Some images and our new website

[Morne]

Hi all

Here are some images we've done over the past few months. All images done either by my lovely wife, or by myself. Also take a look at our new website I've just completed and let us know what you think www.digivention.co.za


The model for the 1st image was supplied by client

[Morne]

Hmmm long time and no reply to this post, does it suck that bad or you guys were still on holiday that time?
(by the way, please excuse the overdoing of the watermark, I'll make it more subtle next time)

[paulison]

Hmmm yeah i guess we all missed this one. I like the projects themselves and you obviously have gone to a lot of effort on them.

I'm not one to criticise because i wouldnt say my work is any better (just maybe a different style) but in my opinion I think that you need to try and do the lighting in a way that is a bit more natural. Try to let the rendering engine and settings do more of the work. Maybe that isnt very helpful - I guess it looks like it has been forced and manhandled to have a nice lighting level over the entire image which is great for marketing but as a consequence lacks a bit of contrast between light and dark areas. I guess I am thinking of the interiors with this comment - the exteriors look ok to me.

Maybe your approach is similar to how people worked before we had GI, where you had to add extra light here and there to keep images marketable.

In general maybe i would look at some different lighting methods - do a bit of testing. Sometimes things look excellent with only a few lights and you adjust the settings to accomodate this.

Theres some really nice elements throughout the images and i think most of your materials are good as well - the only crit regards lighting and maybe allowing more rendering time to get that light bouncing around more nicely and have better antialiasing settings etc. No disrespect but it doesnt look like your typical vray renderings...but that is probably just due to your individual style and post-processing.

Anyway good work. I couldnt help being the first to reply...and hopefully something i've said helps without being too critical

[duke2]

Yeah I agree, everything is there, but they don't look like vray renderings. The lighting, the materials, the feel - it's a little scanline'y!

[Morne]

thanks for the reply! I've been experimenting with different lighting methods. I like to get a nice image straight out of render without any post. But lately there is not much time to mess around so I'm starting to experimenting with some post. I'll post my next arch project for some crits and comments again, and hopefully they'll be MUCH improved

Thanks for all your comments so far. At least now I know what to work on...

(Is there anybody out there that likes my work? I need a job)

[MHenry]

Along with the above mentioned comments you might want to play with the image sampling settings. There seems to be quite a bit of aliasing in your images.

[paulison]

No problems DVP3D. I would say that you are not far away at all - with some good lighting and settings your work will look great.

One thing that we like to try is render your jobs with material overide or else apply a white-grey material to everything except the glass. then what you do is tweak your lighting levels and settings to suit this 'grey' level. It also allows you to test lighting settings much more quickly because the renderer isnt getting hung up on glossy reflections, materials, bump maps etc etc. If you are not getting a nice gradient in your shadowed areas, this is a big indication that your settings need work. Originally when i started doing this, my shadows were black with a hard edge...then i started playing with lighting settings, environmental light and colour mapping etc. There is a lot more involved in this process that most people realised, but once you have it figured out, every job from then on will benefit!

regarding needing a job...Tell me about it. I've had nothing to do all month. I've spent all day sending out annoying mass-emails to past clients. I think we are all starting to get very worried and as a consequence, employment opportunities at the moment will be very limited. Hope things change in the coming months...I dont want ot be tossing burgers at maccas!

[Morne]

once again thank you very much for the reply and the tips. I usualy model everything, then texture (render to check textures also) and leave lighting for last. But seems it will be good idea to do lighting before texturing.

One thing that I don't understand is that with LWF, people say you must make your materials darker. Then it renders anyways with an overall unsaturated grey overtone, and then only at the end they fix the colours with curves in photoshop. If you can't get an accurate image straight from render, then how will you know ok "now its done and I just need to adjust curves"? Or do you everytime you do a test render, you apply curves in photoshop? Can somebody share their knowledge regarding this please?

[Dave@DLR]

Hey Morne,

Regarding LWF/Physical lighting + Vray CAM, you can definitely achieve accurate results that require very little posting with a good materials workflow. From LOTS of reading and experimentation over the 8.5 years I've been doing this, I've found a process that works fairly well for me that is very similar to what others use. From the get-go you want to put some care into preparing & testing your textures & mats. The time expended up front will pay itself back over a couple projects, as you reuse & evolve your materials. If you only think you have enough budgeted hours to 'fly by the seat of your pants' pick a couple very important/ubiquitous materials in your scene and really work them.

Most photos that we create our textures from have not been photographed optimally for use in HQ renderings, since they tend to include color casting, illumination/shadows & specular reflections from the environment they were shot in; so generally I work to get rid of all of that duplicate information for the diffuse map using as much non-destructive editing (adjustment layers) as possible in case I test a mat and it needs a bit of tweaking.

After I have derived a diffuse, spec, and bump maps as necessary for the material, I take it over to my V-Ray sun/sky test scene and set up the mat. You want a scene that includes some basic objects to simulate shadowing, reflections, etc. but renders very quickly using good GI settings that closely match your typical production settings. Two very important aspects of the mat test should include observing and tweaking your material's reflection/glossiness at grazing angles (you can typically use a dark object as the reflectee) and also what I call 'brightness normalization' to make sure that your object doesn't go overbright (greater than 1.0 float) in maximum brightness scenes where the sun is directly over head. So what do we normalize to? Absolute White. Create a VRay mat with a VRay color in the diffuse slot and apply it to a couple objects. Since we don't want our absolute white to be overbright, we can adjust the output multiplier in the VRay Color slot, thus arriving at a value that will appear 'color correct' when rendered. I've found about .71 to be the proper value for the RGB multiplier. Use this value to match RGB color swatches that your client has specified. Once you have established absolute white, you can use this as a benchmark for comparing your test materials.

Sprinkle in a few VRay cameras set to F16, ISO 100, Shutter 100 (we're normalizing using photgraphic sunny 16 rule here) and you're ready to go. You can also set up a similar 'indoor' scene that uses a typical basic lighting scenario to test/compare materials against precedent that typically appear indoors only.

While testing and tweaking my mats, I often use photos as precedent for the material. This helps alot, since materials as we imagine them in our heads are not often how they behave or appear in real life. You should also get your hands on some reflectance & IOR values to help take initial guesswork out of glossies and reflections.

What you're really doing here is trying to set up relationships between the brightnesses of different materials, so when illuminated they create good contrast in your scene letting you concentrate on refinement in post. After you're pretty happy with a mat, save the sucker to your library, and it will be ready to drag and drop for your next outing. You can always refine it again later. Having some knowledge about the physical behavior of light and materials will make your renderings better; but as you'll hear often--the art of VIZ is really about making it look good; so have a drink, use your best judgment, pass off some pics for critique, and have some fun making nice stuff.

There are many good threads regarding these topics around the forums, which you should check out. I'd provide some links, but I have to hit the sack over here for some skiing in the AM. Hope this helps!

Cheers!
Dave