The first of the CityLIFE Challenge making-of articles is here! Done by the Grand Prize Winner, Jean-Marc Emy will describe the process of creating his ‘Metabolic City’ scene which is rooted deeply within the concepts of the Japanese Metabolic architecture stream and relies heavily on 2d post production techniques. I hope you’ll enjoy this article, learn from it and share your thoughts by commenting at the bottom of this article’s page.

Introduction

I would like to share some insight about my illustration workflow for the CityLIFE challenge. As my work is more NPR oriented this presentation will focus on composition and post process.

Architectural inspiration

When the competition began I had just bought a book by Rem Koolhaas about an architectural movement which I’m fond of : the Japan Metabolism. From 50′s to the 70′s, with a great trust in technology, Metabolist architects developed innovative, prospective and utopian solutions for urban expansion and housing needs. One of their favorite was to develop systematic (mega) structures which can receive, for a temporary use, factory-made modular elements. A big part of their projects were not built but those which were built became symbolic pieces of architecture, with the Osaka World Expo 70 as a climax. So the idea was to use some pieces taken from those projects, built or inbuilt, in a collage-like composition, a tribute to the Metabolists works.

I have selected three projects :

Ekuan Kenji‘s Dwelling City

Kikutake Kiyonori‘s Submarine City

Kurokawa Kisho‘s Takara pavilion.

The reason why I have selected these projects are in relation to their shape (graphic and simple – cube, cylinder and tetrahedron), as well as their scalability from a single optimized capsule, to a huge and monumental dwelling building.

Graphical inspirations

My main influences and graphical inspirations came from comics. Even though it’s not directly linked to archviz, there is a strong culture of city representation in these kind of works. The same for Japanese anime perhaps as a legacy of 19th century Ukiyoe (see more on Wikipedia – Ukiyo-e). From Akira to Ghost in the shell or Tekkon Kinkurito, the city is both the subject and the environment. And of course those two urban imaginary’s are merged in Syd Mead’s designs for Blade Runner.

I’m also fascinated with work by concept artists. To use two French references, I would like to quote people like Sparth or Vyle (especially for his work on Tron Legacy) from Steamboat Studio. Beyond their excellent drawing skills, I think that their ability to captivate us and to bring us into their universe in a single image, is strongly related to their mastery talent in composition. Arguably all these influences portray a feeling of space dramatization.

For these reasons I’m more interested by NPR archviz works as those of Luxigon, D&W or even Dennis Allain, in a more traditional style.

The Sketch

I believe it’s important to begin with analyzing the composition. The first image is a standard of the city : heights and traffic (even if it is pedestrian one!). It is layout in a classical composition : a vertical format to put emphasis on this idea of height, built as a central perspective, organized into clearly definite foreground, middle ground and background.

These three plans coincide with the scales of the projects. The scale’s variation between the foreground capsule, human sized space and the background’s monumental shape, is quite specific to cityscape. Arguably, it’s both the purpose and the means of this particular image. To make the object’s scale easily readable and understandable does really impact on perspective’s dynamic.

There are several elements that allow the viewer to visually delve into the image, defining what can be called a visual path. Colors, lines, direction, all these elements are intertwined and are of significant importance. Because the initial view goes immediately to high contrast areas, it is necessary to think in term of the shapes and values. The way building’s profile is read against the sky, or the way light can dematerialize or cut a volume are good examples.

It assists greatly to express it in the first sketch and it will be refined later. It is a good idea to start with small thumbnail sketch made of shapes, afterwards come the values to add depth in complement to linear perspective. For more accurate reflection about composition I suggest you take a look at Fheng Zhu‘s works and tutorials.

To summarize this idea of a visual path for the first image, the foreground on both sides filled with dark values guide the eyes of the viewer through the vertical axis of the image. The pedestrian flow on the low platform level enlightened from underside, the rhythm of those “lighting information terminal” lead the eye towards the center of the image where people standing on the footbridge against the light draw the attention. Their glance subsequently lead us towards the Dwelling City building (the tetrahedron).

For the second view, the approach is different because the choice of the viewpoint is the result of the model exploration. And the model itself is the result of the first image composition. I decided to have a frontal viewpoint and not axial, to switch to a horizontal layout rather than vertical and having a viewpoint from the footbridge and not toward it… I believe it is an attractive link between the two images.

There wasn’t a strong depth as in the first view, neither a real point on which to focus. So I added a few towers to create a background and a foreground moving people to give more dynamic and produce a tension with the cylinder tower. Lighting, neon signs, and people are positioning in a way to create a kind of loop in order to keep the attention.

Here is the composition breakdown / highlights as I referred to them above…

People

As the title of the challenge was CityLIFE, I desired to put on city-dwellers. In archviz images, people are placed to figure the scale and their activities should fit to the purpose of the image, even if it is just walking, enjoying the place, or showing us where is accessible and where is out-of-bounds. And of course, the way they dress must be consistent with the mood of the scene.

