Exterior Renderings


mcrump
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Can someone offer some tips for exterior renderings.  Mine look bland, dull and plain.  I honestly don't know if it's some settings or me or a combination of the two.  There must be some magic tricks to great looking renderings.  I'm about ready to hang up some dead chickens and garlic around the office.

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I like to enable the bloom filter when the ray trace is finished but before exporting it. Adds a nice ambient glow to the image.

 

That gives an interesting effect. I bumped up the settings and it gives a nice foggy look.

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Typical renderings just don't print in B&W or Grayscale very good. Instead use watercolor with lines and tone down all the color settings. Color printing is still way too expensive. Anew tool with rendering and line drawing would be really nice for typical B&W and grayscale printing.

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I've learned that photorealism can bite you when clients are looking closely at textures.  That's why I prefer the NPR approach with watercolor and lines.

 

Final view with shadows, then watercolor, then lines.  As Dennis says, trees and shrubs help, too.

 

Post processing a raytrace with something like FotoSketcher can deliver nice results.

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Lately ,I've had a problem for a while with watercolor and lines that are just too dark and no way to lighten them up espically the skys and terrain. Not sure why, might be a video driver. Using the latest Nvidia drivers.

here is an example

post-113-0-99571000-1409160039_thumb.png

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Perry, that is indeed a problem, if you are unable to control line weight and line color when doing the line-drawing-over-watercolor.

 

Here I have dialed line weight down to 5 and jacked the black color a little lighter by drawing up the lighter-darker slider adjacent the color block.

 

And Michael, how about trying a camera view and not a vector view?  Your funeral home view lacks perspective.

post-55-0-40122700-1409164087_thumb.png

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Michael C - If you want a realistic rendering that 'pops', I think you will need to go to ray tracing. For me, there is a huge difference with ray tracing always looking better than a render. Fortunately, ray traces in CA are now pretty quick for decent image quality, especially with external images. 

 

I also agree that the shadows need to be darker (more contrast). Part of my issue with your rendering is that while the house has shadows, none of the landscaping does, which makes the image 'flat'. This of course, is corrected with ray traces. Of course, for the most 'pop' and realism, the plants need to be 3D.

 

One final observation: it appears all the vehicles are floating a couple of inches off the driveway - small items like this can have a big impact on image realism. 

 

Also, I agree with Gene, sometimes clients focus too much on the details of a 'photo realistic' image. Fortunately, once you understand the client, CA provides tools to provide images that work for you and them.

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Good idea Scott,  Attached is my rendering of a funeral home.

Michael,  I agree,  something is lacking.  I have an idea.  Strip your plan down,  post the plan,  and have a contest with all of your friends here to see who can produce the best RayTrace with your project.  Offer a $10.00 prize for the best rendering.  I bet you would get a lot of entries and we can all learn from it.

 

Hey,  just call me the "Idea King".  See you Saturday at the workshop.

 

Oh,  at least throw in a trophy along with the $10.00......  I will pay for the trophy, (you have been more than generous with me).

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Hey Michael,  lets's call it the MMCCRUMP; RENDERING CONTEST.  Here are the rules:

 

-we have to use your materials

-we have to use your ugly cars

-we have to use columns

 

but....

 

-we can put in our own landscaping

-we can choose any camera angle

-we can choose any media,  whether rendering,  ray trace,  water color etc.

 

this could be fun,  are you in?  This could be very enlighting.

 

You put up the $10.00,  I will pay for the cheap plastic trophy  (minimum 10" tall),  let's do it!!!

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There you go Michael,  you already have three Vermin chomping at the bit wanting to give you the best dang funeral home in the world.

 

Oh,  one final rule,  your funeral home,  you are the final arbiter when it comes to determining the winner of the $10.00 Prize money and the  Cheap 10" tall trophy.

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I'm good with it.  $25 to the winner in crisp, clean American Dollars.  BTW, I used the wrong terminology.  This was a 4 hour ray trace.

Oh Michael,  this is so awesome.  Give me a couple of days,  believe it or not,  I actually have work to do,  and no cheap trophies,  I get paid in Pesos out here in SoCal.

 

Oh,  one more final rule.  All entries must be posted prior to Friday,   August 29th at 12:00 pm midnight.  This will give you Michael 6 hours to determine the winner of the $25.00 and the 10" cheap plastic trophy and you can announce the winner at our Saturday workshop at 6:00 am pst.

 

Awesome stuff Michael,  thanks for participating,  I will have my entry in before the deadline.

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