Steve_Nyhof

Yeah, I didn't like that one either. You might say I am not trying too hard to make the trees nice as much as I was working to try and find my right exposure. I found that if I over exposed in Chief from a darker photo, it would turn too lime green, so was trying to less brightness to overexpose the background. I redid another for Spherical and made the trees smaller. This is just for the perspective full and floor and sits better now. Once again, I'm just trying to get something nice without spending too much time fussing at this time while learning the interior rendering. Thank you, Rene! I have been enjoying your videos and learning a lot of little tricks here and there. I also purchased your closets, so going to mess with setting some of those up soon for when I have a home with a large closet that I want to do a rendering on in Chief. SN Background Far Trees and hills Sph.calibz

After looking at more interior renderings online, I headed toward something just a bit more abstract and artsy. Here are some new backgrounds and camera and rendering settings. I'm liking more where this is heading. What I am trying to do is set up a new website with exterior renderings from Twinmotion, and the projects interiors from Chief. I have been slowly making these rendering changes and to my default template with a camera already in place I can just drag into place all set up. I am including my Library of these backgrounds, both backdrops and Spherical. From these you can see the horizon placement that works for backdrops and Spherical and how they differ. I don't have much of a reflection in the water on the lighter image, but the idea is to wash the background out a bit in the rendering. See PDF for settings SN Backgrounds.calibz 2023-01-27-6.pdf

Here is another one on a lake. Not Spherical. bg-Lake.calibz

I'm still trying to make the background nicer as I continue to fine tune my interior cameras and lighting. So here are three new backgrounds, one for a flat background and two for a spherical background. Same background on the Spherical, but with a twist... FYI - The horizon is very important to get it to sit right, so use these as samples. The lower horizon is for the Spherical. bg-Flat.calibz bg-Sph.calibz bg-Sph-x2.calibz

I think lawn is always going to be difficult to make look like grass. Things like brick and stone have large flat mass areas as compared to the small areas for the groves for the bump (normal) map, where grass has no flat surface and is only vertical. I messed with several software programs for many hours making grass and finally gave up on adding a bump map.

Yes, Chief does a nice job now that I have the setting set up. I have added a few cameras to my template and set to the side for when I want to bring them in. I am getting nice renderings in less than 30 seconds that are quite fine. I have been messing with AI stuff (mainly Midjourney), a good place to get lost for days and then realize that I just wasted a lot of time. Had some fun though generating some fun results base on the images and text I inputted... - add the words, frank lloyd wright to it and get results like this...

Here is another with closer trees

Here is a good backdrop for interior rendering - Not for Spherical. This one has a good horizon location for standing at like 5' high camera and see out the windows and doors properly.

Hello, I wanted to make a better background. Chief distorts it and makes it look blurry but that is what it is. I also played with my grass again a bit and used it to overlay things into the background in photoshop to make it more congruent with the terrain. bg04.calibz

I hear you on the rendering, does it fit into my work flow. I am looking at it from a point of staying fresh with what is happening in the real world moving ahead so fast. I was always ahead of the game for years, but had so much invested into my time with AutoCAD and programming it that I was starting to look like the small kid in the block compared to the 3D modeling that was taking place, so I got into Chief and there too felt like I had a new lease on my business. I may not offer Rendering, but now I know I can do it, and if the client wants to spend the money, I can help them. I started this whole thing because work suddenly got a little slow over the holidays and I thought I better get some plans on the Internet for sale. I had done that years ago with some success. They now require photos or a rendering. Now I am working on a new website https://stevenyhofdesigns.com/ and will be creating all of my images using TM. That's the plan anyway, so I have a lot on my plate - keeps me out of trouble.

I looked at the title, but my only option is to delete the thread. I know the rendering has plenty of room for improvement, but I never thought I would be drawing something that nice at sixty. The young whipper-snappers in here may not fully comprehend pencil and paper and a drawing board. When I was in my teens I used to draw perspectives of the kitchens we sold. I even went so far as to draw the wood grain on the cabinets and put items on the counter. I feel like a school boy again with a new toy in Twinmotion. It's been fun but I have some work stacking up so I need to put it down for a bit. Anyway, a long answer to say thank you for offering encouragement. Thank you, Mick!

Here is a house I just rendered in Twinmotion. About 4 hours of messing with materials, made my own can lights that I can insert anywhere and control everything about them. Everything inside the house is from Chief. Here is a final result after months of perfecting my process... https://stevenyhofdesigns.com/new-home-construction/

Thank you. Yes, that is on my plate to do. There is a lot of info on TM so that has been helpful

I wanted to show a plan I drew today and brought into Twinmotion to do some rendering. PDF also includes more shots. For some inspiration, I am feeling very comfortable with TM now and learning more, but I think it is a great alternative to Chief for better rendering. 01-05-2023_06.pdf

Here is another Twinmotion template with life like grass and backgrounds.

I created a new Twinmotion Template that includes a number of different environments depending on what you turn on or off.. If you do not want to use Twinmotion for rendering but still want some background images, download TM and manipulate the tools as shown in the video and capture some screen shots for the Chief Camera or other things. See video for full details - https://my-plan.stevenyhofdesigns.com/v/tZWaLrXKFRPvYDEQdlER Unzip the file and rename the folder for your project. Open the Twinmotion.tm file and drop in your .3ds model file. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mdi9iTRTdGbQDO5Sia4wfQML7r1ZmlB4/view?usp=sharing

I am messing around with a new water front template for Twinmotion and grabbed the background for CA camera Lakefront Background.calibz

Ok, now I am really going to get back to work. Here are three Twinmotion backgrounds. Twinmotion-lake.tm - this has the landscape image removed showing the water of the main image background and a smaller land surface that is designed to view the house from any rotation with sparse trees in every view. The Lake will also be viewed in every position. (Like a small island). At some point I will want to improve the look of TM's default lake image. Twinmotion-open.tm - this still has the landscape image to give the appearance of more open and vast land mass. I have less trees in this file for a more open feel and look. Twinmotion-wooded.tm - this is the original file I was working on and has more trees so it looks more wooded. On the right menu tree in the software are several grass groups. Click the eye icon to turn more or less grass on... When you open Twinmotion you can now click the + to import your model.3ds file... OR Ctrl+I / Cmd+I All three Twinmotion background files can be downloaded here... https://drive.google.com/file/d/11dnE6ywj2nm9qgKiJ4pncrYRmDW_6fMp/view?usp=sharing If anyone messes with this, please upload your result in this thread, I would love to see your masterpieces. This has been a fun learning experience and thank you all for engaging with me. Lake File Open File Wooded

You're welcome - I really have some work to do, but this has been fun to learn Working on a sparse tree line and lake front TM template files now

You're welcome!

And here is a generic background. Settings in the Library File Full Camera Background.calibz

Here is the Photoshop file... grass-basecolor.psd

I was just playing around with pixPlant and one of the grass images to make it tile and create a bump map. Not perfect, but a start. I will mess around with it more later. Terrain Grass.calibz

Wow! Very impressive to be done in Chief. Camera background image, a few bushes to keep things simple and a few trees for shadows. You have just inspired me to set up my Camera, and put together a few nice background images. And thank for the grass images. Heading to the link now to mess around. Thank you! Steve