Archviz
 

Hello everyone,

In the last few months I have taken an interest in Architectural visualization. Without much experience in lighting, shading and rendering my first attempts at rendering a sort off realistic scene were far from satisfactory. But I think I am starting to improve....although I still need to learn a lot. And that is why I am posting this here....hoping for some critique to push my work to the next level.

http://i.imgur.com/tXnCSZo.jpg

This is the raw render from Maya (rendered with Mental Ray) with a bit of adjusting in Photoshop.
For the next renders I am planning to make use of render passes and the Mila Material but I haven't had a chance to give that a shot.

What I am hoping to achieve is photorealism like in the example below.

http://www.cgarchitect.com/content/p...on-1_large.jpg


Tips and crits are most welcome

I think you're on the right path, jump into passes as soon as possible. I'd say you have the basics in maya to the point where you really need to start to look at the compositing process. Lots of people want the image perfect out of Maya before they start thinking about the next step. DON't do this! Take the image to post ASAP this will give you an idea of what needs fixing in maya and what you can get away with in post.

It will save you a ton of time and until you've seen for yourself what's possible in post you just end up wasting time rendering in maya. A lot of people get stuck where you are now because they don't get the fact that 50% of the image is done in Maya and 50% done in post, that ratio may vary of course but the sooner you start getting raw render information out of maya and into something like Nuke the better of you will be.

Hope that helps a bit
David

You're absolutely right about the amount off work that can be done in Post. Even with just some basic adjustments in Photoshop like curves, the render already improved a lot.
I've already been fiddeling with this scene to long on the Maya side of things. Everytime there is a little improvement but not the major improvements that can be achieved through post.

Hope I got some time this week to delve into render passes and the Mila material.

Off to a great start. Though be careful with ambient occlusion, it can quickly go from tightening up corners to just making them look grimy. I see the AO grime creeping and crawling up your walls Martel, don't let it! lol

Thanks Gen.

I thought I was pretty careful with the AO but I see what you mean. Probably because I don't exactly know how to comp the AO pass in. I just multiplied it on top in Photoshop and turned the opacity down. I doubt that this is the correct method. Could you explain how to add the AO pass correctly?

AO should be multiplied over the ambient light pass or the direct diffuse if you don't have an ambient pass. see the screenshot below. It's a simplified version of the composite of the house I did recently. If you're interested it's volume 5

The AO is multiplied over the direct diffuse this is then added into the start of the node chain. there are many ways of doing this some more correct than others the thing you want to avoid is multiplying the AO over the entire image or bringing in a multiplication operation anywhere in the main node chain.

Good luck :)
David

Thanks for the explanation...I knew I was doing it the wrong way.
I think I'll buy parts of the house tutorial. The texturing/shading and compositing parts are definitely usefull for my interior renders.

Nice one David, saved Martel and anyone reading from the incoherent babbling I would have no doubt posted as I was falling asleep at my computer last night. Slapping the AO pass over everything is especially annoying when there are emissive/self illuminating objects that now have a dark smudge sitting on top of the supposedly bright area around them.

I ran into a slight problem not related to renderpasses and compositing.
I'm trying to add a carpet into my scene using XGen. This all works fine untill I try to render it out. When I render with GI prototype I keep getting these warnings in my Renderlog:

running out of stack space, breaking shader call recursion

It doesn't brake the render but when I open the render in Photoshop the XGen hair is missing.
To figure out what is causing the warning I tried rendering it using Final Gather. This time I didn't get any warnings and when I opened the file in Photoshop the XGen hair was where it belongs.

So I guess GI prototype is not compatible with Xgen. Can anyone confirm this? Or is there some setting I missed?

Does anyone have a different or maybe better way of creating a carpet?

Here is an example of the carpet I'd like to create:

http://www.poshtots.com/_common/_ass.../28994_PD2.jpg

And here is my scene with the carpet shape (no hair or Xgen added):

http://i.imgur.com/BjwAPbf.jpg

I'm pretty much in the same boat (in a bathroom scene even), I'm trying fur and the gi prototype is making me crazy. Will be poking around xgen, I'll report back.

http://i.imgur.com/V9TZ4gH.jpg?1

I think I'm going in the right direction with this image.
Rendered the image out with passes although I still haven't used the Mila material. I've got a diffuse, indirect, reflection and refraction pass. When combining them in Photoshop they reproduce the beauty image perfectly. The only problem I've had with this is that Photoshop somehow doesn't let me edit the 32 bit image. I can't create adjustment layers or use masks. So the above image is just the beauty render with a lot of adjustment layers and masks...edited in 16 bit.
I do have the non comercial version of Nuke installed so I'll give it a shot with Nuke somewere in the next few days.

Few things that I'm not happy with at the moment are the textures for the window frames and the wall behind the piece of furniture. Also not that happy with the LED light above the mirror.

Other than that I'm pretty happy with this image.

Started a new scene because I was kind off happy with the above result.
Modeling part is almost done. Next up is learning and applying the Mila material.

http://i.imgur.com/V9sFtfF.jpg

I like the view through to the bed and the wicker basket. Door handles and plug sockets often forgotten but definitely help to sell it imho.

Look forward to seeing what you come up with for the shading.

Good luck
David :)

Modeling is 99% done (probably change some stuff while shading but for now it's finisht).

Put on some basic lambert materials and a few more compex materials to get a general idea for the right colors.

Now off to building some Mila materials.

http://i.imgur.com/2O4CA3X.jpg

Made some progress shading the room.

http://i.imgur.com/fKiYmTr.jpg