What am i missing for realistic rendering?

[bluediablito]

hello all.

i have a question to ask, and i am hoping for some pointers.

What makes a rendering look realistic, is it the material, camera, rendering settings, lighting, or the post work? (or anything that i have miss)

 

feel free to tell me your suggestion to what makes a rendering of a still images look realistic.

 

you may ask why would i go out of my way to ask a such question.

well i loved to render. i have done rendering since 3d max 3 to 2010.

now i have notice improvement over time, but i feel that i am missing a special element to push my images to the next level. i think the next level for me would be realistic looking images but from what i have attach feel free to comment on anything you may think i should focus on instead of realistic images.

 

 

these images are previews work i have done.

[andstef]

hello

 

All the thing you mentioned make a render realistic. And I should add to that, in my opinion the most important part: modeling.

In your 4-th image: there are some things that don't cap, and the whole scene looks low poly, or the curves of the objects aren't fluent

In the 5-th image: i can't make out what is going on in the background, those white stripes look as if they were supposed to be identical one to another but they were drawn by a 3 year old and came out looking like yous. You should go easy on the DOF, even if you like it a lot, when I look at that image I feel as if I accidentally put on my grandfather's glasses.

In the 3-rd image, the sky looks flat.

 

This are the things that i find wrong with your renders.

 

best regards

[aristocratic3d]

Everything is right what Andrew pointed out. But the crucial thing is the model in that case and that's for sure.

 

It seams to me you use to render your scene within a minimum subdivision setting.

 

regards

[Fran]

In the first image, the people look like they are being beckoned by a UFO. The shrubbery in the foreground is too repetetive and it obscures the view of the building. If you are saving images from the Max frame buffer, I suggest you use png or tga and NOT jpg. Max jpg is very poor quality.

 

Most of the textures look low-quality. Make sure that geometry that is close to the camera is not low-poly. Chamfer the edges of things. When in doubt, leave people out. If they kill the scene, they are better off gone unless a client insists on them. Then you better concentrate on getting good at compositing people in. There are people here who are very good at it - Strat and Dibbers come to mind. I am not one of those people.

 

I can't give you any advice on your render settings or lighting setup without knowing what engine you are using. It looks like you like to take chances and experiment with cameras - keep at it because there is potential there.

[bluediablito]

andstef, aristocratic3d, Fran...........thank you

love the comments. to be honest i believed no one would bother to reply.

i will work hard on this. i felt like no mater what i try it would look the same, but now i have things to try.

sorry if i left a few things out.

modeling - i normally model in rhino and export it to 3ds max (the floor plans are made in autocad imported to rhino, and then to 3ds max for rendering)

------i guess i will have to import into 3d max and leave out rhino

texture - most of the time i go to http://www.vray-materials.de for materials. or i go and find images in Google.

------how would i make high quality material?????

Lighting/camera - i normally play around with this. i don't have any special setting, or any angle.

Render - i normally use vray for my rendering.

-------over time i have played around with different setting but for me these setting has given me less problem......if i have to change it feel free to help me improve it.

 

Fran love your quote "When in doubt, leave people out." (95% the prof ask for people to have a sense of scale. if it was up to me i would leave them out, but i feel i need to also work on adding people as well)

 

for any one who is reading this

if you see something that i am getting wrong feel free to give me some help.

[Bruce Hart]

Hi Jonathan,

 

I agree with what the others have said so far, but would also add you should perhaps investigate using more colour in your lighting such as adding more blue or yellow tints. Most of the lighting seems too close to pure white. You have a gradient in your environment slot. I'm not sure what this is doing for you, but you could consider a sky map or a HDRI of some kind. In most of your pictures it seems as if you could do with making the FOV of the camera quite a bit wider to exaggerate the perspective and help add more drama to the shot (but this is subjective of course). You may have narrowed the FOV so as to get some DOF blur but I would ditch it. You may also need to play with colour mapping a bit more. For some reason the 3rd B&W image looks like there is no GI at all? It also looks like you have a procedural sky. These never look realistic IMO. Better to use a good photo.

 

If I'm working on something I often try to spend a few minutes to systematically critique my work by breaking up the image into small segments and writing down a list of things to be fixed. I then may go through that process a few times until I don't hate the whole thing so much.

 

Try to be conscious of the various elements in the image and what percentage they take up. For example in the classroom scene, you have put some good effort into the smaller items, like pages in the book, pens etc. - but you have a blackboard that has an even black material on it. This could perhaps have a map on it that makes it look like it's been used recently or have a bunch of equations on it or something. Some of your materials could perhaps benefit from having subtle reflection maps going on to vary the specular sheen, and/or layered diffuse maps.

 

A really good article by Steven Hägg-Ståhlberg on composition and large scale, medium and micro detail levels can be found here:

http://www.androidblues.com/visualperception.html

 

That guy certainly knows what he's talking about. If you go to his gallery section you will see the effort he puts in to small details. It is not arch viz but you get the idea.

 

If you have not done so already, try and keep a good library of interior photographs on file, showing all kinds of real world lighting and materials and refer to them often to remind yourself what they look like. It's easy for anyone working on an image/artwork to become blinded to the problems in it. An old artist trick is to view the artwork in a mirror. This forces your brain to re analyse the composition and to see problems previously missed, which of course can be done by flipping the image horizontally in Photoshop

 

Anyway - keep up the good work and keep going.

