VisualDandD

Since I have very little experience with post processing. Can you give me an idea from the one rendering I just did (first time I attempted to render any significant motion vid) what type of improvements post processing might yield? It is WAY outside my wheelhouse and I dont even claim that rendering in general is something I consider myself skilled at. I just know enough to mess with it now and again. But IF post processing would yield good results, what might they be and what is the time involved vs said improvements? Appreciate insights from someone in the know on this. For the vid, I just verified and adjusted my render setting on stills and then let it run. 100% honesty, All the scenes have identical settings (which I know I could improve if I set each camera with different optimized settings). I am just trying to balance out what real improvements can be had vs actual time investment and trying to get an understanding whether pursuing post processing would be 'worth' it. Thanks for any input, this is the video I would love feedback on.

If chief really wanted to improve rendering (which it seems they do), I vote they should include geometry for siding materials.(and corners) Eg show the actual siding in 3d (which could be further enhanced with bumps). This geometry could perhaps be defined by molding profile DBX and be defined (or rotated) for materials like vert vs horiz siding. We all know the poly count would go up, but we are in a day where the GPU's can handle it. Lap siding, even with bumps, does not show well in 3d. Board and batten....well that is the reason so many try to do manual applications for good renderings. I am not suggesting this is necessary. It is my feeling that Chief should stop focusing on rendering. BUT if chief wants to produce good renderings, showing siding in 3d would be the single largest leap forward that I think they could make. This difference would be a HUGE leap in the quality of the rendering.

Nope. Clearly shown in graphic example of sqft envelope that they fully count them on both floors. They then have a break out to show specifically how stairs are measured on 2nd floor. to where you only count the actual area of stairs and NOT the open to below area. The old....picture is worth 1000 words is easy on this one. Look at their examples.

Actually I used to think this way, but I realized there are differing ways of measuring sqft. I would often notice that appraisers would do a home I drew and it would always be 100-200+ sqft larger than what I drew. I just assumed they were not good at doing thier job Turns out, I was the one that was wrong. There is actually an ANSI standard published on how to calculate square footage. Appraisers are required to use this standard when calculating 'living area'. It goes to the outside of the envelope. Outside of siding or brick. With brick, it adds approx 200-300sqft to a home. Always notice brick homes appraise for more, part of it is they measure more! Also the odd one is stairs are measured on BOTH levels. This is quite different than the construction standards which have always been face of stud and stairs on one level. Here is a link to the standard: https://www.homeinnovation.com/-/media/Files/Standards_Development/Square_Footage/2020_Z765/ANSI_Z765_-_DRAFT_20200207_-_no_cover_art.pdf

@Renerabbitt I wish I had better PS skills. I know enough to be dangerous, but there are definitely times where PS would be easier than re-running some things. Your talent is evident. Really cool and equally as impressive!

Yep, you sum it up quite well. I very much enjoy rendering. Just never found a way to justify the time it takes me to do it and what the 'market will bear' as far as compensation goes. I was doing VR stuff years ago (I still love that for getting the 'feel' of spaces. Hell, now it is almost easy with so many software packages integrated. Anyway, it comes down to working with good people who appreciate your talents. I have been lucky that appreciate what I do. I have hopes to do more, but I am not holding my breath. I have had clients who sub out to overseas renderings, and I will be honest that the final product is nice in many cases. Many of them have to draw the homes as well. (I wont share CAD files with clients, only the PDF const drawings). So the overseas rendering people have to draw everything. I cant imagine how it can be worth their time. Working from a CORRECT chief model would be do-able. I could see that working. But there are lots of good guys out there such as @Renerabbitt who occupy that space. (Your work is incredible and I would not hesitate to refer anyone to you for your quality). Rendering is such a fun creative process and it has come such a long way in the past 20 years. I can remember using the Pov-Ray on old chief. Watching the tiny dots fill in hour by hour. Only to realize you wanted to change a small thing and have to start all over again RTX is/was a game changer for me. It made/makes rendering so much more practical. I will draw the digital vs film camera analogy. RTX has made rendering easier in the way that digital cameras make people better photographers. If you do 20 images, you are bound to catch a good one . "Back in the day", the processing took so long, you really had to know how to set up an image. You could not afford to clog your computer up for 9 hours rendering a image that ultimately would not be useable. Not so with RTX. Your 'misses', just take a minute to generate and are no big loss in productivity.

