Here is a streetscape I am sending out for review today. These larger projects are tiresome.
And you are building all these houses from scratch?
Well, yes. I work from CAD files.
Ah okay, so actual 3d houses?
stills sounds tiresome doing so many in a row.
Yeah, one at a time is fine, but nine is a lot of work.
the images need more work, they look very CGI and one of the factors to look like that are the cars.( the materials are off)
They are the cars I always use. I did boost the overall colors a bit, but basically the same workflow of all my work. I’ll desaturate everything a tad.
maybe your client is not really caring about the cars as much as we do, but doing automotive for almost 10 years, I have to say, that they do stick out as looking CG.
some simple and fast things to make them look more realistic,if you are inclined:
-put the whole car just a tad into the ground. this way the tires dont look so perfectly round and the car seems like it has its weight. right now they look like they are floating a little.
-make the tires blacker and if you dont want to bother with tweaking material to a more realistic look, just lower the reflectivity and glossiness, as now they look a little too bright and shiny.
-slap a quick carpaint material on them. right now they all look the same solid metal.
-everything behing the rims can be darker, less reflective to make it easy.
-add just a little more contrast to the cars, especially the body with the carpaint.
there could be done more, but I bet you dont want to tweak the cars to perfection and these three things will make them look a little more real in just a few minutes.
Good stuff, thanks. I did use the reflection and specular pass on everything. I usually remove it from cars, but this time I got lazy. I like lowering the cars some, so the tires are not so round and I have been told about making the tires darker before. I can quickly copy the cars from the raw to the post because I use PSD Manager and everything is masked. I’ll darken the tires in post-production and maybe paint some pavement to look like I lowered the cars. Thank you, all good things!
a little better 
are the cars actually floating? it still seems like it…
in general the diffuse colors of the cars are a little bright, I think. especially the greys and blacks..
The cars I think need to be closer to the curb, they don’t look at first impression they were parked on the street… especially when there is only one car.
For composition, if you still want to show cars I would have one parked and one with a subtle motion blur and some people walking around…few leaves under the trees and different sky per image
Hey Bobby, just remove the damn cars…
The original had motion blur on some cars, but the client had me remove the cars he didn’t like and the moving cars. People, those usually ruin things for me, for the most part, so I usually leave those out. I guess, towards the end of these I get tired and a little lazy. There are a ton of things I want to change, but it would take a day to render these out again and I don’t have the time. The client called them done, so they are done for now.
Totally feel you .
done is done so it’s all good 
Nice rendering as usual, like it
Opinion on these… this client started off with, “I have been using an overseas company, but I want to improve on what I have been receiving.” What he was paying for the overseas guy was ridiculously low and I said that there is no way I would compete on that price. We ended up settling and he has steadily been requesting finer detail and extra views to were it isn’t making much sense for me. This one, not only is he using a microscope, he thinks adding elevations means pulling a camera a hitting render, so I have been just doing it. As you know, when you move a camera, you have to move trees, cars, lighting… what worked for the perspective doesn’t work for the elevation, so it adds days. On elevations, he sees things he didn’t see on the perspectives, so more changes. Are you charging full price for extra views? What range would you be charging for these views?
I always use xrefs (Siteplan, Landscape, House, Entourage) or even in one file with layers you could turn off the elements you want to show and cropping the camera also helps for color elevations; with a little bit of math, you could have them in scale if they need them… I don’t those often anymore but I was charging 1/2x of a regular view.
More of moving things around like cars, people, and lighting for composition purposes. Render and post-production time is also a major factor. I usually discount extra views like this, but a lot less than 1/2. I’ll have to start charging this guy more. Talk about scope creep!
I usually include a cost for additional views in the contract as a base cost for the additional view PLUS any any additional work that’s needed specifically for the new view. I also specifically mention in the contract that I only model what is seen in the final view. This additional work would include model changes, landscaping, lighting changes, etc. Together these two line items usually make it worth my while to generate the additional view (i.e., I’m happy) and keep it below the cost of a totally new view (i.e., the client’s happy).
flat color elevations are very fast to render…I would say 10X faster. (roughly)…to me was almost like free money.