4 Highrise Condo Towers - WIP - need some peepers

[Jake76]

Hi everyone. I've been lurking 'round the forums for many months now, watching, learning, admiring, not posting. Yes, I'm a lurker. I admit it.

Now, I've come to the end of a super large project and I'm having trouble with getting this exterior to look "realistic". My interiors came out looking brilliant, but I'm struggling with the harsh lighting of the exterior. I need some eyes, experienced and sharp, to lend a helping hand and make this rendering perfect. What do I need? Whether it's modeling, texturing, lighting, entourage, or composition - please chime in and help.

Here are some things that I know I need to change/add:

1. horizon treeline/forest
2. landscaping around the fence, entrances, pools, etc
3. diverse trees (the trees in here now are temporary (and dark))
4. people having lots and lots of fun. (I'm thinking of purchasing RPC volume #13,543 - "People Having Lots and Lots of Fun")
5. fix the pixelated and washed out sand


I feel like it has a faded 80ish cartoony illustrated look and I don't know why. My settings are:

LIGHT (sunlight system)


RENDER SETTINGS


RENDERING


Any help would be most appreciated.

-Jake

[timmatron]

I think as far as the rendering is concerned, its all there! You aleady covered the things you need to fix in post work. Once you get your horizon in, more landscape, people etc. its going to look great! Maybe work on the grass texture a little too.

I have to say though, that I really don't like RPC people much. Maybe you could render some lowpoly3d people since they will be so far away (those are much cheaper anyways I thinkg) And they have the benefit of being actual 3d instead of bunch of 2d bitmaps like RPC. That way the peeps will have the right perspective from such a high view.

Show us your interiors too! I'd love to see them.

[Mirko]

Well, it allready looks good so far!

Some ideas to improve the look:
- you should add some shadows which were casted by the trees!
- There should be something behind those houses. Some kind of city houses, or even a park, the sea or something different. You should also add some white/blue oxygen fog which melts the sky and the ground together a bit in the horizon.
- The trees could look a bit greener/fresher/nicer as well
- The streets are very brown. Is this color correct? I would try to make them more gray. And I would ad some road signs.

May we have a look at you interiour renderings as well?

Mirko

[UBIKmh]

Cartoon look, mmmm.

Could be your sun. The multiplier is on 1.5, for me that is way too much. I usualy put the multiplier for an exterior on 0.8. The color might be too green (the sunlight yellow), could also be the jpeg compression though. GI light is too blue.
Now for GI secondairy bounces, three is good but turn up the multiplier to 0.7 (I would go for more bounces though, 5 to 10).

A nice distance fog could help too. I could blend the horizon into the background sky.

Trees really need shadows.

Personally I think these perspectives, high up looking straight to the horizon, are always dificult. Being closer and looking slightly down can give a much nicer dynamic composition. A ground level 2 point (maybe slightly 3 point to prevent the buildings from topling over) would be realy impressive.

Good luck, and maybe see the progress on the Vizdepot forum.

Marc

[percydaman]

you admit to being a lurker and then say your looking for some peepers? Freud would have a field day with that...lol

your wall wall map seems a little to oversaturated. Other then that, I would say lets bring on the people!

[paulison]

damn!, how many polygons and what modelling software did you use? Did you bother doing any internal walls etc for the exteriors?

just wondering as im struggling with a large apartment block at the moment as well. My model is a bit too heavy so they tell me...Maybee because I'm using ArchiCAD, but im going to try out a cool plugin tomorrow from here that may reduce the mesh garbage a bit:

http://plugins.angstraum.at/

sorry if thats all irrelevant....

personally for your render it looks a tad flouro which I think could be helped by not only making second bounces up to about 0.7 but also maybee try and lower the dark multiplier to 0.8. These settings are working good for me. I think your sun may be a touch too bright as mentioned, try 1.3 ? doesnt matter if the final image is too dark as you can brighten it up in post without starting with an initial flouro image (hard to fix imo)

are your trees/cars all bitmaps or RPC or something else like xfrog trees? definatly need shadows and more variety. I think ill also try out the RPC people library you mentioned (hopefully this is good). For close up images id suggest trying xfrog trees although you need to change the opacity map to vray or it goes VERY slowly

pool looks a bit aqua and maybee should reflect the sky colour a bit more? From a marketing perspective though I think its great

your green colorbond (im guessing thats what is on your roof pitches) maybee overscaled?

Overall its looking really good, wd! (im jealous)

[tom182]

Nice work and no doubt you spent quiet a bit of time on it. I know the feeling whne you are not 100% happy with it, but remember you are looking at it so much that the image does very little for you anymore (well thats the way I get) anyway back to your post, I think the buildings are very good but the believe-ability factor (how realistic it appears) is reduced by the cars/grass/trees/roads, if you can improve the ground and its components then the image will be lots better. I did a few exterior recently and from my lurking days it seems that most here when rendering an exterior (correct me if I am wrong) use the following setup: use a std dictional light- Vray shadows , Mult=2-4,
render dialogue= First bounce =.8 to 1, Second bounce=.7 ish, Environment is much lighter blue, set to Mult 1.2 approx and try the EXPO Colour mapping,
give it a quick try it may help,
Cheers,
Tom