Inserting people/trees in a rendered image.

[alimarafia]

Hi, and happy new year to everyone;

 

I would like to know what process do to use to make the trees/people contrast/saturation the same as the rendered image ?

[Sketchrender]

Honest

 

Eyeball it, adjust it, step away from it, when you think you are finished, and come back to it after a half hour.

It's what makes a good viz artist, matching the colours, tones, lights.

 

Phil

[Corey Beaulieu]

I agree with Phillip, but will add:

 

Curves are great for darkening areas that need to have lighting changed or just need to be darkened.

Hue/Saturation. Use the channels and shift the hued and saturation to match your image. Reds and Yellows seems most common in my practice.

Shadows are not black. Use a sample from a shadow in your render to get a nice color match.

Blur much more sparingly than you might think. Only the part of a person in motion is blurred naturally so take that for what you will.

Lastly, photo filters on overlay are good for matching light colors. You need to mask where appropriate, but it really is good.

 

With people, it can be good build a group and either turn the group into a smart object (will make your file size larger, but maintains full parametric values), or collapse a copy. With this you can do some final balancing so that you don't have to go back through each adjustment. More generally, this will allow an easier masking experience.

 

Good luck, I hope this helps.

[alimarafia]

I thought ( hoped ) there was a way to compare between the curve of the rendered image and the one of the tree/poeple one; but obviously, it is not that simple ! ( a sort of automatic process )

Thanks for the valuable tips, it clearly needs a lot of pratice to get it right.

[Corey Beaulieu]

Haven't tried it, but something you might check out is the 'Match color" function in photoshop. It may suck, but it may also put your people into a good range to start with. just open the people in a separate window than a collapsed version of your rendering and say match color. Then go from there.

 

Most likely though, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” Teddy Roosevelt

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Why not make the rendering match the people and trees instead of the other way around?

[SkylineArch]

If all your trees/people have the same lighting, insert them and don't worry about matching the rendering at first, however, pay attention to the light/shadows on them and make sure they match the light angle in the rendering. Then go back and adjust them with levels and hue/saturation all at once as a group(s) if you can. Use the brun tool to add shadows to plants/people as needed. Play around with the burn too until you understand it, and use a brush at 10 or 20%. Create an action that copies the layer, desaturates it, adjusts brightness to make it black, sets opacity to 50% or so and moves it down a layer (to be behind the original layer). This sill give you easy shadows you can skew to fit your sun angle. Make a shortcut key as well to speed things up.

[alias_marks]

Haven't tried it, but something you might check out is the 'Match color" function in photoshop.

 

I'm quoting for agreement, this function is most valuable when used the right way I think. May times when I think my people aren't sitting quite right, I'll do this>

 

1. Merge and flatten all current layers with ctrl - shift - alt - F

2. open an image from my inspiration folder that I think has some nice tones

3. Gaussian blur my inspiration image beyond recognition

4. Apply the match color effect to the flattened layer

5. Play with blending and opacity settings as desired

6. When used as a blunt tool like Corey mentioned, it's a terrible filter, But sometimes it can be a great time saver.

 

 

Alternatively, when I'm not feeling so hot on some inspiration image.. I'll paint the lighting for each person, but rather fast. Generally I'll spend 30 min painting in some evenly lit people with the following method if I'm feeling up to the task:

 

1. Have all people on a ctrl-click easy selection in photoshop

2. In general the ideas is to go to each person and dial in lighting in photoshop with a top lighting layer and a lower contact shadow later

3. I tend to adjust the tones on top of the person before adjusting a 'master' layer below them that has contact shadows.

4. Take a step back and 'see' every person in the scene, start with the person that stands out most. Delete them Joking.. You can make most people work I think as long as they are evenly lit.

5. Side note, if you render you people into the max scene, as look at me camera planes, make sure to have them as a select-able multimatte that you can seperate into separate selections

6. Select your first person(s) with ctrl click layer bounds in PS

7. Sample your colors for darkish tones and light tones (never use black and white). I generally use the eye dropper alt shortcut to sample a darkish blue and brightish orange/yellow from my scene.

