Cortina house

[OPEN_RANGE]

Here are two views of a house to be built in the mountains. The renderings are for an architect and he will use them for his DRB submission. I started with the architects sketchup model.

So far in my experience, the sketchup models I get from others are always pretty messed up. There will be many objects. Typically each object has a 2-6 part multi sub object material. One object could contain one side of a few walls, a window or two some other geometry. Seemingly random mixed up stuff is attached together into one editable mesh and assigned a multi sub object material. There are lots of these objects. I am able to ultimately get control but often just model new over the top of the sketchup stuff. Especially wall, roof and windows. Anyone else have good or bad experience or advice for importing sketchup models from others?

[flino2004]

I work in sketchup 90% of the time and if you know how to use it is very seamless workflow between SU and MAX.... If I export the model via 3ds and I always export it by material.
the name material in SU has to be 8 character or less so in max you keep them the same name. If you create your library per project updating the materials when you re-import the model is done with one click.

there are many free ruby scripts and extensions to clean the model, flipping normals....delete materials on the backface, etc.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Hi flino2004 and thank you for your reply. I am just receiving the .skp file and importing that into Max "as is". Are you saying it is better to export from sketchup as a .3ds file and choose export by material, then import that .3ds file versus importing the .skp file?

[flino2004]

yes, when you import as SKP you got a lot multi sub object materials...when you update the model in SU and import it again into 3ds you may get different ID's so it takes more time to update the model in 3ds.
what I do is creating my 3ds vray version materials of the ones that I have in SU ...save them in a library and use the option in 3ds "update materials using library". It doesn't matter how many times I change something in SU i always can import the model again by material and updating the materials with my library (if they have the same name of course) and it takes a couple seconds.

[flino2004]

In SU turn off "Export standalone edges" and turn on "preserve texture coordinates" ....when you are using displacement select those faces and weld them in 3ds.
I normally use small version textures in SU and I UV map them in SU ....when I import the model into 3ds the textures are exactly where I want and I replace them with vray material with High-res version of them.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Thank you again. To be clear, I do not work in sketchup. I recieve sketchup models form others and import to Max/Vray. I may get a copy of sketchup and use it to adjust the model for export as you describe. I doubt I will ever need to go form Max back to sketchup. Thanks again!

[OPEN_RANGE]

Some revisions per client/architect. Main revision is changing the view angle of camera #1. Some adjustments to materials and added some distant background. Added people and car which I do not care for but are supposedly "needed for scale".

[Morne]

Do you have 2 suns in here or perhaps a sun AND an HDRI?
Something looks off with the lighting and that gradient background doesnt fit the scene.

I'd say push the saturation up a bit for all the tree leaves and then make it a much darker green. Start off with a default VRaySun and Sky combination and also add VRayAerialPerspective with defaults. I'm sure you'll get a much more balanced image you can tweak from there.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Hi and thanks for your review!. I don't think i have two suns or sun and hdri. I am using vray sun/sky. I have replaced the sky in photoshop with the gradient that you are not keen on. i think it is similar to the vray sky that was produced but I will check and compare. Can you expand on how the sky could be made better?

I am not familiar with Vray Aerial Perspective but I will look into that as well.

Thank you again for your valuable feedback.

[OPEN_RANGE]

I revised the renderings. I checked what the vray sky looked like in the render and it was pretty washed out, not any where near as blue as the sky I added in pshop. (I uncheck the sky in the max environment for final render so I can get proper alpha to composite my own sky.) So I went with a much lighter sky gradient, per suggestion above. I think that helped.

I have also sort of gone down a rabbit hole trying to incorporate some tone mapping into my work flow.

I looked at the videos https://vimeo.com/ondemand/tonemap/126611934. I tried using the camera raw filter technique which seem to work. But just applying the filter without making any adjustments had a unfavorable result. It over exposed and too much contrast. So then turning down highlights and turning up shadows helped. Then I tried the techniques in the bonus video using pshop smart objects and etc. That gave me similar results but pretty involved and time consuming. I'm still unsure if this is something I should be using on exteriors. I'll have to spend more time/gain experience with this tone mapping. Any advice or observations from experience with this would be appreciated