. I think to change the colour from what actually exists, and what the architect intended, would defeat the purpose of trying to reproduce as faithfully as possible the reference images we found online on which these renders were based. I will attach a picture of the material in case I’m a little colour-blind and failed in this respect. :P

Thank you for taking the time to comment and give your input, for me every opinion is valuable.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Hi, good to know we are all good and thanks for verifying that. Yep, architects always want to put in people. usually "for scale". I used to put people in every rendering I did. Now I almost never include people unless it's a hotel lobby or library or some other commercial place where activity is expected. Again, look at the best renderings and real estate photos and architectural photography. they very rarely include people. Especially residential. Things like doors, and rails and stairs and etc provide all the scale that is needed. People draw the eye and are a distraction and a cliche in renderings. IMHO.

The orange in the photo above is super duper vibrant and orange. I suspect a result of some errant photo processing or maybe camera white balance or who knows. The previous photo of the stair you posted further up is much more like the rust I am used to seeing. I am called on to show a lot of rusted materials in my work, and here where I am rusted metal is very prevalent and even more brownish but never orange. However it's a kind of rarefied atmosphere without much in the way of pollutants.

https://www.ssab.com/brands-and-products/cor-ten

Your renderings are great and so good on you!