Swimming Pool WIP indigo newbie

[hoyter]

Hi,
I appreciate anyone taking the time to read and analyze my renders. Very much appreciated.
I've been getting into sketchup to bring my 2D hand drawings to life for my clients. I chose Indigo as my rendering program after thorough research. It has been fun and challenging, I'm learning something new every day. That being said I think I have advanced enough to ask for peer/someone with more knowledge than I review.
I know there are some blatant issues- the 2D plants not facing the camera, the grass not appearing correctly, the material's reflective nature. Please dont hesitate to point out the obvious errors but more importantly I was looking for good constructive criticism how I could improve my materials and the way they render. Photorealism is the goal.

Notes-
How could I improve the water in terms of realism but still have it look inviting?

How do I improve the grass? Ive tried messing around with displacement and clipping and it seems the grass will never render properly from close distance.

Every flagstone patio/coping material I attempt to import always appear to be super low quality. I even tried going out to one of my jobs and taking a picture with a 12MP camera of a flagstone patio then importing it. The photo is super clean but, once imported into sketchup, appears semi-low resolution like attached image.

How could I improve my fire features? How do I make the flame look more realistic? I've tried messing around with the difference luminance and temperature of the emitted light.

How could I make my landscape 4" rock look better?

Thanks all. I appreciate any help very much.

[Zom-B]

Hey hoyter, welcome to the Forum

Please save your images a jpg files and attach them directly, by that every forum user can see your stuff directly and the chance for some help is way higher

You seem to be new to 3D viz and there is still along road to go.
I can only advise you to learn the materials of Indigo and all the features and mappable channels, use them!
http://www.indigorenderer.com/documenta ... /materials

Regarding Material creation there is 80% similarity to other physical based render engines, so learning the materials of one renderer will also help you if you should use another one

Also check out the skindigo manual here: http://www.indigorenderer.com/documenta ... o-sketchup

How could I improve the water in terms of realism but still have it look inviting?

http://www.indigorenderer.com/documenta ... l-sketchup

How do I improve the grass? Ive tried messing around with displacement and clipping and it seems the grass will never render properly from close distance.

Scatter some 3D grass with Indigos Scatter feature: http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... 17&t=13175

Every flagstone patio/coping material I attempt to import always appear to be super low quality. I even tried going out to one of my jobs and taking a picture with a 12MP camera of a flagstone patio then importing it. The photo is super clean but, once imported into sketchup, appears semi-low resolution like attached image.

mapping textures on planes doesn't bring any "visual volume" to these flat objects! use displacement mapping for your cobblestone and also always use exponent & fresnel scale maps for reflective materials to bring some life into them. I have no idea of the resolution side of your problem, since you don't provide any examples of your sources...

How could I improve my fire features? How do I make the flame look more realistic? I've tried messing around with the difference luminance and temperature of the emitted light.

First use a proper Fire image (on black background), the one you have looks rather like from a cartoon. Then map this fire texture on a plane and subdivide it a lot! Now for the material use a null material with the flame texture in the emitter chanel, set emitter to uniform and crank the power up to 10M

How could I make my landscape 4" rock look better?

No idea what landscape 4 is

[hoyter]

Many thanks for the help Zom-B. I looked through your gallery- most impressive and inspirational!

I've already figured out the scatter tool (with the preset ;P), and have improved my water. I'm devoting the rest of the night to reading about material editing and how I can improve my own imported materials based off other posts. More or less going about this whole thing more methodically based on your advice from here on out. I will post updates in a month or so.

Here are the jpegs.