[aristocratic3d]

I am agree with Bruce, procedural sky never looks realistic. your adaptive DMC image sampler setting is too low and also interpolation sample under irradiance map.

 

BTW you can find good quality textures here:

http://www.arroway-textures.com/

 

Thanks

[bluediablito]

Thank you all now i have something new to look out for and try.

a quick question....

when it comes to modeling wooden floor some people tell me to model each planks and other tell me to create a plane and add material. what is the correct way of doing this to obtain a realistic image?

 

aristocratic3d

thank you for the link i will look into this.

[aristocratic3d]

Wooden texture with bump map is enough I guess. I did not see anybody using mesh tile for floor. Or have I got wrong impression?

[Fran]

Jonathan, I recently purchased some high-res wood textures from Thomas Suurland's http://www.cg-source.com. On that site are some free scripts for creating and manipulating a plank or tiled floor (Floor Generator), and for creating a new Max texture called Multi-texture which will randomly place a group of bitmaps onto the planks or tiles.

[nivvu]

Helo Jonathan,The question which u asked is the same question which my students asked me when i teach them max and vray.....i normaly give them an example.......if a movie is super duper hit then the credit doesnot goes to only one department......the credit goes to each a every dept for eg the music should be good, story should be good, screeplay should be good, action should be good, romance should be good, editing should be good etc etc.......u know it should have every part of the ingredient divided equaly..........same as a realisitc max image, ur modeling should be good, materials and maps should be good, application of maps and mat should be good, lighting should be good, shadows ( stong and smooth ) should be good, render settings should be good and postproduction work should be good..............i hope everyone agrees with my example :-)so when i saw ur images i noticed one thing besides all those points mentioned by our fellow cga's...........That point is the cool shadows, for eg in ur first image and third image .....there are no cool or smooth shadows happening where the slab nd the wall is joining........in realisitic world there would be smooth shadows happening even though u have a strong or sharp shadow...to tel u more clearly u can see the smooth shadows happening in ur fifth image wich is interior....like a cool shadow of the table faling on the chair and the cool bowl shadow hapeing on the plate and the cool beeding shadow of the table edge...........so tht is the shadow effect whch i was talking about pal.............i normaly attain these cool shadows when i place a vray dome light in my max scene whether its an intrior or extrior image.............and if i want a strong shadow then i place vray sun or a normal direct light........and if i want both types of shadows then i place both lights..............and if u want this cool shadow effect if u r using standard scanline then place a skylight and on ur lighttracer option in advanced lighting menu in ur f10 dialog box.......and once u get this smooth shadows hapening where ever two faces are meeting u can automatically see the difference in ur image..........so this is one point wich i noticed...........all the best for ur future work and sory if my english is wrong anywhere :-)cheers nivas

[bluediablito]

Thank you for your reply Fran.

wow they have super high quality wood texture........

love the scrips. will be looking forward to using it in my next project.

(my friends and i are debating to which material website to buy from. ether arroway or cg-source) thank you for the link.

 

Thank you nivvu

i will also try to fix my shadow and make it smoother. (i am sure i can take care of this problem. )

 

aristocratic3d i have use texture with bump map (sometimes use displacement to try to have those wooden grain when i zoom in but no good result). i know my problem is my texture material not been good quality.(i will speak to my friend to see if we ca all chip-in to save up to buy some texture cds....and thank you for the website) i guess now i would stop using the Google images as material and i should invest in buying quality material.

also, what is a good adaptive DMC image sampler, and interpolation sample number?

 

 

Bruce Hart Thank you for the comment.

you are right about loving your work. the more time i spend on a project the more and more i start to hate it. when i reach this point all i worry about is sumiting on time and having something to show for class. Also i have notice that i am unable to pick up my own mistake after siting in front of it for sometime. i like the comment of using a mirror and seen your work from the mirror to allow your brain to re analyze your work again. i will surely try this.

 

 

sorry to sound desperate by asking so many question, but i never had any one that could give me pointers (normally in school the professor would teach the class and we would ask simple questions. after the semester is over the real question starts and theirs no one who i can ask.)

 

i just remember why i use rhino to model and import to 3d max. the reason for this extra step is to minimize the poly count and allow 3d max from choking, lagging, and crashing on me. is there a way to model high quality and stop 3d max from crashing? i have heard that it depend on your system.

my system

windows 7 ult 64bit

amd dual 3.0

8gb ram

nvidia 7600gtx

500 gb hardrive

i have max use 6gb of ram

 

..................looking forward to build a i7 next month if i get a job lol

Edited March 15, 2010 by bluediablito

[Justin Hunt]

nothing wrong with your system, its stronger than most.

 

With regards to detail, put detail where detail is needed.

 

When importing your CAD plans, first get rid of any info you dont need, like exploded hatching, dimentions or blocks of plants, people and cars. Or even trace the bits you need and only import that.

 

Use the Layer Manager to manage your scenes, to hide / unhide things. Organise your model in a logical way and name your objects accordingly. Use instance copy when ever possible.

 

jhv