Couple questions for experts and professionals ....!!!!

[abdboji]

Hello , every one ..... I am new to sketchup and vray ......

I see beautiful and very realistic works her and i have couple of questions and would you mind please i need some answers ...

first every one knows that making a realistic photo is not easy at all it need first making the models then making textures then lights and materials then testing the vray setting and making adjustments for all these put together ..... it is not easy , it needs alot of time , is this right !

did you use a pre made models in the scenes ?

did you use a pre made materials ?

if you use a pre made materials , doe's these materials works in any version or it must be for a specific version ?

if you use a pre made materials , doe's it work fine for any scene or the material changes for what the scene is about ?

my problem in vray sketchup is about material , you know the render depends on materials and lights ... it's difficult to make materials for a project , because you need to make test render every time you made a material to be sure that's work fine .....

[abdboji]

Re: Couple questions for experts and professionals ....!!!!

no body reply ...... plzzzz

[thomthom]

Re: Couple questions for experts and professionals ....!!!!

You might have alienated people a bit by addressing to professionals and experts. Quite possibly that there's lots of people able to reply here but might not immediately classify themselves as experts.



I personally never use third party materials. I occasionally look at some to work out how they did a particular effect.
With third party materials one has had to relink all the textures - which meant going through all the maps on the material. But they might have improved lately?

I have used some of the materials that used to ship with the older VfSU. Mostly these where the metal materials. For materials with texture maps I always build them myself simply because I want particular textures.

The materials you find on the net must be compatible with the version of VfSU you have. Older VfSU versions will not be able to open materials made with newer version.

When making materials one had the Material Preview - but it's not always the best way to preview your material. To dial in a material I often create small test scene which renders quickly.

I think the main reason why I don't use third party materials that often is that I like to know how things work. If I don't make it myself I don't learn anything. If I create them myself I get a better understanding of how material creation works and I find it easier to create materials the way I want them.

[abdboji]

Re: Couple questions for experts and professionals ....!!!!

You might have alienated people a bit by addressing to professionals and experts. Quite possibly that there's lots of people able to reply here but might not immediately classify themselves as experts.



I personally never use third party materials. I occasionally look at some to work out how they did a particular effect.
With third party materials one has had to relink all the textures - which meant going through all the maps on the material. But they might have improved lately?

I have used some of the materials that used to ship with the older VfSU. Mostly these where the metal materials. For materials with texture maps I always build them myself simply because I want particular textures.

The materials you find on the net must be compatible with the version of VfSU you have. Older VfSU versions will not be able to open materials made with newer version.

When making materials one had the Material Preview - but it's not always the best way to preview your material. To dial in a material I often create small test scene which renders quickly.

I think the main reason why I don't use third party materials that often is that I like to know how things work. If I don't make it myself I don't learn anything. If I create them myself I get a better understanding of how material creation works and I find it easier to create materials the way I want them.

Thank you for your response , the reason that i put professionals and experts because i saw alot of fantastic works here ..... they are realy almost like real photos .... and for a normal person can't differentiate between the real one and other not .

Thank you again , and i am waiting more responses .......

[Viztecture]

Re: Couple questions for experts and professionals ....!!!!

Personally I think when learning vray you have to make your own materials.

Like thomthom says its good to look at vismats to see how they work, however if you dont get your head around the bump, reflection and refraction parameters your renders will never achieve a photo-real look.

This is because you won't understand what to adjust within these settings to suit individual light levels and achieve the effects your after.

Whilst light settings and materials play a massive part, you also need very detailed models for it to be convincing and also make sure your post processing skills are up to scratch.
I hear some people saying photoshop post is 'cheating' or something stupid like that, but anyone can produce a half decent raw render with the vray manual and some patience.... the real skill is then turning that into something beautiful... thats where you earn your money in arch vis anyway.

Good luck and dont hesitate to ask more questions if your stuck

[thomthom]

Re: Couple questions for experts and professionals ....!!!!

I hear some people saying photoshop post is 'cheating' or something stupid like that, but anyone can produce a half decent raw render with the vray manual and some patience.... the real skill is then turning that into something beautiful... thats where you earn your money in arch vis anyway.

Some of the best illustrations I've seen has come from a very basic 3d model with good post production work.
Anyone that says anything is "cheating" - is just full of it. One cannot cheat because there is no rules. All that matters is the result.

[abdboji]

Re: Couple questions for experts and professionals ....!!!!

Personally I think when learning vray you have to make your own materials.

Like thomthom says its good to look at vismats to see how they work, however if you dont get your head around the bump, reflection and refraction parameters your renders will never achieve a photo-real look.

This is because you won't understand what to adjust within these settings to suit individual light levels and achieve the effects your after.

Whilst light settings and materials play a massive part, you also need very detailed models for it to be convincing and also make sure your post processing skills are up to scratch.
I hear some people saying photoshop post is 'cheating' or something stupid like that, but anyone can produce a half decent raw render with the vray manual and some patience.... the real skill is then turning that into something beautiful... thats where you earn your money in arch vis anyway.

Good luck and dont hesitate to ask more questions if your stuck

Thank you so much for you participation , it was great .... I get very important points from you .....

- it's very important to understand the settings of each materials so that you get the effect that you want .

- ready materials don't let you get the result that you want and you need sometime to adjust the settings that depends on the lights in the scene.

- realistic render it needs also good modeling with details .......

- may also can produce realistic photos by playing in photoshop and this is can be cheating , and that's how you earn money from arch visualization .

very good points and now every thing is clear to me , so making a realistic photos is like building everything from scratch .....

- good modeling with details .

- making materials from scratch and testing every material to get the effect that you want .

- making lights that you get the effect that you want .

- if needed you can play a little bit in photoshop to get the realistic photo.

[mjm223]

Re: Couple questions for experts and professionals ....!!!!

Some of the best illustrations I've seen has come from a very basic 3d model with good post production work.
Anyone that says anything is "cheating" - is just full of it. One cannot cheat because there is no rules. All that matters is the result.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Photoshop post-processing is cheating, but at times when I see such amazing renders I do wonder, "Is it possible to fully achieve that in V-Ray?" My competitive side wants know all of the secrets to a great render so that I can someday have a scene that I'd consider to be up there with the greats like ThomThom, Ferdinand, and Teofas, just to name a few.

Admittedly, I am terrible at using Photoshop to touch up renders, so I try to render scenes using the least amount of post-processing possible. Maybe a month's subscription to lynda.com might change all of that ;D

Echoing what others have said, it's good to have your own stash of textures and to work from those. You'd be surprised what kind of realism you can get out of the SketchUp materials. After putting a SketchUp material in your scene, if you go to your SketchUp Material list and right-click that material, you can 'Export Texture Image' and save it as a jpeg in your personal folder. Then, open that image in Photoshop, go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate and you got yourself a bump map. Tweak the levels and contrasts and before you know it, you've got some specularity maps! (Unfortunately, that's about as far as my Photoshop skills go.)

As for models, I personally find it best to make your own. Downloading from Google's 3D Warehouse is like Russian Roullette at times. These models could have a whole bunch of unwanted textures that you'll have to remove manually, and some models could have an obscene amount of polygons, that'll really bog down your render. It's best to open 3D Warehouse models in a seperate file, clean it up, then import it into your model.