Elegant French Chateau

[AlboRegency]

Studio/Institution: Freelance
Genre: Residential Exterior
Software: Revit, 3Ds Max Design, Vray
Description:

Hey guys, I have a project that needs to meet professional expectations. There's a lot of detail that still needs refining as the architectural drawings are not very concise. I had a few stone samples which I took photos of with my DSLR and use with vray mtl, diffuse and bump map (made with photoshop). The mullions and slate roof will be espresso colour (option for blue slate roof as well. I need to add a skirt at the bottom with different material to see how it turns out. Landscaping is last on the priority list.

 

I'm using VraySun and a flat background plane with sky bitmap. I also have a front plane with landscaping image which seems to cause reflection on the stone walls which affects the colour and render outcome. I'm not sure if I should use HDRI in this situation (I will do rear and side renderings later on) or a skydome primitive, etc.

 

If anyone has any render settings recommendations, please advise. Need to finish in 2 weeks.

[AlboRegency]

[Tommy L]

'professional expectations' is a little vague, but Id say you have a way to go yet before it becomes of a commercial level. Your two main issues are lighting and composition. Change the direction of your key light to be over the shouder. You are taking aot of the charm out of the facade by putting it all in shadow. You need to dress teh scene a little, a plane behind the camera isnt enough to make the illusion believable. You need planting and background.

Do you need HDRI? Its not a magic bullet in this scenario, more the icing on the cake, but you need to make the cake first.

[AlboRegency]

I definitely agree that it needs quite a bit of work. The modeling detail still needs to be finished. I need to try some different lighting setups because if I use grass texture then that is reflected on the walls which makes it look greener so something is wrong there. I will leave landscaping for last as I need to finalize the lighting and materials as soon as possible. Thanks for the tips.

 

I've been looking at different tutorials but it's hard to choose which methods and setups are best for this scenario. Some people use domelight, hdri, direct lighting, vraysun, etc. I don't really care about using shortcuts just to save on render times. Quality and realism are much more important to me. I need to find the best method for that with no compromises.

[Tommy L]

ok, but 'saving on rendertime' is relative. Depends on what render power you have at your disposal. You have two weeks, if you are working on one machine then rendertime is paramount, like it or not...

I'd suggest lighting the scene with vray sun and vray sky and tweaking materials until it looks close. Then experiment to get your ideal settings.

[AlboRegency]

I have 3930k hexacore. Those renderings took about 15 minutes max at 4k x 2k pixels which is large enough resolution. I can lower it to preview the render and raise the resolution for final renders. I'll give vray sky a try and I may create parallel files with different lighting setups to see what I can come up with. I'll post the results. May need to play with the render settings as well as that affects time and quality.

 

All advice is appreciated. I wanna make this a learning experience as sometimes I would import a model to a preset environment and sort of cheat my way into a final render and in the end not learn as much.