It is necessary however, to take notice that they also work as a part of the composition…their gestures, dynamic or static, even the direction they look at, has to do with the main composition.

As an example in the first image it was important to have the mother and children standing on the footbridge, enjoying the sight, looking toward the same direction as the viewer.

And in the second view the wife is coming in our direction, as if you were crossing her, help to create a dynamic effect that allow the viewer to plunge into the image. At the moment of positioning people, I aim to avoid hiding strategic parts of the image or creating tangency and alignment effects that could consequently confuse the perspective.

Mood Lighting

At this stage I have line art and flat values and it is a question of finding a color scheme related to the moods I would like to explore. In these particular images I endeavored to render the atmosphere of Japanese cities, where floating light signs give to the air a kind of thickness, especially in summer when the sun sets early. Because there isn’t any vegetation in the image, the feeling of season had to be suggested by the sky and enhanced by the reflection on the buildings.

After experienced different moods for the sketches, I finally chose a summer evening at sunset with warm tones, orange and blue complementary colors for the first image, and for the second a rainy autumn day with cold tones, green and cyan low saturated.

Once you have chosen a color palette you can easily play with camaïeu or with complementary color to blend or to contrast elements. Furthermore, the colors contribute to the depth of the image: distant objects take atmospheric tones and create less contrasts. At the opposite the strongest values are found in the foreground. This connection between colors, lights and weather does really spark emotions. For this kind of exploration I think that MIR pieces are really impressive and Japanese anime are also extremely interesting for their unexpected use of color.

There are many ways to correct and control tones and colors using Photoshop. In order to achieved this, I use many gradient map adjustment layers, with different blending mode. I try to create gradients libraries from images or photos of which I like moods so I can quickly get nice color scheme applied before getting in more refined steps. Arguably one can deduce that the results depend on image contrast and of course on the gradient itself. To blend specific elements in the image by using color, I apply a simple color overlay on the layer. I pick the color corresponding to the depth and then play with opacity. It works very well on cut-out people or background elements.

Sketch files layer organization

The black and white art line is put on the stack in multiply blend mode, above the flat colors and values layers and below the colors and lights correction one, which can therefore affect the line.

The 3D Model

The model was built on a 320×320 cm grid structure, defined by the capsule and its framework‘s size. I started by creating two rows of chamfer box array so I could easily match the viewpoint of the sketch. Once this was completed, I proceeded to combine both sides of the street with the framework inspired from the Takara Pavilion.

As the result was rather heavy and repetitive, I’ve deleted some capsules to create holes in the pattern and to obtain a more interesting skyline. Basic capsules volumes were then randomly replaced by a more detailed and assorted set, thanks to the Object Replacer script by Neil Blevins.

The distribution of the screen-like panels, also helps to add some variations to this repetitive pattern.

For the footbridge I finally decided to use the same framework than for the capsule. The unfinished extrusion became lights or vertical neon supports. They are also used as a connection to the pedestrian platform.

I am also greatly inspired by Metabolist works to design the information terminal volumes of the low platform level and the streetlights of the highway.

Arguably it is evident that the Submarine City Tower and the Dwelling city should have been more detailed, especially the Dwelling building which looks like a rough draft.

Finally nothing particular for modification, all elements are quite simple volumes that belong to the same architectural vocabulary.

I don’t use plugin to position people in my scene, but rather cylinder of human size. I place them as soon as I’m looking for interesting viewpoint because as I explained previously, they work as a part of the entire composition.

Light Setup

I am used to rendering my scene with VRay. I usually start with a dome light using an HDRI (from Peter Guthrie of course!) and a VRaySun. However, for these almost dusky scenes I didn’t need sharp shadows but a soft key light as the stronger source of light has to come from neon and screen panels.

I therefore decided to maintain only the dome light. As I had the cylinder shape tower on the right, I positioned the light source in the top left hand corner in order to illuminate it. The first test renders are made with a unique light grey material, using the clayrender option of Solidrocks, and thereafter followed the screen like panels material to check light result.

Materials

For the screen panels there is a VRayLightMtl. I have created several maps for this, and have also used images from the Osaka Expo 70. Those maps are randomly assigned to the screen panel thanks to the MultiTextureMap.

I was seeking for a dark metal material for the capsules to produce subtle reflections while keeping the scene full of shadows. I placed a BerconGradientMap in the diffuse channel to create a slight color variation for each object.

The galvanized metal of the framework is made from a substance material. Only a few setting were made in the base material to generate diffuse and reflection maps.

Render Setup

Materials and camera excluded, render setup is done with SolidRocks from my friend Jérôme Prevost. Because I do a lot of post-process work that will clearly affect the image, I don’t use or work with a high quality setup.

