How can I make a plain wall-render look realistic?

[stayinwonderland]

I always struggle with photo-realism. It's easier if you have something that requires real textures, like wood or stone etc. but my client always makes his designs/properties with flat, solid colours. Like so:

 

 

As you can see, the solid greys just look a little '3d' or digital. In some cases I would add a super soft reflection but in this case I think that would just blow out in the strong light. But then really it needs to be very matte anyway.

 

Bit of leaky concrete? Or maybe dirty it up in photoshop slightly?

 

Edit: scene is unfinished by the way, just in case a few other areas get pointed out. There's going to be a wall and bushes and something to the empty space, left of the building. For now I'm just struggling with the main structure's wall-render.

[benjaminbogaert]

Maybe use a heavy bump for some variation in tone? Also for the corners use an edge tex map. I saw this at Ronen Bekerman, it gets rid of those 'too" perfect straight corners.

 

Btw, that road is it a photo or modeled if so... Yum!

[Devin Johnston]

Anytime you have pristine materials with no variation in texture or color you run into a problem of it looking too clean. In this image I think bump or displacement would help to break up those monolithic walls. In reality even painted concrete has texture to it and I think that's what your missing.

[Scott Schroeder]

When I run into a client that likes flat colors and generally doesn't like adding in even slight grime, I always try to push them to letting me do the non-photo real water color renderings. This way, the flat colors push more towards the drawing look rather than the photo real look.

[stayinwonderland]

Thanks for the suggestions chaps, I'll address each:

 

Benjamin - not sure what you mean by edge tex map? do you mean unwrap it and paint in some light along edges/corners? And yes, it's all 3d, thanks

 

Devin - thanks, suggestion noted

 

Scott - hmmm, not sure what water color rendering style you're referring to? I'll see if I can push him to dirty things up a little. Sounds a bit odd, lol.

[benjaminbogaert]

Its a material you can apply on your model, you can use a bump map on the egdes of your model. Verry cool stuff.

http://www.peterguthrie.net/blog/2009/03/vray-edge-fillet-tutorial

[stayinwonderland]

Ah yes, I vaguely remember seeing something like this before. I'll check it out. Guessing that it might not be effective at this distance but we'll see.

[heni30]

You can also do it in post with a very subtle pixelate crystallize w/ noise or the texturizer/sandstone. That way you can have direct control of the final without having to do testing.

 

Even if you use their minimum settings you can still make it more subtle with "fade" after the filter is applied.

Edited November 6, 2013 by heni30

[benjaminbogaert]

It has a setting that allows you to set a number of pixels instead of using real units. it gives a bit of variation to the straight corners.

[RyderSK]

You answered yourself with strong bump map :- ) but one that tiles as little as possible (you can mix it using noise), and with both high-frequency and low-frequency detail. But it will still look bit odd, honestly, there almost nothing you can do about it :- ) It is mostly so visible because of flat angle, high perspective, and flat frontal lighting. You can also try the highly rough reflectance, very weak glossiness (something almost extreme, like

 

But don't make it dirty, however it might seem attractive for us, they don't want to see their building dirty when they're straight new. There is 0 chance any client will ever want this with this purpose.

[stayinwonderland]

Thanks for the input, was hoping to get your input actually. Wow, 0.3 glossiness, I don't think she'll take that much power captain, she'll blow!

[CliveG]

When I run into a client that likes flat colors and generally doesn't like adding in even slight grime, I always try to push them to letting me do the non-photo real water color renderings.

 

I'm quite interested in this Scott, is this something you do in PS or AE or do you even use something like the old Piranese?

 

Do you have any examples you could show?

[Francisco Penaloza]

You can put any stucco or concrete texture in the bump channel and this will cut the straight flat surfaces with the lighting. If you wan to to go the extra step you can use a compositing shader with a mix between your flat color and a B/W stucco-concrete image and set it as multiply, adjust the opacity just to create color variation, very soft though.

 

Also do some dark or bright accents in photoshop can be more flexible as mentioned early.

But never the less bum map always help.

[Stephen Thomas]

Perhaps this is something you could do in post? Take a stucco/render texture, apply a high pass filter then layer over your render with overlay blending mode and adjust the perspective to suit your image. Might be worth a try as a quick fix.

[Tommy L]

I know it seems this plain white-ness is a bit too CGI for you, but maybe you are overthinking it. If you pull the rest of the image up to photo-real then the white walls will sit comfortably. A well exposed photo in this context would have 100% white walls in direct light.

[Scott Schroeder]

I don't have any personal examples right now as they are all under NDA's. However, here are some general reference points.

 

http://elizabethday.com/

http://www.ronenbekerman.com/non-photorealistic-rendering-npr-approach-to-architectural-visualization/

 

I do all of the work in Photoshop using my base render from Max. I adopt a similar workflow to this tutorial;http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/watercolor-painting/

 

Though I keep the level overlays and colors a lot less intense to give it a more subtle look and combine that with a vray toon line overlay to enhance the lines of the structure.

 

The reason I push some clients this way is the fact that they may not be interested in all that much detail, so I'm not going to burn time putting it in there just for them to ask me to remove it. It saves me time and saves them money, so win win. This method is generally only used in the very early stages of design when those super perfect renderings can actually detract the client from the process.

[notamondayfan]

I would also look at adding reflection, but not as low as 0.3, perhaps something around 0.6 / 0.7, as render actually has quite a high reflectivity, but it's the bump which makes it appear very glossy. Then you might start picking up the blue from the sky slightly, and other reflections. Also vary the reflection amount and specular amount with maps.

[CliveG]

....and combine that with a vray toon line overlay to enhance the lines of the structure.

 

 

Yeah, I've been experimenting with adding noise to those toon lines to try and soften the effect further. I did like the old Piranese software for some of those "hand drawn" features.

 

I think this is an intelligent approach for more reasons than just saving our time in the early stages. I feel that clients can actually be put off by too much photo-real "certainty" as to how their project may look - if this occurs too early in the design process.

 

This may be a topic in itself but my feeling is that we can jump into presenting a client with photo-real images a few stages too early because these days, it's actually getting easier to knock out a model (that we can edit and re-use along the way), than it is to follow a more organic development of ideas in concert with the client. Because of the ease of the software and speed of our machines it's easier (for me anyway) than producing some of the less formalised sketchy ideas that some clients actually need in order to feel that they are still part of the development process. Bear in mind I come from a time when we spent over 100 hours waiting for a pretty simple hidden line removal of a wireframe, so being able to produce a model, apply materials, lighting and render 5 views in that time means that, for me anyway, modelling becomes part of the early design process. I just have to fight the obvious temptation to present too much of that modelling to the client too soon.

 

Perhaps I need to brush up on my PS skills, as it's still easier for me to work a visual to a more presentable form than it is to hold it back and turn those early stages into the sort of water-colour-painting work you suggested.

[Justin Hunt]

I like to use a fall-off map with two slightly different variations of the colour, set to fall off with the lighter colour set to the far or glancing side. Just be careful that you dont push it too far or it will look like velvet.

 

Also use the same bump map in the reflections, just set to something very low otherwise it looks too wet.

 

jhv

[RyderSK]

The worst thing is, as Scott mentioned, he might just get asked to clean it up after they see it :- ) There is big chance the client is happy the way it is, so maybe I would communicate with client before hand. It's not such a good idea to "tune-up" commercial rendering as it is personal work.