We decided to post occasionally the projects we like the best. And we’ve grown to like this one a lot. It has interesting background, because we started building the project up from scratch including the architecture to illustrate our upcoming free tutorial, same as last year with Parisian apartment and bed tutorial.
After quick start, since the time is spare between our commercial projects, this project turned commercial as well, and series of images were created to illustrate lighting from Phillips Ambilight/Hue and start-up company GetGoldee. I’ve decided not to post these, but instead continue month later for few days and revisit this project, add up detail here and there, and move the project to into cloudy overcast weather mimicking our current mood.
Lighting was done using CG-Source HDRi, modified to my needs, and the night was done using mixed HDRi of the same CG-Source, combined with night sky of Peter Guthrie’s 2003.
Furniture is all custom modelled with few exceptions (chair is from 3dSky), the sofa and bed is created in Marvelous by Veronika.
Post production was done using linear (burn setting 1.0) .exr corrected by MagicBullet Looks plugin inside Photoshop. I do some manual curve adjustments mostly to boost midtones, glow, and bring back some contrast. Very very basic stuff, but it does make a difference.
Reserved for technical info. I will only copy here answer regarding this project, so it doesn’t get lost and can be easily found for those who could benefit from it.
It’s not the best texture, but we all know how hard is it to get wood textures :- ) This was is from cgtextures.
Almooost done. Take it easy on poor soul with ADHD and too much work :- ) I’ll send it asap to you.
There are tasks that take a moment for most people but for me.. I can get stuck very easily and over-do lot of other things. I re-read mails 5 times before I send them..
Hi Juraj, first of all congratulations this is a great rendering, very impressive quality and composition. The lighting also look soo good.
I have a question regarding the environment, reading your explanation I don’t get a clear idea if you add the back hills and lake in photoshop or you create a dome with the image or a series of panels with self illuminated materials?
I work with VRay I am pretty new to Corona so I am trying to figure out if a straight switch of software will do or I have to re adjust my workflow to Corona.
I am in awe, again! Crazy realistic renders as usual.
Would you mind elaborating on your night lighting setup? Specifically the interior lights - as soon as I start adding in any sort of directional lights to my hdri lit scene (corona ies, photometric or max spots) render times go from about 30 mins to ~4 hours to get something relatively noise free (using a 3930k).
I’ve also noticed that max spot lights seem to “clear” a lot quicker than corona lights when mixed together in a scene - is this a bug? I’m using the earlier stable daily build.
It is pure 360 spherical HDRi, modified from original CG-Source one. I haven’t done any compositing in Photoshop, although I have thought of it. Maybe next time, when I’ll photograph my own backplates :- )
I’ll post more elaborately about this later, as HDRi stuff interests lot of people, but right now I ask for patience, I am happy to be happy ;- )
I am not really expert on artificial lighting, but you are correct that times go up currently quite some. I used IES only using CoronaLights and haven’t experimented with Max Lights (I never used them in Vray either, they seemed too complicated for me and too many things to fiddle around with… I HATE that)
I use Alpha5, because I can’t afford daily builds for my commercial work, too much stress already. I think lot might have changes since, but I don’t know.
I think I saw Keymaster’s suggestion to use Max spotlights for the noise in the forum, which would correlate to your findings.
Anyway, I am very proud of my NightHDRi :- D All copyright where due to !
The only thing I would point out is tiling wood texture. But it’s still ok.
For me it is always awesome how you achieve realistic and aesthetic results with very simple means and (almost?) no fakery.
If you are ok with sharing your secrets - could you post screens of your material setup for the outside wood, water and glass?
The renderings look awesome, no doubt about that, but I really hope something like that will never be actually built somewhere on such a calm looking coast in iceland - it just doesn’t belong there.
Lots of people seem to be using MagicBullet these days, would you mind showing a raw render?
You are very right about tiling :- ) and I was aware about this..but sometimes, I just say “ah, whatever” and just move on. I haven’t changed the material from original commercial version, and that one was built in 7 days.
Yes, I’ll post the screenshots, but you are again correct it will be super simple. I am simple person, so don’t expect som sofistication in them :- )
First screenshot shows that the geometry is not displaced or anything, but each plank is modelled and chamfered using QuadChamfer. Every single object has chamfers from this :- ) It is then mapped through 2 different UVW channels for the above posted maps.
