getting the right look.. help desperatly needed!!

[ottoatom]

hello!

I'm doing a 3d job and it is not going out well at all.. I think that in part the architecture is to blame, but much of it is my fault due to my lack of experience.. I dont know how to make it look.. good.. You know? not real, but good. Anyway, I have been looking at it for days in a row, and I am a bit lost know.. I dont know what elso to do..

There are millions of things I could do, and some obvious questions come to my mind...

 

-What can I do with the building blocks around the main building? they dont exist yet, so I dont know what they will look like.. Do I make a grey box? a transparent one?? I really dont know...

 

-What can I do with terrain around the building? the terrain isolines I got where limited.. So what can I do?

 

-How can I break up the tileness of some textures, like asphalt of the street? I used to work in Lightwave, and used to mix it with some fractal noise, but with max I dont know how to do it...

 

This is supposed to be one of those renders to put on a billboard next to the construction site, and how it looks like right now, It will not work at all...

 

I really need suggestions from you guys that have been on the business for ages... Some of your work really rocks.. I could use some good ideas..

 

Thanks a lot!!

 

 

 

 

 

By the way, I used Vray for the renders.

[Jeff Mottle]

Please update your user profile with your full first and last name. This is a requirement to participate on our forums.

Thanks.

[kippu]

well you could use better textures for the asphalt ... a real road map ,the glass definitely needs reflections and your entourage (bah rpc) not casting shadows

[Abilio_KID]

Boas "R M":)

First of all, I'm not very experienced in 3D either. I have done a few things in the past but nothing too professional. My job doesn't required 3D so I haven't done much of it lately.

Some of those pics have a somehow distorced angle. Try to make the perspective a bit more vertical. Are those trees already there in the local and with that size? They seem a bit random and different. In reality if they were put there when building the sidewalk then they would all be almost the same size and probably not that big. If you are puting them there for the first time then try to make them smaller. Don't put that big one in front of building you're trying to show. Or make it smaller. Can you get pictures of the trees with more detail? It helps to make them more realistic.

Both trees and people are too flat and washed out. They also don't cast shadows very well. Compare the shadows from the cars with them. In the last pic there's a tree hanging in the air. Is it flying?

The road really needs a better texture. Also try to make the white lines a bit less white. They are very strong to the image. They should be secondary.

Are those cars 3D or 2D images?

The sidewalk needs proper aligning of the stones.

For the buidings around you could try taking a few photos of it and map them to the blocks. Then you'd make them start to disappear from the center (the main building you're representing) to the outer side of the pic.

These are just my suggestions. Like I said, I'm just a "noob" myself and for the record I don't even work with 3D right now. Just try it at home but not for business.

 

Edit: Ooops, I should have read the post more carefully. You said there aren't any building surrounding it yet. Sorry!!!

[Tim Saunders]

don't be too bumbed out. at least you know what looks wrong. first off. ease off on your lighting a ton. that way you will see sone more contrasting shadows. move your sun over to the other side of the scene. that way you will see better shadows coming from that step back in the building. materials. similar to what you mentioned, mixing is a good way to get a seamless feel with some of these materilas (like asphalt). to give you some further instruction on how to blend them up however, we'll need to know what software your using. you mentioned vray, but is that with max-viz or what? check out www. accustudio.com, exchange, textures for a good library.

[William Alexander]

Something like this?

 

Improve depth/contrast of GI,

Better reflections (maybe maybe not)

Desaturate the cars

Dirty the seams and corners on the panels (left hand shown)

...asphalt texture & lines as previously described

 

WDA

[ottoatom]

Hi all

 

Jeff Mottle: sorry, It is now corrected.

 

 

Kippu: I am now making a better texture for the asphalt, I hope it will get better. As for my entourage, I use RPC because I am working on a laptop... so I dont have lots of ram power to process polygon vegetation... I turned off the reflections of the RPC cause they make longer render times... it also resolves the color splotchiness issue with RPC and VRAY. I have however turned on the shadows, so they should be projecting shadows (trees and people) but maybe due to the quality of those RPCs they dont (I also dislike them in terms of quality, but they do render fast... and now I dont have much time to loose) If you can assist me to obtain better results, I would gladly thank you!

 

 

Abilio_KID: Abraco de LX! I made that angle to be abble to obtain the wider view without distortion. I will put it on 28mm anyway just to make shure.

I am trying to make a render of the best possible situation of the building so it should be in its golden ages, not early post-construction or whatever when the trees are not all grown yet.. They do hide the building, and I will correct that by putting smaller trees. Same goes for "dirtying textures", I cant use them in order to make the building look old... (I dont think I would know how to do it anyway.. at least not in MAX).

