New Orleans Cottages

[christophergeorge]

Studio/Institution: LSU
Genre: Landscaping
Software: Sketchup Vray
Description:

Im embarrassed to throw this up here, I know theres is so weird shadowing in the corners of the Porch. Im a student just looking to improve, any feedback would be awesome

[MrCAD]

hey its your first post..welcome to CGA... Its nice to see your render and looks its a good to see the progress as a student. Well regarding the weird shadows you mentioned are just simply ambient occlusion...you need to play with the values in vray. Well only one crit from me for a beginner is that the human cutouts do not go well which this image..especially the borders don't merge well..Hope you shall improve faster.

 

Meher

[AubreyM]

Welcome Christopher. Any relationship to the actor? The Rat Patrol was one of my favorite shows.

For the image, get rid of everything that is not modeled. You will never get good at modeling and texturing if you just paste stuff in in photoshop.

Don't get me wrong, using Photoshop is an essential skill, but it should be in aid of as opposed to instead of skills in a 3D program.

Pay attention to perspective as well, in your image the perspective is off.

 

Look forward to seeing the next update.

[christophergeorge]

I really appreciate the feedback!!!

 

Meher Thakker, I have been messing with ambient occulusion setting and still cannot get the weird shadows in corners to go away, I guess Ill just need to leave it off.

 

Aubrey Millard, Thanks for the tips about photoshop, I had 3d vegetation in the model but unforunately it crashed my computer when I tried to render it, and being a school landscape architecture project I had to add some vegetation in pht. I think I need to add some RAM, I have 4gb.

 

One of the big problems I am having is grass, I cant get the displacement map to actually displace anything, I am using the Physical camera in vray I have heard this causes problems

[AubreyM]

I don't use displacement for grass anymore. I just use Forest Pack to scatter my grass and trees. They have a lite version that is free. I suggest you check it out. I am not sure though if they have it for sketchup, I use 3ds max. Check it out anyway just in case.

4GB of ram in not much for any kind of rendering. You need a decent PC and video card if you are going to do a lot of vegetation.

[christophergeorge]

I actually have the Lite version of forest pack, I have tried to use 3ds max, The light version doesnt include grasses though.

 

I have a Macbook pro with 2.4ghz I7, I need to add 8gb of ram whenever I can afford, A decent PC is hopefully in the works. Im not sure if you are familar with 3dats tech, but they have recommened computers for 3d modeling, a buddy has there midrange computer, not the CUDA version and the model with vegetation wouldnt render on there either, I may have a setting messed up or it just could be that Sketchup Vray is limited by its 32 bit environment

[AubreyM]

The pro version doesn't either. Model the grass yourself, it's easy. Make a few planes about the size of a blade of grass, bend a few for variation and texture them. use at least 3 different shades. Copy and scale/rotate to get a good variation in a clump about 6-8 inches in diameter. Then use forest pack to scatter it.

 

This scene (a WIP) was done entirely with forest pack for scattering the grass, trees and plants. I didn't model the trees and flowers but I did model all the grass/weed elements.

http://www.3devolutions.com/pics/garden-c9.jpg