Indigo Renderer Forum

Hi everyone,
I've just started to work on the whole series of recreation, single-family and duplex houses. In this thread I'd like to present the results to all of You and get some constructive criticism to improve my skills. Design, modelling, rendering and postproduction are by me. Sketchup + indigo 3.8 + photoshop. Let's start with two first renders - enjoy!

Nice pics, especially the first one! The only thing that makes it look slightly CG is the low resolution road texture.

Oscar J wrote:The only thing that makes it look slightly CG is the low resolution road texture

Good point. Thanks to You I also noticed that there was to much of the ground and not enough of the sky. I can't change the texture on the fly, but composition question is easy to repair - see attachement.

Yes, that's better!

Nice, clean renders! Great work.

A few minor points if I may...

In the first render, the dark windows make the house look kinda gloomy. Maybe put some lights on inside? Also, the paint on the car looks a tiny bit like plastic. I think Oscar or Ono made a great metallic paint recently. Worth a shot.

The second render is looks good, but maybe too "clean" considering the surrounding? Some light weathering and dirt closer to the ground would add a lot of realism I think.

Again, great work. Always good to see another Sketchup user here - and with a great name to boot

Voytech wrote:A few minor points if I may...

That's why I posted this. To get some c&c and to get better.

Voytech wrote:Also, the paint on the car looks a tiny bit like plastic.

Yeah it's simple phong material. I didn't know it's noticeable since the car is rather small in the picture (no closeup)

Voytech wrote:Maybe put some lights on inside?

Good idea I'll try this.

Voytech wrote:Some light weathering and dirt closer to the ground would add a lot of realism I think.

Do you mean grass bending due to the wind? I'm not sure how to do this. I made my grass by randomly repeated circular patch (patch itself and repetition done with make fur plugin). With wind affection all grass should bending in one direction. I'll do some try and/ or research.

Thanks for all your comments.

Hi wojtek-w! I think you've made a really good start here! Well modeled, composed and lit. I think really you are at the stage where you need to look at a bit more post-production to raise the level of realism. In the first image I think (in my opinion) you have the following issues;
1. The sky is too dark for the lighting on the model... I think it looks added in photoshop...
2. As Voytech mentioned it's too clean... what he means here is actual dirt, cracks, staining etc... They are all things that will be in the real world, and so adding them subtly will make your image look more real.

I hope you don't mind but I took a (very) quick go in Photoshop to try and highlight how I might suggest to make the image look more realistic. Now I'm not saying this is what you have to do, I'm just highlighting the possiblities of Post-production! The way the final image looks is entirely up to the artist - you!

Really promising work so keep it up! And as Voytech said, always nice to see another SketchUp user around!

nice!

i would like to see the plants on the windowsill randomly rotated an different sizes

Thanks guys for your comments.

bubs wrote:The sky is too dark for the lighting on the model...

I totally agree. For me it's one of those things which are not obvious until someone point them.
About dirt, cracks, staining etc... It's real but on the other hand shouldn't we think about archviz little like about photos for magazine? They suppose to be attractive and not necessarily brutally real...

wojtek-w wrote:Thanks guys for your comments.

bubs wrote:The sky is too dark for the lighting on the model...

I totally agree. For me it's one of those things which are not obvious until someone point them.
About dirt, cracks, staining etc... It's real but on the other hand shouldn't we think about archviz little like about photos for magazine? They suppose to be attractive and not necessarily brutally real...

It's all about subtlety! Things almost always look better the more 'real' they look, but you shouldn't look at an image and 'see' the dirt / cracks, it should subconsciously fool your brain! I was probably a bit heavy handed on the above but I was just intending that as an example!

It's funny, isn't it. Photographers always reduce/remove dirt, cracks, weed, unwanted reflections, chromatic abberation, etc. - and end up with rather CG looking images, while CG artists seem to do exactly the same thing in reverse, trying to make their images look like photos.

Oscar J wrote:It's funny, isn't it. Photographers always reduce/remove dirt, cracks, weed, unwanted reflections, chromatic abberation, etc. - and end up with rather CG looking images, while CG artists seem to do exactly the same thing in reverse, trying to make their images look like photos.

This is the exact same sentence, only the commas were different that I said yesterday to my fiancee, when we were doing her landscaping project! I think we are the same, Oscar J... xD except, you know what you are doing with Indigo, I just kinda randomly click everywhere, lol! xD

On-topic: These renders look amazing to me, well done.