The trees are my biggest concern. How do you guys manage to get those fine trees? they are not RPCs, are they 3d? doesn't the computer crashes with all those polys?... I am using a laptop so It's kind out of the way, but I would love to know how you do it...

Obrigado pelas dicas!

 

 

rmaytee: Man I love your work! Thank you for sharing your time with me

The lighting is a big problem.. I thought I "mastered" vray since my last work, that went better than this one, but It doesn´t look this way.. eheh I have got a lot to learn yet.. My client is a bit problematic regarding the lighting.. He keeps saying that he wants a joyfull day full of light. Everytime he sees my progress theres always a darkspot somewhere like:"the interior walls should be white! why aren they grey?" I keep telling him that when white surfaces dont have direct lighting they tend to get grey, but he doesn't want to know about it. Anyway, he is the boss, so I have to do what he wants. As for the interior I could put some lights and all, but I haven't got the time for now.

I dont know how to mix materials in max... I know It may sound dumb but I never managed to understand that part. In lightwave it's so easy, playing with alpha maps and all... I know abou the Mix and the composite, but I cant make them work as they should. If anyone knows a good tutorial about this please tell!

 

 

wda: I like the job you made around the seams, I will try to work on that in the texture! but then, I will have to mix to maps: the wood one and the dirtymap.. I wont know how to do it... I dont like very much the overall look of the image. Its too dark and saturated. That one I'm shure my client will dislike eheh... But I get what you mean in increasing contrasts.. It's just hard to do when I have to keep lighting to a maximum..

I did reduced the whiteness of the street lines and reworked the asphalt texture.

Is there a way to play with RPC's colors? adding saturation? changing some item's colors? If I render in passes, like one without al the RPCs and another one only with RPCs and the rest in matt, I will loose there reflections on windows and all... Is there a way to work on this?

I will try to post my progress tomarrow when I'll get some time of.

Thx!!

[Abilio_KID]

I have always worked with AutoCAD (I use it at work), 2D and a few non important 3D scenes. I also used some ArchiCAD back when it didn't have Lightworks but it was only for small stuff, nothing realistic.

My biggest problems are with lights. I never seemed to get the result I wanted. I even tried playing with Radiosity in Viz 4 my boss had gotten when he bought AutoCAD.

If you want to render a reflection of an object but don't want to render it, you can do it in Max. In viz you have to select the object, right click it, properties then in the window that comes up go to "Rendering control" and make sure "Visible to camera" is not selected. This way the object exists to the scene but you just don't see it.

I think the Max procedure is the same. I'm just not sure if it works with RPC.

I used the same type of trees like you. However some of them I had to manipulate in Photoshop. The ones I used where low quality but it wasn't a problem because they were for a large scale project and they looked fine at that distance:D In ArchiCAD I made my own tree objects by using 3-4 different views of the same tree rotated (2D maps in 3D). Some of them I only had 1 map so I rotated a few copies with different vertical scales.

Use some program like Photoshop to give some contrast to people's maps.

It's all I can think of right now. Good luck:)

[Tommy L]

Try turning off the exposure control and re-rendering it. It should desaturate it quite a bit. It might be too dark, so crank up the lighting again. Youve got an Dosch HDRI in the environment slot right? Put that in the v-ray render panel environment light and turn on the GI.

[Tim Saunders]

trees, some rpcs work fine. i like 2d trees though. just clip-maps like this one (free smaple from got3d).

mixing materials is not as hard as it sounds. in max, get a standard amterial. in the diffuse slot load a mix right off the bat. on the top mix slot (color #1) load your desired asphalt. in the middle slot (color #2) load another map, maybe even a concrete to add some variation. not the mix slot (the bottom one) you can either just type in a percentage, or click the none button and select smoke. down in the smoke parameters change the size to around 65-80. you can also adjust the exponent to show how much of one map show more than the other. just try defalt for now though. you can even mix in a third if you want by going back a parent to the mix parent. now you can click the button above the mix parameters next to the material name slot. click that button that says mix and select mix again. say yes to keep old map a s sub-map. now you can do the same thing over again with another map mixed with the other two. you will probably have just fine results with two maps though. good luck.

[ottoatom]

Hello all.. Finally some time for myself to show my late progress. Unfortunately I don’t think I will be tweaking it more for now, because another job fell on my lap, and I am starting to get really busy with my project in class.. I am still not happy with the result, but I think it is a bit better than the last ones. I also made a rear view, but due to the lack of time he gave me to do it, It is pretty raw...

Comments are welcome

 

Anilio_Kid - Thx for the tip about the reflection!

