Mountain House Exteriors

[OPEN_RANGE]

A large home in an Aspen forest on a resort in the mountains. Also used Vantage to present the model to the DRB for two step approval process. Clients, Architects and DRB members all happy with results.

[piotrus3333]

maybe a bit more lively?

[OPEN_RANGE]

Hi and thanks for your reply. Very interesting to see your version. The strong vignetting Has a real vintage, sort of from the romantic period, flavor. I really like the added shadow at the foreground and wish I would have done that. Also would have liked to put some under story vegetation in there. Next time <g>

[flino2004]

modeling is good, but the realism is not there if it was your goal. The colors of the trees are off and it looks like you didn't use GI at all, the glass also needs a lot of work.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Hmmm. GI definitely enabled. Tree colors look fine to me but…That’s me.

The glass is reflecting the vray sun/sky. Agree Would look better if it had some forest like reflections going on.

very tight timeline on this, clents very happy. DRB approved and breaking ground soon.

[flino2004]

The green looks very homogenous and too light. Regarding GI, the shadows look even, and the reflections are blurry.

[OPEN_RANGE]

I appreciate your comments. I am always keen for critique and etc. The house is to be built on a lot that is covered in mature Aspen trees. All the tree are the same species. aspen and a few spruce. So, yes homogenous.

The windows are not really reflecting much at all. For the most part white painted interior walls are seen thru the glass, maybe some reflected vray sky. There are a few shrubs amd parts of the house reflected in some of the windows and those reflections are fairly sharp. The glass is set with some blur for the reflection like .98 I think.

Regarding “even” shadows, I have a vray sun; sky, vray camera, gi enabled, vray sky instanced into the gi environment and reflection environment slots. Vray sun size 2. Pretty much default render settings, Reinhardt color mapping. Those are the shadows that are produced. I am not sure if shadows would be “uneven” on a sunny summer day?

[francomanko]

the images are too desaturated for me, and need more contrast etc ..running it through Photoshops camera raw, using a bit of saturation, clarity etc helps.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Thanks for your review! funny, I have the .exr saved in pshop as a 16 bit smart object. On that I have a camera raw filter that uses clarity of some amount (almost always use it). I don’t think I adjusted saturation. I seem to lean towards de-saturating stuff.

It’s a dry climate in this part of the Western US.

Plus, the architects, and this is not uncommon for me, essentially want black, grey(s) and maybe some sort of white as the overall pallet. Currently considered to be “mountain modern”.

Some type of Brown/Bronze/Taupe/Griege/Dried Skunk Blood is sometimes incorporated, but I’m told that is kind of old school alpine chalet(ish). fwiw a lot of these projects are not very colorful. They want to blend into the mountains scape and they have to conform to the drb/hoa etc review boards.

[piotrus3333]

colours are not important in this case as you have limited control - you work with the pallet specified in the design. this illustration still needs to hold up even if desaturated:

going farther - bottom with posterize filter - on the left you can still see the subject - not so much on the right. use whole range of values, from black to white.

and do not forget this kind of image was done millions of times before - find a reference photograph you like and use it - this way you will get closer to "realistic":

[OPEN_RANGE]

The black and white examples are great. I think you are commenting on strengthening overall chiaroscuro? Thanks!

[piotrus3333]

The black and white examples are great. I think you are commenting on strengthening overall chiaroscuro? Thanks!

yes.
you mentioned using Reinhard - this is not complete tone mapping solution - you still need to add contrast, preferably with curves to get decent control (do it all in the VFB for flexibility, do not bake Reinhard tone mapping into render).
and shaders - your roofing and wood seem too dark.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Reinhard is the default color mapping I think and also it’s the same as linear when set to 1,1? I add a linear contrast curves layer to the exr and then some clarity amount with camera raw filter. Will experiment getting more aggressive with those in future.

The roof is speced as dark black slate and the wood timbers, fascia etc are specified to be stained black. So, yes pretty dark.

Thanks for your valuable feedback!

[piotrus3333]

ok - so it looks like no tone mapping at all: linear color mapping (Reinhard with default burn) + contrast + clarity (local contrast). this is the reason for it looking so flat.
try (in VFB) linear + boosted exposure (some parts should get overexposed) + filmic tone mapping.

[OPEN_RANGE]

So create a burned out highlights/overexposure and then correct it back with filmic tone map? I will give that a try going forward. Thanks!