After some heavy-duty exterior work with the Nakagin Capsule Tower, it’s back to basics with this subdued Scandinavian-looking interior.
This scene featuring a small apartment (about 70 square meters, as you may have guessed) was modeled in 3ds Max, as always. Corona is perfect for this kind of work and takes care of the difficult illumination without complaints. Minimal post-work was done in RandomControl’s ArionFX, which is turning into my post-production tool of choice for color-correction, temperature tweaking, and lens effects.
The idea here is maximum realism conveyed through detailed modeling of all visible parts, the use of some 3D-scanned models (the stools, the wood bowl, the pumpkins, the pastry…), complex shaders, and the illumination (the night shots actually show some light contribution from lamp posts on the street outside captured in the HDR maps).
The full scene–including its entire content and separate day and night setups–for 3ds Max 2016 and Corona 1.2.1. is available to download. All the full-res renders (raw .exr renders and post-processed .jpgs) can also be downloaded for free. More info about this and additional views on my blog: www.bbb3viz.com.
Easily some of the most realistic images I’ve ever seen. Congratulations!
You mentioned, that you only make subtle postwork in ArionFX. Can you specify a bit more?
I guess you save out a 16bit or 32bit exr (of course without changes in Highlight Compression and Contrast), go to PS, fire up ArionFX and add Glow and Glare, so far so good.
Then you make all your grading inside this tool? Or did you make some tweaks in PS itself as well?
Because I always think the color grading settings in ArionFX won’t give me enough control. Your images look very well graded though.
Impressive…always admired your work, and more of your process/ technique to creating your image.
(Minor) Crit: I noticed on the last image (night scene)..there’s this bluish light spill casting on the ceiling that seems off (doesn’t look “natural”).
But still overall, this is another benchmark, for me at least
Yes, I do everything in ArionFX. The main steps are always 1. Exposure and midtones (I render my raw images quite dark), 2. Glare, glow and CA, 3. Film stock, 4. Highlight compression, 5. color temperature.
I say subtle because at the end of the day, the most perceivable changes are in exposure and overall lighting. But drastic post-work is also possible. ArionFX is very subtle and photographic in how it approaches post-production. It is also missing a lot of things (saveable presets, lens distorsion…), but I often find that I don’t need to do anything else to my images when I’m done.
Lucideye: It’s actually light from a lamp post in the street that was captured by the night-time HDRI. It’s definitely less strong in real life, but it’s there.
The “light on the ceiling” effect could definitely look interesting if it was a rainy day. I mean light passing through drops and streams of water pouring down the glass. It would probably require a projector map (as Ludvik mentiond, caustics are PITA at the moment) and you would have to be careful with it not to introduce a tacky-horror look.
This year at Splash this is exactly how Marek Denko shown it, he placed another directional light simulating “caustic sun” going from floor in angle perpendicular to normal sun. Works more or less, ok-ish, not too convincingly for anything other than rather clean sky.
Well, this is pretty great series. Contemplating the buy.
Very nice indeed! I like the detail you added to you scene like the imperfections in the ceiling paint and wall. Do you create the DOF within Corona or is a post production thing?
As always, gotta admire your dedication and attention to detail, though I’m not a great fan of ultra realistic lighting (at the expense of appeal) I do appreciate seeing how realistic it can get
There’s almost enough assets there to convince me to buy the scene. Going through your Turbosquid page: “NOTE: Only available for 3ds Max 2016 and Corona. No other versions included.” ← Why 2016 only, if I may ask?
edit: I take it nothing besides the render output would change? Backwards compatibility would still allow for studying the way you set up different materials and putting the very nicely done models to use in other projects. I get that you would have to put a big DISCLAIMER out because of it, though.
Great work as usual BBB. Will probably buy this and install 2016 trial to convert to 2014. I’m more interested in the mats, models, etc, than the cameras.
I think most people who buy it are like you, but unfortunately, TS is ruthless about suspending products that don’t behave exactly as advertised on all supported platforms.
