Exterior Archiviz - part deux (early evening)

Just as the title says.

Night scene.

Quick render. It is my first go at this kind of setup. I hope I did it right.

Post processed.

This one is adjusted to get the bluish tint that is usually found in photographed nocturnal scenes.

Settings. Click for higher resolution.

As promised last time out, here is the setup. This was lit by an LDR plugged into a skylight and instanced to the environment map. A few photometric lights to light the rest of the scene. The background sky is just a plane and was rendered in along with everything.

Exterior Archiviz - part deux

Finally finished this good old scene. The results are much much better that the first time it was rendered. Changed the POV, the lighting and added some new colors to make it feel livelier than the previous one.
It took only 20 minutes to render this at the original render resolution of 1125x1800 pixels with default FG.

Out-of-the-box render.

This is the post-processed look. Same look and adjustments like my two recent posts.

"Photographed"

Night Scene

This scene is where I got my blog banner. It's the same from my last post Lomo. I got a bit crazy that's why I rendered it the way it is now. Well it's a personal challenge. I needed something to tinker. Anyway, a night render was something that was in my to-do list. Thought this was an interesting set for such and a photo from a magazine where two light bulbs are laid on a parquet floor just caught my imagination and got stuck in my head.

Wired!

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Lomo

Been toying around the image processing software lately. Scouring the net for some sort of inspiration and one type of effect has caught my fancy - lomography.

It's a photographic look that adds (imho) artistic flare to an image. A somewhat ordinary image like this, which is by the way rendered in 3dsmax mental ray, could be more interesting if given some post-processing magic.

3dsmax(mental ray) Out-of-the-box-render

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Bedroom

Something to break the IBL stuff around here. I can't be stuck on just one thing so this scene breaks the monotony of irradiance particle and image-based lighting. Here I used the good old (but very useful) mental ray sun and sky.

Raw render.

Click for higher resolution.

Smart IBL and Irradiance Particle

My irradiance particle "study-mode" is back in action! 

I have encountered a very cool site that provides high resolution hdr stuff long before I have gotten myself hooked on this Irradiance Particle thing and the whole image-based lighting gig. It's www.hdrlabs.com. It's where I get my hdri's but I never bothered with the Smart IBL GUI. 

To make the long story short, I got bumped in the head and  this idea of using Smart IBL's user interface to setup my scene just came to me. I import only the background and reflection because I want to control the lighting using irradiance particle as my lighting solution. It's fast and easy scene set up. Plus your hdri's get sorted. More info can be seen at their site. Great free stuff. I totally recommend it.

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In Between

Something that's kept me out of the Irradiance Particle testing-learning-testing-learning-thingamajig. This is also posted at http://www.cgpinoy.org.
 

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The background clouds were not post-processed but plugged into the mr skylight haze slot (like in zap's post).

What?

What happened to Jeff Patton's website? I can't access the old site with the informative forum and tutorials. I was hoping to look for his sky dome tutorial. Now I won't be able to finish my irradiance particle scene properly. I draw a lot of knowledge from that site. I really hope it would be up and running again with the same information as before and more.

Irradiance Particle (update 3)

click to view image

Work has suddenly picked up again and this is the only update I have to offer for this particular scene since my last post. And one "extra-income" (some sketchup modeling stint) which I could never pass up also came along the past weeks. That's the reason why this got bogged down a little. It feels like forever to finish. I really hope to finish this like it should be. 

Here I added some grass using the grass-o-matic and plugin some trees using Onyx trees.

Shaderlight

Here is something new that I have been busy with. All this render-your-exterior-scene-in-unique-way thing has got me to look for alternative ways to make my exterior archiviz stand out. I am greatly pleased with the way ctrl ghost of mental ray renders image-based lighting.

But while in the process of "learning" irradiance particle in 3dsmax mental ray rendering for exterior archiviz, I have tumbled upon this new render engine for Sketchup. Enter Shaderlight "An interactive, photorealistic renderer for Google Sketchup." The software is in its beta stages but out of my curiosity I tried using it for my Crockett residence scene. 

Since I was into learning IBL (image based lighting the non-production shader way), using irradiance particle this simple and small but wonderful piece of render engine does the job in real time(!) using Sketchup's physical sun or HDRI's. You can change materials using Sketchup's default material editor and tweak them simultaneously using Shaderlight's material editor as your scene renders progressively. You can freely move the camera around and change views inside Sketchup and you can see it change instantly as it renders. Did I mention it can use HDRI's as light source?  And one thing I like the most is that there is no need to export your scene, it renders right inside Sketchup (well, sort of. Actually it opens a render frame window where you can take snapshot of the render as it progresses.)

