AlvarD

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    72

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by AlvarD

  1. AlvarD
    One more thing to note on this is that the B&W "height map" that I showed can essentially be used as a "bump map", and you get the same effect. Here it is with just the bump map and no normal map. You could even argue this looks better than with the normal map! -Alvar
  2. AlvarD
    As I mentioned before, I'm no expert in normal/bump maps, so all I can do is share my experience creating a normal map for the board and batten, which I thought came out pretty decent. You may find some of it useful. Before I go into the maps, here's my motivation. Without any maps, the board & batten that come with the CA base library creates very flat B&B walls in a PBR render. Like this: With a "simple" normal map applied to a general material, it can make a huge difference in 3D PBR renders, looking like this: I created the map using this online tool http://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/. The input to the tool is a "height map", which uses black and white (and greys) to define low and high parts that define the "heights" of the map In my case, I created this height map in photoshop, but you can probably create something similar in any paint program.I took care to use the dimensions of 3.5" for the batten on 16" centers, for the white strips. This is what it looks like when you use it in the tool to get the normal map. The preview on the right shows you how the normal map can make the image look like in 3D. Hope it helps! -Alvar
  3. AlvarD
    I definitely over did it with the normal map. Here's with a toned-down normal map for the tile.
  4. AlvarD
    Thanks Mick! In this case the apparent dark color of the grout, as you surmised, is mostly the result of the normal map, although I have seen cases of white subway tile with darker grouts, which looks fine too. I also agree with you that not having the counter back-splash may look cleaner/better. -Alvar
  5. AlvarD
    Graham, once again, thanks very much for all your ideas on fine-tuning the lighting and materials on the kitchen to get better renders! Jere's my second attempt after updating the materials and lights as you suggested (or as best as I understood) Here is the PBR render before the latest changes: and here is the new render. Although I still see some minor issues with the render, overall I'm very happy with the improved results so far. The backsplash tiles took a bit of extra work. When I originally wanted the angled herringbone subway tile, I couldn't find it in the library, or figure out how to get it from the ones in the library, so I ended up making my own pattern file. This time I added a normal map to give it extra depth. I have also attached the X10 plan file, in case anyone is curious about the camera, lighting, and material settings I used to get to this point. -Alvar Test plan 2.zip
  6. AlvarD
    That looks great Graham! All the extra details definitely help. I haven't tried to render a night scene yet, but this certainly inspires me to try.
  7. AlvarD
    Graham, here's my first attempt at using your technique. Not perfect, by any means, but I like better than my best results up till now: but still very far from some of your great renders, like below... That's my goal -Alvar
  8. AlvarD
    I wasn't familiar with the wall material region tool, and I wish I had been, as I've spent a lot of time in the past adding polyline solids on external walls to get some details (like the attached pic of a beach house we just finished building), but this tool makes it a LOT easier as it can cut through doors and windows automatically. I can see how handy it can be for things like tile showers, etc.
  9. AlvarD
    Yes, I was referring to Mick's B&B library as the material for the outer layer framing, as was discussed in the thread that he referred me to. I'm not sure exactly what Rene means by "material regions", but Mick's library allows full control over the battens, if you want to control exactly how the B&B wall looks like. My solution with the NormalMap is a simple solution which can give you the look of the 3D battens in PBR. The downside of using the NormalMap on a generic material is that you can't control the exact locations of the battens on the wall, and you can't dimension them on plan/elevation views. To be clear, I'm no expert on materials or normal maps. I have a fair amount of experience with PS and photography in general, but yesterday was the first day that I ever tried to create one. Luckily it didn't take me that much time to got the result I was looking for, but that's the extent of my knowledge of normal maps (haven't tried any bump maps). Attached is the normal map, which you can apply to a general material. This map is for a 1"x4" batten 16"OC. You need to set the scale to 32" x 32" to get approximately the 16" OC. You will likely need different maps for different size battens and different OC spacings. -Alvar
  10. AlvarD
    Graham, thanks for the detailed description of your PBR lighting process. I've been very impressed with all you interior kitchen and living PBR renders and wondered how you achieved them. No doubt, you have invested countless hours tuning your craft, so this information is really appreciated!!
  11. AlvarD
    Thanks Mick, and Rene for your suggestions on getting more realistic B&B renderings. I played around with the B&B and Rainscreen library where you have to add it as framing, but in the end I ended up creating my own normal map using Photoshop and the NormalMap online website. I think it looks much better than the default B&B in CA and probably pretty close to the 3D framing option with the B&B library. The advantage is that I don't have to worry about framing the walls and the cleaning up the resulting boards. The pic below shows a PBR render where the left gable uses the default B&B (this one is from the CertainTeed library), and the right gable uses a material where I just applied my normal map.
  12. AlvarD
    Rene, that looks great. I haven't played around with bump/normal maps much, but your render is the first time I'm seeing the board-and-batten siding look realistic. I see the lap siding and the metal roof also looks better. I've only been using Chief for one year and have a lot to learn, thus appreciate the tips from the experts! Of course, like you and other have echoed, it's easy to spend so many hours trying to come up with the perfect (or just better) results. That is always the challenge, as we all have limited time to invest in those explorations... If you don't mind giving me a little more info on which maps you used for the vertical board-and-batten, that is something I would certainly like to know more about. Thanks!
  13. AlvarD
    Larry, I agree 100% with you. Having to play these games with sun intensity, fill lights, and even the idea that Graham had about different exposure backgrounds, while good to have as current options, would be GREAT if chief made it easier with more built-in controls. Let's see if there are any further X10 updates to PBR. If not hopefully X11 will have them!
  14. AlvarD
    What I've found is the brightness of the sky depends on the strength of the sunlight. From my earlier posts, you can see the strong shadows you can get on exterior PBR shots, and how you can mitigate them with controlling the strength of the sunlight and the addition of 3D "point fill" lights. If you want a brighter sky, the sunlight has to be stronger and the fill lights have to be proportionally increased in strength. In the first shot, I have the sunlight set at 1 lux, and 3 fill lights set at 200 lumens. Because the sunlight is weak, the sky is dark. Without the fill lights, you get very strong shadows, like the pic below: The next pic shows a lighter sky, thanks to a 26000 lux sunlight, but in order to have soft shadows and compensate for the very strong sun, I had to increase the fill light strength to 450,000 lumens!! With the same 26000 lux sun and without the fill lights, the shadows are stronger:
  15. AlvarD
    Thank you SO much Graham! That did the trick. I don't get exactly what you got (my shadows under the porch are stronger than yours), but it's very close, and MUCH better than with the default PBR settings.
  16. AlvarD
    My goal with the external lights is just to soften the strong shadows from the sun in PBR, as I had seen the effect that Graham had posted. Graham, I tried your suggestion of changing from lights from Automatic to "Light set" default in the Adjust light DBX, but it didn't help. Perhaps it's a bug that I need to report? Thanks very much for your assistance!
  17. AlvarD
    I'm trying to follow the suggestion of adding 3D external lights to lighten the shadows on exterior PBR scenes, but I must be doing something wrong as the additional 3D lights I added don't seem to make a difference, no matter how strong I make them. I currently have the sun set to 26,000 lux and have tried various 3D light intensities up to 40,000 lux, but the I still get the dark shadows from the sun. I have attached the PBR render and the plan. Thanks much! Test plan.zip