Neil Denari - Alan Voo House WIP

[Magnus_Alexander]

Hi guys,

 

This is my first image post here. I started this project late November of last year, but the holidays and other miscellaneous distractions have prevented me from moving forward with it. I figured the best way to jump start things would be with some C+C.

 

I decided to start this project as a modeling / rendering exercise using nothing but photos. You can see the images I used here:

 

http://www.nmda-inc.com/index.php?/project/alan-voo-house/

 

No scaled drawings were available, so I estimated everything by intuition. I am including shots of the exterior, kitchen, and stairwell. The kitchen and exterior are further along, but everything is clearly a work in progress. One question in particular I'm hoping someone can answer: in the exterior shot, how would you go about making the butted glass (encasing the lower level) read as individual panes? The geometry of the glass currently has depth, and I figured the refraction depth would eventually pick up the edges of the glass panes, but I haven't gotten it to read correctly.

 

I am aware that I should hide the horizon, and am probably going to use 2d trees / shrubs / etc. to do the trick.

 

I used Rhino for the majority of the modeling, but imported the model into max and used powernurbs for some additional work, and have rendered everything in V-Ray.

 

All C+C is welcome, whether it be about modeling, or render settings, etc.

Thanks in advance!

[CHE]

Great modeling and nice renderings Alex. For some reason, the images look dark in my monitor; try tweaking the exposure. Also, the materials could use a little bit more work (texture,specular,reflections/depth in the glass). I hope it helps.

 

-E

[erickdt]

What are you using for your glass texture? Did you make it from scratch or did you use the EGZ materials (VRay Glass)?

 

EGZ Materials Available Here: http://www.vray.info/materialbeta.asp

 

Otherwise, the modeling looks nice but I agree that the textures and the lighting need work. A more motivational lightsource would go a long way and that green texture on the plants and grass definately reads "cartoon" green.

[Magnus_Alexander]

I made the glass texture from scratch, but I'll check out that link you sent me. As for the textures and lighting; I agree about the grass, it's actually just a placeholder for the time being. I have a hidden surface that is using a vray displacement mod, but didn't want to take the time to render that out. I'll do that with future updates. I'll play a bit more with the lighting; particularly the interiors... and I might experiment with an HDRI for the exterior. Right now e exterior is just using the vray sun / sky, which gives a similar feel to the photos.

 

Thanks for the comments, and I'm still open to more if anyone has them.

[Magnus_Alexander]

I'm going to try to resolve this WIP one image at a time, so first; the exterior:

 

I checked out that EGZ glass plugin; it's simple and good. However, it reminded me of why I had made some previous decisions about the glass material I originally made. The glass in the original image had the index of refraction set to 1.0, to prevent refraction / distortion from occurring. This is actually what caused the edges of the butted glass to disappear. In this new image I used the EGZ glass, with the default IOR (1.46 I believe?) and the distortion through the glass on the lower level is unacceptable. Does anyone have a suggestion to work around this issue?

 

I fixed the visibility of the horizon, and am satisfied with how that end of the image looks.

 

Thanks again.

[rmccoy]

there are a couple of ways to get the glass edges to show up. Have you modeled the panes individually? if so you can chamfer the edges to help create some highlights.

 

or you can mix two seperate materials to create the illusion of the glass divides. Just use your base glass material and then a different material such as a gray/black and then mask it with either a black and white tile map or something similar.

[Stan Zaslavsky]

alex - your modelling looks excellent - and very nice architectural features to the model too

 

my comments are - were you planning to have this scene populated with people/cars later on? otherwise the scenery looks a little bit sterile

 

also the grass texture in the bottom left corner seems stretched - you probably would want to adjust UVW mapping to remove that effect - it seems unnatural.

 

i also agree with erick - the image currently looks a little too dark - the blue sky suggests that its a sunny day hence the lighting should probably be light throughout

 

cheers and congrats on an excellent composition in the meantime

[Magnus_Alexander]

Since this project is sort of a photo dupe, and there really is no opportunity to place cars, I'm not really looking to do that. However, I am currently placing furniture in the scene, and am considering placing people, but I think the scene would look better without them.

 

As for the darkness issue; I'm wondering if it's an issue of linear work flow. I haven't used any form of gamma correction, because every time I follow through an LWF tutorial, the output always looks too desaturated. One thing though; I do think the interior shots are too dark, because I haven't spent a lot of time lighting them, but is the exterior appearing dark as well? I'll be posting a new image soon, maybe I'll experiment with exposure or LWF for those images.

[CHE]

If you are using the Linear Work Flow you have to gamma correct your final image. I usually save an OpenEXR file out of Vray (32 bit). Also, make sure that you are using the Vray Frame Buffer for testing your lighting/exposure. What color mapping are you using?

[Magnus_Alexander]

Those last two images were using the default color mapping (linear multiply, all settings to 1.0) I've since tried out reinhard and HSV exponential, and am not really happy with the results; it looks too desaturated. It's probably also worth mentioning that I'm using a vray physical cam, so that might affect the mapping / exposure as well. Anyone have any better suggestions?