I can ramble all day about how I love its simplicity. Head on out to http://www.artvps.com to have a look. I almost forgot to mention it also has something for 3dsmax. nice. :)

 This came out directly from Shaderlight without any post processing.

 Click on image for higher resolution.

Here is a test. It's a snapshot of render in progress. I have used one of the default lighting presets (golf course evening) which also comes as a background should you choose not to use a custom one. In this scene I changed to a custom background to suit my need. Forgive me on my grass material though. I was eager to try it out immediately. 

Cheerios!

irradiance particles and hdri. update 2

I have gone to a totally different direction with my exterior archiviz test.
From my regular lighting solution of using Daylight with mental ray sun and mr physical sky, I have taken a new path - Image Base Lighting using HDRI's through Irradiance Particles.

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A few more adjustments. Somehow, I would have to invest in some decent HDRI's. That would come if only I could land in a decent job that would pay me and this hobby. :)

irradiance particles and hdri. update

An update of my Irradiance particle study.

As it is, I do not have access to hi resolution HDRI's so... any who, I just want to learn how to set-up Irradiance Particle along with Image Base Lighting.

irradiance particles and hdri

I feel like a kid on his first bike ride without the rear training wheels. Let me tell you why. While trying to figure out how to make my exterior archiviz render with mental ray better, I have stumbled upon Jeff Patton's entry on making interior renders "unique". Here he recommends IBL with Irradiance Particles. I'm hooked!

After 4 hours of tweaking with it here is what I have.

I'm still figuring out if I got it working right. The shadows seem soft compared to the HDRI environment which is bright daylight.

 Here are the settings. You can find free HDRI's at www.hdrlabs.com and some at www.hyperfocaldesign.com.

I will surely be updating this.

wip_exterior

I've been around the net looking to challenge myself for something new to render. I've noticed that I haven't posted any exterior renders except for one that I never really got to finish.

I have stumbled upon this very nice looking house at http://www.trendir.com. It's called Crockett Residence. Designed by Elemental Design. (Please do not sue me. I do not claim ownership of the design and of the house. If I violate any laws please contact me immediately. )

Modeled this from scratch in Sketchup. Here are some study renders.

You can find the image I tried to emulate at the http://www.pbelemental.com.

Back inside

Hey, is this thing on?


Man, it's been quite some time since my last post. Work got in the way. And a long overdue vacation was something I would never trade for. I stayed away from the computer while I was "away" as much as I can just to give myself some space to breathe from everything.

I will be posting some stuff in a few days.

Ciao!

Bedroom in Sketchup

For weeks I have been playing around with a very nice sketchup model of a good friend. For such a small scene it is not suppose to take 3 to 4 weeks. But I only toyed with it in between my spare time.

I know I would have a good time rendering this one out. And I did. I had a few issues with some of the models which came from the google sketchup 3d warehouse but nothing too serious. The chair, the fan (which I opted out of the final rendered image) and the blinds.

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Depth of Field

I remember this post at cgpinoy. I wanted to test mental ray's DOF and tried to come up with a pure out-of-the-box rendered image without using any post editing. The funny thing was I only had a core 2 duo machine. I cannot  recall how many hours it took but it finished without a problem.

I came up with this:

Click to enlarge

CGPinoy First Exterior Rendering Competition

This is the first exterior rendering competition that I will be joining. It's quite interesting because I've been a big fan of Stephen King's The Dark Tower novel and the main subject is a tower. I have read all the seven books in the series and I have so many ideas running in my head of how to approach (should I say) the problem just thinking of The Dark Tower.

Artwork from the original Marvel comic series based on Stephen King's epic The Dark Tower.

the third & the seventh

Just keep in mind while watching all of this (in FULL screen) - it is CG. I had to slap myself a few times midway in the (short)film just to keep from drooling. The musical score just lulls you into this dreamy state that convinces you into thinking that the scenes "are" real; the lights, the textures, the ambiance... (are they not?). This is something I can only dream of achieving.

I'll just shut up now because you'll enjoy it more by seeing it for yourself. It's not enough to use a single word to best describe this magnificent work by just one man. This is just truly awe-inspiring. Check out Alex Roman's site and see more of what I'm talking about.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.