Arnold Sher Posted November 10, 2008 Share Posted November 10, 2008 Hi everyone, Fellow comrades ... There has been a request for me to do a tutorial so i am just going to paste from a previous discussion my comments on it and if you guys have specific queries i'll try to look at it when i have a minute.. "you guys say the nicest things.... Okay i am going to try to sit down at some point and do a tutorial on post production. The only problem lies that i use a lot of pre-made brushes as well other tools to speed my work up and i do not know if i need to incorporate that into the tutorial as that in itself is a tutorial...But maybe i should just give an outline on the common mistakes people make and what to do to avoid it and how to achieve the most out of your interiors and exteriors...perhaps i should start giving Bryan Smith a run for his money (just kidding Bryan) Anyway, give me your comments please and i'll take into account what you guys want before i make a tutorial for you.." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted November 10, 2008 Share Posted November 10, 2008 show us your brushes, what kinds are you using? round soft is all i know do you render to 16bit tiff, exr, tga? how much / heavy overall colour adjustments do you do? do you make heaps of mattes for various objects? do you take photos of people to match your 3d lighting. do you render in passes? all quiet interesting questions when it comes to post work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cadmunkey Posted November 10, 2008 Share Posted November 10, 2008 Hi Arnold, this could be an interesting thread I think it may be a good idea to choose one of the recent threads on here where you offered some of your crits and some post production work and just go through the stages you took to achieve the result from the original render. I think most people understand custom brushes already (correct me if I'm wrong here). Looking forward to this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amer abidi Posted November 11, 2008 Share Posted November 11, 2008 aha...and dont forget to include a night scene version as well! =) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted November 11, 2008 Share Posted November 11, 2008 i dont see a link to any tutorials? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cadmunkey Posted November 11, 2008 Share Posted November 11, 2008 i dont see a link to any tutorials? Give Arnold a chance mate I know you're eager Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted November 11, 2008 Share Posted November 11, 2008 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arnold Sher Posted November 12, 2008 Author Share Posted November 12, 2008 right....so i guess i'll start at the beginning...I will probably be doing a more extensive one but this will probably give you an idea of how we get to the final product... I've included two images of how we render the image out and then the one with the post production... It takes about twenty minutes to post it... So... Step: 1. In photoshop we add colour balance and the key here is not be afraid of colour so we add abour +30 of red and about -30 of yellow... You will see straight away that an image is getting much more depth and saturation already. 2. Then i tweak levels do get the mood it little bit darker. Already is starting to look better. 3. With my "light" brush and after i've duplicated a layer i added some subtle glows and you can clearly see one on a ceiling and on the ottoman by the bed. Now they look little bit heavy even though my opacity brush is set to about 30%. To blend it nicely under layers i pick "lighten" and that is straight away better but i am still not happy so i choose and eraser brush and with opacity set to 18% i work on the edges till it blends perfectly. You might need to go over the edges couple of times. Now the idea is that you want to keep on tweaking it and retouching it so do not go with heavy artillery with opacity set to like 60%, that won't give you the control that you need. 4. I repeat exactly the same process with my shadows brush and just add subtle shadows on the carpet and where the wall meets the ceiling. It tends to really 'ground' the space. 5. The rendering is improving fast but we still have a way to go... Now in order to achieve nuances of external light and other sources of light i decide what i want to do. I want to create a subtle "blue" effect coming from the outside of the window and that will effect ceiling on the left as well the wall on the right hand side as that is directly opposite of the window but i do not want my whole picture to go blue. the middle i want to keep warm. How do i do that? I make myself a gradient to do just that blue on the left and right and summer orange/yellow in the middle (all of that needs to be on a separate layer so you can manipulate) and after that i just change the layer into overlay and tweak the opacity till i am happy. 6. Okay so the picture now is pretty much there but there are couple of key elements that still need happen to make really stand out. I want my lights to glow and really create a mood and in order to that i repeat step number 3 on all the lights and from the sides of the headboard and then it just a matter of eraser brush and subtle blending and the some more till i am happy with the result. 7.As i last step i like to adjust exposure and gamma just to give that lat bit of "bounce" and we are good to go... 8.Make coffee and start this process all over again... A key to getting this to sparkle is to not rush and test and try and most of all use reference material and try to mimic. It does not happen over a day but with lots patience results can be seen and time can be saved as a fairly bland picture can be turned into something you can be proud of. Hope this helps and i am looking forward to seeing your results on this forum.. Regards, Arnold Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kippu Posted November 12, 2008 Share Posted November 12, 2008 thanks arnold ....very informative ...and what a difference from raw render to post ...i usually try to get this in raw render itself and fail a lot :| Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trevor Tizard Posted November 12, 2008 Share Posted November 12, 2008 Very interesting.........thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trevor Tizard Posted November 12, 2008 Share Posted November 12, 2008 Hi and welcome! