Exterior House Render - Crits Please

[MarcellusW]

Studio/Institution: Personal Work
Genre: Residential Exterior
Software: 3ds Max 2010, Mental Ray, Photoshop CS4, Sketchup 2014, Forest Pack
Description:

Based on my skill level, this is a finished render. A redux of an old school project, intending to learn how to render better. Your constructive criticism is most appreciated.

[philippelamoureux]

To me it looks very good. Maybe the vines are bit too bright for my taste but rest is very good!

[mareogomez]

great work!!!

[ryannelson]

Looks great!

 

Maybe increase the size of the sun a little? the shadows on the tree trunk to the left look a little too sharp. The grass might be a tad too green, desaturate a bit and lean more into the yellow range. I think the vines at the back left are a bit distracting too because they're SO green. Maybe they should have a bit of glare on them if they're really waxy leaves?

[MarcellusW]

Thanks guys for the comments. Yes I struggled with the ivy and other plant textures on this one. I think I am just going to need to photoshop it. This render took me 5 days with 3 FG bounces and a bagillion render elements (experimenting). One more question I did a z-depth render pass but it flopped. Any ideas one why it would only render the foreground?

 

Ryan,

 

When you say desaturate, do you mean just use the photoshop commands,moving the sliders down until its not so bright? Or is the process more involved than that?

[ryannelson]

Think of zdepth as the difference between white and black based on the object's distance from the camera. If pure white is 1m away from the camera, and pure black is 20m away from the camera, any object in that range will be rendered a shade of grey based on that scale.

 

In your image, it looks like pure white is close to 0 and black might be a value of about 3m? If you're in max, whatever units you are using is what you will base your range on. Measure the distance from your camera to say around 5m (or whatever units you're in) behind the back of the house (measure in line with the camera, but think of it as an arc in your field of view).

 

With photoshop, the best way to do this is to add a filter layer over top of your base render and simply mask out the area you want to apply the filter to. There's a ton of masking tutorials out there, but GET into the habit of using masks in PS and make sure you fully understand the concept of non-destructive editing.

 

http://designshack.net/articles/graphics/a-complete-beginners-guide-to-masking-in-photoshop/

[Amen]

The stone walls really would shine with displacement. And saturate the vegetation. Maybe give it some warmth in photoshop.

Nice detail in the modeling. Check the scale of your trees.