I didn’t tweak the RPCs in Photoshop cause I didn't know how to render them in different passes. Know, I figure I just have to do as you mentioned, hiding the RPC for render but not for reflection, and then render a separate pass with only RPCs... Somehow I think it will be a little more difficult than it first sounds...

Anyway, thx for the help!

 

Tommy L - If I turn off the exposure, it will get clamped out of brightness.. I am using very high values of illumination, the I use exposure control on exponential HSV to equalize the lighting.. I don’t know if its the better way to do it though.. As for the Dosch HDRI, I did just that.. but then I tried with only a VRAY GI environment with a single bluish color (with the multiplier at 2,5) and the result was not very different, but faster to render.. So on the final renders, I did not use any HDRI environment.. Oh yes I did, for the reflections, also on VRAY GI environment.

 

rmaytree - You use 2d maps for trees directly on MAX? with 2 planes crossing each other? or do you do it in post-processing on Photoshop?

I haven't got time yet to experiment your explanation of mix materials yet, but I will soon enough.. You can be sure I will be bothering you again with this eheh!

 

cheerS!

[ottoatom]

[Abilio_KID]

You said you won't tweak it anymore for now but if you don't mind there are a few things you could consider, maybe for another near project. I'm just describing what I can see from the pics, not criticising:)

The first 3 RPC's on the first pic seem to be floating or glued to the left building, hehe, kinda weird. The trees look better but they don't cast shadows?

There is some light showing up in the shadow on the 2nd pic. probably a VRay issue.

Are they having a party on that building? Lots of people there. Some of them seem out of place, specially the guy with the suitcase;)

I notice on the last pic there seem to be errors in the projected shadows from the windows.

Anyway, good job. I probably wouldn't do it half that good. I haven't done anything lately.

[ottoatom]

I will not tweak it for now, but I will tweak it again to get the best result I can get.. I am though going to render them again at much higher resolution to be printed in a billboard. Does anybody knows what the resolution is supposed to be? Just to make sure.. I will also increase my Vray irradiance map quality to high.. It was on low to save time, witch explains some lighting pbs I think (light leaking problems and some shadowing issues).

Now for the RPCs, I really don’t know why they don’t cast shadows... I guess that they don’t have good enough quality for it, but I am maybe wrong.. maybe I am not using the correct settings.. All I have done is activate the shadow in mass editing. I do believe also that it looses lot of quality without those shadows, but 3d trees were out of the question. I actually tried to render one frame lores with a 3dtree I took from the net and it took really too much time. I have to try the rmaytee way, maybe it's better for cast shadowing..

There WAS a party on that building the other day, but the guy with the suitcase was not invited .. I have to work a little bit more on that eheh

Those shadow errors, errhh I guess that they are from bad modeling I had to do it really fast and I probably missed something there. Nothing that Photoshop can’t correct anyway

Obrigado Abilio_kid! fico a espera de ver trabalho teu :)forca nisso!

[AJLynn]

If this is going to be a billboard, you really need to do something with the people - not just the way they render, but the choice of people and the composition. EG, the guy in the last pic who looks like he's admiring the trajectory of his client's 3-wood while not sharing what he knows about how that patch of ground is muddy, and the guy behind him who's intensely studying his own shoe. These are people who hate each other, or maybe one of them just made an inappropriate joke and everybody's feeling uncomfortable and pretending they're not paying attention.

 

I say all this not to be snide, but because I find I get better results if I think of the people in the renders as characters who are currently doing something - this allows you to frame a narrative for each person or group of people, which makes them believeable. This is especially important for a billboard. Billboards are movies, they need a soul.

 

Resolution depends on how far away the viewer is but for billboards it's probably going to be between 30 and 70 DPI, very rough guess based on what I've read. Last but not least: Textures!

[Tim Saunders]

rmaytree - You use 2d maps for trees directly on MAX? with 2 planes crossing each other? or do you do it in post-processing on Photoshop?

I haven't got time yet to experiment your explanation of mix materials yet, but I will soon enough.. You can be sure I will be bothering you again with this eheh!

cheerS!

right in max, make a plane the size of the tree you want in the scene. Make it somewhat proportional to the image i gave you. position the plane in the place you want it. now make a standard material. in the diffuse slot, load the colored bitmap i sent you. then in the opacity slot, load the black and whit map i sent you. now apply the material to the plane. on the toolbar in max there is an align button. hold it and go down to the align to view mode. select z axis and ok. then from top. i usually make a copy and just rotate it so it somewhat aligns to the sun. in the second plane, pull up the objects properties and uncheck visible to camera. the second plane will give you the shadow.