Cork Tree House in Braga, Portugal

[MICHAL_LACH]

Cork Tree House is an existing architectural project located in Braga, Portugal.

I recreated this project as a personal study, mainly to develop my visual skills and explore the atmosphere, materials, and architectural language of the original building.

This is not a 1:1 reconstruction, some details were simplified or interpreted in my own way. I tried to preserve the overall character, mood, and essence of the architecture.

There are still more views to come, including interior scenes.

Work in progress. More views coming soon.

View project on Behance: Cork Tree House, Portugal :: Behance

[Nirvana]

Beautiful work. The mood, materials, and natural surroundings feel very calm and realistic.

[bardo]

really nice job!

I really like how do you put all together like could be done in the real life.

The only slighty fake element that catch my eyes is the caustic on the bottom part of the concrete high part of the house…I don’t know why but I’m expecting that could have a different visual result.

[MICHAL_LACH]

Thank you very much for this comment!

[MICHAL_LACH]

Hi, thanks for the comment!

The caustics were originally done in Corona, but to be honest, that raw render didn’t look too good and wasn’t well denoised. That’s exactly why I had to change it a bit using AI. Because of the caustics, the image was rendering forever and left behind a ton of noise that the denoiser couldn’t handle, so I was forced to tweak and modify those reflections on the ceiling using artificial intelligence.

[bardo]

Thank you.

Understood.
Haven’t tried with a fake caustic using a dedicated light?

Production speed speaking probably use AI was faster…

Have you used AI also for something else?

[MICHAL_LACH]

Could you tell me what dedicated caustics light are you talking about?

Yes, I use Nano Banana and Magnific Ai.

Nano Banana for generative things like people and caustics on the ceiling. Magnific for enhancing and improving the realism of plants and materials.

[bardo]

@MICHAL_LACH

Could you tell me what dedicated caustics light are you talking about?

I mean to use an area light mapped with a texture of a pool caustic as driver for the intensity..then you include just that concrete surface and you’re done.

@MICHAL_LACH

Nano Banana for generative things like people and caustics on the ceiling. Magnific for enhancing and improving the realism of plants and materials.

Understood…would you mind to share at least one raw rendered image just to see how it should be without AI?

[MICHAL_LACH]

@bardo

I mean to use an area light mapped with a texture of a pool caustic as driver for the intensity..then you include just that concrete surface and you’re done.

Honestly, I still don’t understand what you’re talking about. Could you send me a YouTube video of this process?

@bardo

Understood…would you mind to share at least one raw rendered image just to see how it should be without AI?

Yes of course. There is a raw render from 3ds max + render element caustics.

This is an optimization that prevents corona from rendering on every rendered caustic element. Only that element is rendered separately, which improves rendering speed.

I simply added this element in Photoshop to the main render with lightmix and gave it the “screen” opacity. Later, of course, I added it to the nano banana to improve the caustics.

[bardo]

@MICHAL_LACH

Honestly, I still don’t understand what you’re talking about. Could you send me a YouTube video of this process?

I was thinking just to this setup
EDIT: Sorry I’ve missed to refer that I’m using Vray… but I think that Corona should replicate this…

@MICHAL_LACH

I simply added this element in Photoshop to the main render with lightmix and gave it the “screen” opacity. Later, of course, I added it to the nano banana to improve the caustics.

What difference about your computed caustics and the one managed by Nano Banana in the concrete ceiling…it seems really too fake in my opinion…not so far away from my faking caustics setup…