Thanks man. I may look into it. I dont render much, but this might be a good option if I start to increase the amount I do. Doing stills is a non-issue with my box. I can process 35 stills in approx 10-15 min. If I do video though, I can see the need. I wish I could justify doing more rendering, but the challenge is for it to be worth my time to do them.... The prevalence of overseas 'cheap' rendering has spoiled a lot of people and the perceived value is not all that great on this (from what I have seen) .

Here is the finished product that I made from this rendering model. The video takes a while to render. This was almost a day and a half with a 3080ti

Always been the way I do it. Even in Lumion. Posted this a few days ago

I really dont render all that much. But every once in a while, I get a bug up my butt to mess around with it. I have a few high(er) end projects going and I think they are worthy of putting the time in. I have a pretty fast pc. i9 12900k 32gb 5200mhz mem 3080ti etc..... This took about 1 1/2 days to render at max settings. The client was not expecting this. I just promised them stills for Monday. I am curious to see what they think. Client is a builder and this is a spec home some hoping to secure future work if they feel this is worthy of marketing the home long before they dig dirt. Thank you! I looked and TM does not support multi-gpu , but might be interesting to just use a virtual 4090 machine just to not tie mine up. I might look into buying one if I do more rendering. I dont know if it is worth it though for me to take the time in doing the renderings. I know my son would love my 3080ti as a 'hand me down'. Then he could put his 3070 in our driving simulator!

Funny. I just posted a thread on if anyone is using any virtual computer/cloud rending. Running a rendering on a 3080ti which is going to take 2 days and looking for alternatives.

So I have been playing with more rendering lately. Mostly TM. I have essentially what is the fastest box one could build (before the 4090 cards came out). For RTX it is fantastic, but I am looking into rendering video. Even doing 30fpx with ray trace the times are days with 3080ti, I am doing about a minute of vid and it will run for 2 days to accomplish. (cant wait to see how it comes out). So I did a quick search on rendering farms where you rent a virtual computer. Found monthly, weekly and even hourly rentals. Equiv to to 10-1080 Ti cards running on some. So has anyone here ever used any? If so which might one recommend. I dont do enough of it to justify monthly or even weekly rental, so hourly would probably be best bet. Any thoughts?

Here is the end result. Have not tweeked my renders yet. This is first run at them.....No post processing, just strait out of first shot. The client wants all white also. Not my color choices. They have a decorator with some 'out there' ideas. When I add some lights and do some lower light shots, the design will really pop. I included one darker one I will light with good effect.

I export to TM with terrain. I use the terrain to cut in driveways, side walks, and even landscape beds. The TM paint on terrain does not give a good enough finished product for that. Export to a terrain that contains your drives, and walks, (and beds if you want them). Have the terrain slope off approx 24" at edges. Import into TM and blend terrain to meet up with it. This is a chief terrain blended with a larger area in TM The driveway is modeled in chief as is the underlying terrain. (drive set approx 3" higher than terrain for grass) You can do some cool things in TM to get more realistic ground look. Perfectly flat grass looks fake. See ripples down the side of the home in the ground. That is an intentional element meant to try to being in some more realism.

