Rambler

[glorybound]

you have an excellent foundation, you know the tools and techniques and established a strong pipeline, the next step is to work on the artistry/craft to bring it all together, and that is probably the hardest step of them all, to become a story teller.

Asking yourself, "what is the story I telling?", from there it will be clearer as to what you need to do.

There is a line between art and commercial art, I suppose. Sometimes we are caught in the middle.

[hoppergrass]

they shouldn't be though, and its the one area where the top most successful studios excel, first and foremost they are storytellers, they use images to tell stories to convince other people to fork out cash to buy the dream being sold to them. It is irrelevant whether it is a designer selling their design to a client or a real estate agent selling a house to mom and pop. Its what changes are render from a "collection of stuff" into , "Hey I'd really like to be there right now" or in advertising speak "sell the sizzle, not the sausage"

I really believe that you achieve that with your exteriors, you tell stories and make us want to live in those mansions or be part of that community even if its just a students digs

[glorybound]

they shouldn't be though, and its the one area where the top most successful studios excel, first and foremost they are storytellers, they use images to tell stories to convince other people to fork out cash to buy the dream being sold to them. It is irrelevant whether it is a designer selling their design to a client or a real estate agent selling a house to mom and pop. Its what changes are render from a "collection of stuff" into , "Hey I'd really like to be there right now" or in advertising speak "sell the sizzle, not the sausage"

I really believe that you achieve that with your exteriors, you tell stories and make us want to live in those mansions or be part of that community even if its just a students digs

Oh, I am in agreement with you. I pointed my wagon in that direction a couple years ago and studied art theory, architectural photography, and other things pertinent to our craft. I have a lot of clients, however, very few that don't want cheap, fast and good. I am happy meeting in the middle and giving them my all, but there are only so many hours in the day.

[hoppergrass]

absolutely and that is part of the challenge of creating something interesting within the constrains our clients impose on us.

[glorybound]

I literally have people contact me, at least once a month, saying I am crazy for not doing their house for $150-$200 per house. They tell me that they are will to pay me double (yes, $150 is double) what they have others committed too. There are people out there doing a house for $75 to $100 a house. Yes, they might have 100 of them, but the amount of work per house doesn't change. Point is, we are a commodity to most people.

[hoppergrass]

It is very prevalent in the residential housing market because that is all they need because the marketing budgets are relatively big compared to the build costs .The overall $'s are small but there again so are the profit margins. Its a different story in the upper end of the residential apartment market, a $75 render just wouldn't cut it, although its just as cut throat, the budgets for marketing are tiny compared to the overall build cost and profit margins can be huge. When you are spending $100m plus, then a few thousand for renders is a drop in the ocean. Of course the image quality has to match that too.

[andybot_cg]

Portals or no portals?

No portals. Reading through the latest advice from Vlado, seems it's better to avoid using those. Doesn't do anything when you have dome lights.

[glorybound]

Some updates. I ended up painting a black disk over my HDRI's hot spot.

[andybot_cg]

Awesome, looking good! Much better color balance.

[glorybound]

Awesome, looking good! Much better color balance.

Thank you. Still not 100%, but closer. I found doing a color balance in V-Ray screwed with my sky, so I set the lights to white and warmed it up in PS. With slight warm lights my room looks like a dessert. which seems really off. I'll play with in more when I have time.

[glorybound]

No portals. Reading through the latest advice from Vlado, seems it's better to avoid using those. Doesn't do anything when you have dome lights.

That is my feeling as well.

[glorybound]

I taped down the saturation 20%, which seems to always help. I think I am done - thanks for being patient.

[hoppergrass]

the tighter crops work well too

[glorybound]

the tighter crops work well too

Yes. I tried that originally, but they said to follow the arrow on their plan. Most of the stuff I share here is after the client is out of the picture and I am allowed to make tweaks I think will improve the image. I get some strange requests, but basically, they want to show everything in one view so they don't have to pay for more.

[hoppergrass]

Love those requests little do they realize that its often false economy in that by showing everything you end up showing nothing.