Revisiting an old project

[Dynedain]

I had to go back and rerender a project that a guy in my office had originally done with Radiosity about 3 years ago. Shortly thereafter I had reworked it with VRay for our demo reel, but it was still very badly mangled with bad modeling, not so great lighting and textures.

After a lot of cleanup and modifcations to show the current design (under construction), essentially remodeling and lighting from scratch, I generated these two images for the client. Total work about 6-8 hours including rendering time.

[timmatron]

I'm not sure where the project is located, but you know what would look nice?

A cold drizzly storm outside, even snow if possible. And have a roaring, warm, toasty fire inside. Right now, both interior and exterior look warm, like you could either be inside or outside and it wouldn't make a difference. If it's summertime, make it look cool and refreshing inside. If it's wintertime, make it warm and cozy inside & thats where the fireplace comes into play.

Nice job though. I would be interested to see the radiosity renders from 3 years ago.

[Dynedain]

It's nice to hear a comment about style, it makes me hope that my renderings have gotten good enough that the technical problems/mistakes aren't a substantial issue

This is a Los Angeles beach house, so it won't ever be snowy, and stormy rain is unusual... although that might make for some nice renders for our demo reel. Our original set of VRay renders did make the inside feel cool shadowy and sharp, but the designer really didn't like that (hence why the radiosity renders were given to the client). It was one of our very first VRay renderings. Up untill that point almost all our renderings had been done with FormZ and no GI whatsoever. The architecture side of our firm usually warms up and softens the appearance of our contemporary projects to get better receptions from the clients. So they preferred the warm soft style of the Radiosity renderings better, even though it meant blotchy bad colors

I dug up the Radiosity renderings. I remember there was a lot of photoshop work done to them to clean up blotchiness and do color adjustments.




By comparison the two VRay renders in my first post are pretty much straight out of Max (background added in post using alpha, with a tiny smidgeon of specular bloom from the windows).

[timmatron]

In terms of quality your Vray renderings are much better. But there is something about the radiosity renderings I like too. It could be that they are overall more bright, especially near the windows. And there is more blue in the radiosity versions, which to me conveys a sense of being cool and breezy. I think those 2 things would be easy enough to translate to the Vray versions and might make them even better.

[mcvltd]

Nice images Dynedain. What did you use for the shelf uplighting? I tend to use a self illuminating object wrapped in a vray matl wrapper, but am unsure if this is the best thing to do.

Rob.

[Dynedain]

Nice images Dynedain. What did you use for the shelf uplighting? I tend to use a self illuminating object wrapped in a vray matl wrapper, but am unsure if this is the best thing to do.

Rob.

Just a long narrow vray plane light recessed in a notch that will be there and angled to point up and towards the back of the shelf.