Here is material screenshot, nothing special. Maybe worth noted for some, is that I often use anisotrophy for woods. Make of it what you wish but I like the results ;- )
Glass. Nothing to watch :- ) Embarassingly simple. I am pretty sure more complex glass can be made, but, this one works. This project originally had double paned glass, but I didn’t particulary like the look this time, so I simplified it back to single box of 12mm thickness. There is no bump for distortions :- ) I usually use it (and it is painted not noise), but this time again, I simplified it for most clarity into interiors. Hybrid glass, although I think I tried rendering with true glass as well and it went just fine, maybe because there are so many windows.
Water. The difference is IOR and small noise bump. Again, nothing nested or interesting. It worked and I was satisfied. True refraction this time, not hybrid.
Since I already opened up the scene, I might as well post the other ones in case for later.
Metals: Even more simple..just one texture. But what I consider important, is they are pure black in diffuse, there is not texture or value there. That keeps it pretty autenthic.
The windows: It looks weird on preview because it was properly stretched by UVmapping on objects ( on Z-axis)
The fireplace Top Part : I quite like this one, the texture is simple composite from some scratches from cgtextures. Unusually, it features bump map as well, something I avoid most of the time.
THe fireplace Lower Part: It ended up not being visible, but I still quite like it. Here I contradict myself, because I ended up using very small diffuse value through map, this material is more “composite” than true metal.
Concrete: Again, very very basic. I used unmodified Arroway textures. I got some flack for tiling pattern, which is not true, because they tile on 5meters :- ) but the texture itself seems so. I
agree the some Arroway collections, while extremely high in quality, can have certain generic/plastic feeling about them. But it’s impossible to find something in same quality unless you photograph it yourself. Only thing worth mentioning, I sometimes uses higher IOR for concrete as it is composite material so it becomes more reflective, but very matte-glossy, almost unnoticeable unless extremely grazing angle.
Bed fabric: Extremely simple. At some point, I had variant with displace, then normal map, but in the end I settled for simple bump map. Works wonders :- ) I would like to point out this is the
brightest material in whole scene, with RGB level 210!, every other white is between 160-180 RGB including white paint.
Well my only luck is I’ve been here sooner than you :- ) Once you post renders, I’ll migrate to Octane !(jk)
Hmm, seems I can’t fit everything into one post, so I continue here:
Don’t worry DeadClown, all in good faith of fantasy ;- ) I am not architect and Veronika concentrates on small architecture at this point only. With that said, the inspiration was the FOGO Island houses from Saunders Architects, which is often criticed for this fact (abusing calm nature) and it is very interesting controversy, which boils down how far can you get in personal selfishness.
Magic Bullet LOOKS: I use it because I use only Photoshop in my stills worflow (and AE for animations, and BM Looks is interchangeable between these apps) but still want to correct .32bit images. It’s also very convenient and fun to work with. Like something you would do on smartphone :- )
Top is RAW render from Corona, in these case, already crushed in Corona. In these whole set, it’s 50:50 saved with burn1(linear) or burn5-8, if I like the result.
As can be seen, interiors are barely touched for most part. Exterior features mostly glow.
Thanks for the comparison images. You seem to be pretty good at stopping postwork at the right moment I always have to take back my stuff at least 50% to not make it look too crazy (and it’s still too much ). It’s the subtle changes that make the renderings look so “photographic”.
Maybe I’ll take a look at magicBullet (LOOKS!). I always thought it would be some “advanced-photoshop-filter-catalog” for people who are not willing to (or not knowing how to) do their own curves and stuff, but it looks useful if you can split it up in different separate tools.
The presets are very cinematic, definitely not fitting for regular “photography” work :- ) It would look extremely instagramy. So I build the basics from scratch.
I don’t actually consider myself great at subtlety, and sometimes intentionally just don’t care and overdo it as well. After all, it can contribute to certain style and if I had to be precice&picky I would have lost my hair by now. I don’t really care about mistakes in my works, I always strife for certain bigger picture and the rest be damned. Archviz world is filled with too much obssesion about unimportant things ;- )
PS:There is actually a more “advanced-photoshop-filter-catalog”, it’s called MagicBullet PhotoLooks instead, and is very much like just instagram, oversimplified version with very crunchy presets.
I always have to take back my stuff at least 50% to not make it look too crazy (and it’s still too much