8. ctrl click the later of your first people you want to adjust

9. set your over top layer to overlay and start painting with 1-10% opacity with a soft brush to tune in brights and darks depending on where you light source is on TOP of all the people layers individually, *use cliping masks if you get tired of making masks for each set of people.

10: hint, use a wacom pressure sensitive device or use shift-[ or ] to adjust your sofness.

11. After painting to your desire, set the under layer contact shadow to multiply.

12. There are 2 layers of contact shadows you want to apply... those right next to their feet, and those that fade further away.. Use some distinction.. sometimes I brush in the immediate contact shadows, and sometimes I use the quick shortcut to (g) to use a circular gradient for the 'further away' at around 10% opacity at a time. remembering to use blues and warm tones instead of white/black.

 

13. People matter and it's best to get a couple right than add to many that stand out as eyesores (*in my opinion). So take your time.

 

14. Once you get it dialed in this should take about 30 min, unless you are doing a stadium, or huge public space... then I would suggest something like MIR did for the french soccer stadium... or similar...

 

14. Share some of your renderings, I know we would all love to see what your up to and it might help give some better direction.

 

Cheers,

 

M-

Edited January 10, 2013 by alias_marks

[Umesh Raut]

Quite a loadful of tips there Michael, and thank you for those; what I thought of just adding to it is a fact that (in PS) holding alt and rigth mouse button, you can alter the brush size (right-left) and hardness (up-down) while working and it is really time saving and interactive.

Just 2 pence.

The above images show people and other local stuff composited in Photoshop, for example.

Edited January 10, 2013 by umeshraut

[alias_marks]

Good tip my friend, I'm going to have start using that one Awesome. Very cool of you to upload your images and share with the community. I think a lot of artists browse here, and see work like this, and feel like they are in your same position ... of how to make it better.

 

I think posting these is a great, and helps some of us understand the what you are asking. These images are a great start but could use some love that has not so much to do with the people integration.. sometimes.. like clients.. they ask for one thing, but are really wanting another... I'd push if I were you and surprise the client with something they weren't expecting...

 

1. Pick some composition (GET IN THERE!) i.e. use the walkthrough tool in 3ds max to approach.. - I learned from an architect a long time ago, foreground, middle, and background will really help the image.. currently you have some background but the image wants foreground trees, people, water, whatever will help these a lot.. and then add some background fascination... while not adding too much distraction... sometimes the project wants isolation, while other times it wants intgreation.. just gotta feel it out I guess.. Thats where the skill comes in I suppose

 

2. Pick a story that you feel the developer/architect really gets excited about (*sometimes it's the thing that makes them money, sometimes is's about makng their design feel prolific. sometimes it's the thing that makes them feel like they are changing the world for the better, which is my choice l'd feel it out with your contact.... but that's the real skill.. in my opinion..

 

3. Once you have your story, that will help inform all your people and integrate them.. sad.. happy .. active mountaineers.. SAAS ceo's ... timber manufacturers... Tech employees designing the future? who the hell knows really...

 

Anyway, thanks for sharing and look forward to seeing where it all goes.

 

Cheers.

 

Mike

[leemanet]

Thanks for the tips, they sure were useful!! ;-)

[M V]

This tutorial can be used on people and trees. Just have good tree files and make sure to match the lighting in the tree with your scene by flipping it if necessary. I think some people miss this and cannot figure out why their trees feel fake.

 

http://www.viz-people.com/tutorials/69-relighting-cut-out-people

[nevek]

Great advice. Thanks! I have been new to this but I have found that working with people images that were made for visualizations work really well. Like I bought images from epcitor.com I am was really impressed with the outcome. Basically don't have to do any work on them, just minimal fitting them into the scene. Because they are designed to be ready to use and really high quality cut outs. Saved me a lot of time!

Good luck!