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amer abidi Posted November 12, 2008 Share Posted November 12, 2008 Interesting approach.. I usually bring my renders up to your post standard through max... hmmm..interesting to see how much time'll be saved now.. if at all =) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cadmunkey Posted November 14, 2008 Share Posted November 14, 2008 Great tutorial Arnold.. waiting for an exterior lesson now as 95% of my work is outside Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cimprichjb Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 Thank you for the tutorial, Arnold! I remember reading your reply in that original thread and looking forward to reading this. I was following along and had a couple of questions. In the first step where you color balance the image, are you affecting only the mid tones or are you adjusting any of the shadows/highlight options? When I changed the mid tones (default) using your settings it applied a sepia tone to the overall image. Also, have you ever through about replacing your 4th step with an occlussion pass and multiplying it on top of your image? It seems to me that it would produce a more accurate result. Just curious why you prefer this method. For speed? Control? I do a lot of my work in post as well so it was interesting to see another approach. I found step 3 and 5 to be particularly helpful. Thanks again! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 This guy does some nice colour balance work in this tutorial using colour balance, its also worth mentioning if you are doing this kind of colour stuff you need to be using 32 bit other wise yoi get nasty artifacts and banding when you push the colours. http://www.evermotion.org/index.php?unfold_exclusive=296&unfold=exclusive Arnold - Wouldnt it be alot easier / better to add some colour to your lights in vray? Its a massive jump from your rendered image to your post one (which looks good btw) i dont see the point in tbh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 Arnold, would you care to give any more detail about your "light" and "shadow" brushes? Are they custom, or is it an adjustment to a specific standard brush? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAWUK Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 Arnold, would you care to give any more detail about your "light" and "shadow" brushes? Are they custom, or is it an adjustment to a specific standard brush? Is he talking about dodge and burn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 ^ For this I use 2 masked layers with curves adjustment (one brighter, one lighter) and then just paint on areas with soft brushes on low opacity. If it goes too far you can always clear the mask without worrying about being able to undo 10 gabazillion dodge and burns. Im also interested in what kind of brushes you use? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 Thanks for the tutorial, its helpful to see your workflow. BTW, I think Dodge and Burn are awful tools. They adjust pixel color, which I dont think is too healthy. Using layers to control adjustments is much better. One other thing, I cant help myself, I have to say it....The lighting in the scene needs work. The light thrown onto the bed through the window is not lending itself to a realistically lit scene. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arnold Sher Posted November 19, 2008 Author Share Posted November 19, 2008 Hi everyone... thank you for your comments, sorry for taking a while to get back to everyone but we've been rather hectic over here. Right... Just a quick to the guys commenting on my work flow... THIS IS THE WAY WE WORK, and that's what works for us.. There is many ways to skin the cat and i am sure lots of guys out there work differently. The idea was to show you how we do it... Now there was a question about light and shade brushes and what do we use... We've made various custom brushes that are fully adjustable and that gives us complete control how we want to use it and the reason we did that is we started off with a plugin for photoshop called "mystical" which is kind of a beginners tool for adding shadows and light. After that we made our own to suit our needs and the rest as the say is history... Right, there was also a comments from someone about trying to do as much as you can in max and vray. Once again guys, if this is what suits and works for you then by all means continue... I think it is brilliant to see different guys working differently to achieve the best work they possibly can. That is how we learn from one another... Anyway, if there is anything else you want to know feel free to ask...Cheers for now... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxlee Posted November 19, 2008 Share Posted November 19, 2008 Nice reading, thanks for the tutorial . Yip you could do it in Vray ,but the result is definitely slower and less predictable. I think this a very fast method of working, great results on pressure jobs.More intuitive , you set a colour light in vray and it washes out to nothing or doesnt even show up on the wall you need it to, so rerender etc, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted December 4, 2008 Share Posted December 4, 2008 Really useful info. Thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
openstheway Posted December 7, 2008 Share Posted December 7, 2008 The post work is nice, but maybe the lens flare like a bit over the top. As a photgrapher you spend so much time trying to avoid and remove lens flares. Thanks you the tutorial but maybe less lens flare imao James aka Openstheway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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