Detached Houses in Marseille

[AltoR]

Hello everyone,

Here is my last work: three detached houses in Marseille, not far from the sea.
Software used: 3dsmax, VRay 3.2, AE, PS
Hope you like it.
C&c are welcome

[glorybound]

Nice work. I like the wide angle. Maybe, a little too much AO, but that might just be your style.

[AltoR]

I didn't add any AO but I turned on the Irr map Detail Enhancement. I also added a levels adjustment layer in post: maybe I pushed the dark point a bit too far, resulting in an over contrasted image for your taste. That's rather a subjective stage but ... I think it is also the interesting point when dealing with CG.
Thank you for your feedback glorybound

[glorybound]

Just looked at them again, on my 4K and they are extremely well done.

[AltoR]

Thank you !

[joconnell]

Lovely work - quite dreamy in places

[AltoR]

Thank you John !
By the way, I have to thank you for your great video "Sampling for Arch Vis renders": it just changed the way I use VRay. Now I have smaller render times and no more AA problems

[joconnell]

Ah, great to hear Thomas. the ideas in that will always work for vray but Vlado and his team are trying to make things a lot more automatic so hopefully in future service packs no one will have to listen to another hour of my boring voice

[AltoR]

Once you began to understand how VRay works, you can't go back and switch to a more automated way (imo). I hope VRay advanced settings will still remain accessible in the future.

[joconnell]

Yep - the nice thing is there's kind of rules about what objects need aa and what objects need materials - that's what the guys are trying to automate.

[AltoR]

It sounds good ! I can't stand testing it

[PGD]

I love the style and light balance between the sharp sun and interior light. If you could spare any tips on achieving that I'd like to hear them

[AltoR]

Thank you PGD,

I'm glad you like my style

Here are few words about my workflow:
_ the scene is lit by a VRaySun + VRaySky as environment map
_ VRayLights set to Portal (simple) on every windows
_ the background is a curved plane with a VRayLightMtl on it
_ VRayColormapping set to linear (gamma 2.2)
_ rendered frame is 32bits float .exr to keep the full range lighting informations
_ it doesn't matter if some areas in the render are blown out: I then use Fusion to tonemap the render and then I flatten it to 16bits. You can also tonemap your render with the built-in VRay Frame buffer tone mapping tool but I prefer doing it inside Fusion as it comes with more advanced settings
_ in Photoshop: I play a bit with level curves and color balance, on the whole image or on certain aeras/objects only, to achieve the desired look (VRayWirecolor pass and/or VRayObjectID passes are used here)
_ I can enhance reflections and specular levels if needed with the VRayReflection and VRaySpecular passes set to Screen mode
_ Also I like to play with flares (real world photos set to screen mode work fine most of the time)

That's pretty much it !
Hope it can be useful

[PGD]

Fantastic, thanks for that. I think the key there is the 32bit and Fusion, neither of which I've tried.

It would be nice if V-Ray could output as a DNG file which could then be edited with Adobe's Camera RAW editer (comes with PS) That's the way I edit my architectural photos so the workflow would be familier. Maybe one for the V-Ray suggestions box..

[NicoC]

Fantastic, thanks for that. I think the key there is the 32bit and Fusion, neither of which I've tried.

It would be nice if V-Ray could output as a DNG file which could then be edited with Adobe's Camera RAW editer (comes with PS) That's the way I edit my architectural photos so the workflow would be familier. Maybe one for the V-Ray suggestions box..

Why don't you try 32bits TIFF output ? this way, you could enjoy PS Camera RAW, no ?