Just wanted to share a little tip I have used for a while. When rendering in TM, I take my home and add terrain perimeter. I then go to all the extents of the terrain and add a 'elev-region' about 12-24" lower than where home sits (so the terrain tapers off). This allows me to add my driveway and sidewalks. I make them 2-3" thick and they stand ABOVE the terrain. For landscape beds, a nice hack is to use countertops. Set to 6-8" thick and apply a nice tapered curb molding to the edges and it makes nice raised beds. I bring it all into TM and then create a 'flat' landscape. I sculpt the TM landscaping, and blend it in with my tapered terrain perimieter. Add grass (which works nicely with the raised drives and sidewalks. Add bump and textures to landscape beds and plant in TM. Getting ready to render another project and figured I would share my process. Pic of elev regions, terrain and sidewalks and beds and clay model. I have a few more tweeks to do and then bring into TM for rendering.

Ha. I really dont put a lot of time in it, but I do remember the days when it was MUCH harder. These are old ones from Chief 9 (NOT X9 but 9). The old PovRay version. This was back when chief did not even apply freize and you had to manually drain in all the trim. I of course photochopped the landscape in, but pretty amazing what you would do with that old stuff, but generating that pic (without the landscape) would take 4 to 5 hours.... But my first renderings ever were for my first home that I designed in chief. They are attached as BMP's This was 6.0. I bought chief because I wanted to design my own home. As you can see from the design, the ability to do curves were a big thing that sold me on it. I had tried some other 'comp usa' programs and could not get what I wanted. I grabbed a real estate vid from when the house sold a few years back. We lived there for a decade. Those are not my furnishings, but the person who lived there after us. But if it were not for Chief, I dont think I could have pulled it off. It was the first home I designed. https://youtu.be/MuIPjkDnuvQ

That is super kind. I keep saying that I dont 'render', but I find myself dabbling in it from time to time. I do try to search out better textures and have saved a few. Most often, I will use chief's and then make normal maps to bring into TM and have them look better. Of all the things bricks and shingles are the 2 toughest for sure!

Thank you! I will load it and try it out!!!! Brick is always the toughest to get good looking ones for sure. Thank you again!

Some to add. The client is a porsche guy so I threw in some fun stuff. It is hard not to get carried away. After you do a nice model, the image generating is just as fun! .

I do this all the time. Chief can be a little finiky, but I have a way I do it. Not sure if it is the 'right' way, but it works for me. -I copy and paste in place the roof I want the kick out on. -I then drag one of the roofs from the bottom eve and snap to the inside of the wall. -Open the roof dbx and take note of the 'fascia height'. -Then I select the other roof plane and drag from the top down to the inside of the wall. (so now the two roof planes match and look like one roof) -then open the lower dbx and alter pitch as you desire for kickout. Whether radius or just lower pitch. -Then open lower pitch DBX and paste in the fascia ht of the upper roof plane in to the LOWER roof's ridge height. Just for removing any glitches, you can then join roof planes to clean up any small sub fractional issues. Then copy the lower kickout and paste it around the plan using point to point on baseline. I do all my roofs manually. Chiefs 'auto' tools start to fail as the design becomes complex. I might auto build a simple hip structure and then go in and start editing manually.

Yes Twin Motion. I worked on pool design and tightening up details today. I did not put a ton of time on the rendering end. But I make most of my own textures and normal maps. I often start with a chief texture and make normal maps for those. I tend to experiment a little.....but I dont consider rendering 'my thing'. Just something I do to convey ideas on higher end projects. Lots of details on this. Most all done in Chief

Thank you. I have further work to do of course refining. I love the way things evolve and even I am surprised at times! I'll post up some when I get a little further.

Here is what I used for rendering. I ended up using the radius wall that I broke into sections. Going to save the cabinet trick though. Thank you! These are not final renderings, but they are for design concept sign off.

@Alaskan_Son Has anyone submitted a request to make a CAD tool that will accomplish what this is doing? Be nice to have deform any solid along a line for example. Draw solid flat and then be able to manipulate said solid along a line. I can see this as being very useful.

Lots of options. This took me 30 sec to make. It is a perforated metal. Re-scaled it and changed color to bronze. There are also mesh materials. Just resize, and color. On chief, set the screen material to a discrete material. (some type of glass that wont be used any other place). Then when you switch the material in TM only the screen porch gets changed.