Render Passes

I use V-Ray render elements in post production to enhance the image especially for reflections. I also add Ambient Occlusion as an VRayExtraTexMap to add an effect dirt or details. Depending on the object’s scale a few more AO pass can be used with different settings.

Due to the fact that I aim to use non-destructive method in Photoshop, I utilize many adjustment layers with clipping mask, that is selection. This explains why I manipulate VRay render elements to generate selection passes. VRayWireColor for quick selection, VRayMtlID for MultiSubMat, Refraction and Reflection Filter, VRayZDepth of course and sometimes Falloffs…

Objects selection passes are made with Rendermask.

Post process work

Render elements

I would like to begin with analyzing the layer organization: I have a group of VRay passes loaded in my files via “load files into stacks”. Sometime I place these elements as smart objects, it could be useful when updating the render but any change on the size and dimension of the image makes this option crippling. I try to keep as many elements separated out as possible to allow changes and updates, but I must admit that when there are too much layers it can become quite uncomfortable.

My classical workflow in Photoshop consist in the following group arrangement (first here is at the bottom of the stack) :

• Background
• Main render
• Enhance refraction
• Enhance reflection
• People
• Vegetation
• Foreground
• Lights and Colors adjustments
• Final effects

Depending on the project other specific groups could be added. In this particular case :

• lighting and rain effects.

Lighting effect

To add these effects I create what I call light layer, fill with black in color dodge blend mode. Commonly I have two layers : one for the flare, the brightest area, draw with a hard brush in cold and low saturated color and the second for the glow paint with a soft brush and a warm saturated color. Paint those effect on a black layer allow you to see exactly the shapes of light area.

It’s a nice and practical manner way to “switch on the light” of the image, just be careful not to use too much overlapping layers of this kind because this effect depend on what is below So any changes, especially regarding values, could affect the final result.

Rain effect

To create the rain I used three different elements…

The rain itself is made with a scattered brush, adding motion blur and distortion. Combining 3 sizes of brush in 3 layers with different opacity give some depth to the rain.

The rainy ground effect is a mix of photos blend with VRayReflection passes. I also added people and lights reflections with a certain distortion.

The rain drops and spatters are made with custom brushes. You can download tons of spatter-like brushes on the Internet but one can also create their own. In this case I found a photo of drop, clean the area I needed and created the brush. After using settings to add scatter and size variations I applied it both on floor, glass and in small touches on some striking elements in the image, especially in foreground.

Lights and colors adjustment

Most of those corrections which affect color grading and contrast settings are made via adjustment layers. The first thing is to modify contrast via black and white or exposure adjustment layer in this case combined with Z depth passes as a clipping mask.

Once you have a good balance of lights and values it’s easier to work on color variation and saturation. As I stated previously, in order to do this I use a lot gradient maps, but also photo filter, selective color, curve. At this stage the image is a material to experiment with and sometimes it can lead you into an unexpected direction.

However, it is important to keep in mind that most of these adjustments are made in respect to the first sketch intention, especially for the depth and lighting whereby both create contrasted areas.

Final effects

As a final refining step, I have a bunch of filters which combine together to give stylish results. The main purpose here, is to give the image a kind of graphic unity, to enhance smooth integration of all elements and a more personal finish. All those effects are applied after a copy merge layer, the pasted result can eventually be turn into smart layer (then filters applied became smart filters which are easily manipulated at any time).

I am used to adding some comics-like ink effect. There are several ways to proceed here. In 3dsmax with VRayToon, or in Photoshop with filters as trace contours, grain, poster edges, photocopy etc…

Each one give slightly different results that depends of the contrast and smoothness / sharpness of the image they are applied on. More often than not, the image must be tweaked before obtaining positive results.

I also use gloomy or pump light effects with huge Gaussian blur applied on whether colorized version of the image in hard light blend mode or de-saturated version in linear dodge blend mode.

For night time illustration with a lot of flares and reflections, chromatic aberration effect can give interesting results. This is produced via lens correction filter or moving by a few pixel one of the RGB channel.

Once I’m satisfied with a set of adjustment or mixed effects I aim to store them in actions, which is an interesting way to optimize workflow. Third-party filters as Red Giant Photo looks could give nice results and allow to create customized libraries effects.

Summary

I hope this presentation will have enlightened the way I made these illustrations. I also hope it could help you in your job, in one way or another. If you have any questions I’ll be happy to answer… simply comment below.

Links, references and inspiration.

Books :

• Project Japan. Metabolism Talks… Rem Koolhaas & Hans Ulrich Obrist, Taschen, 2011, ISBN 978-3-8365-2508-4

Movies :

• Tekkon Kinkreet, dir. Michel Arias, 2006
• Akira, dir. Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988
• Ghost in the shell, dir.Mamoru Oshii inspired from Masamune Shirô, 1995
• Blade Runner, dir.Ridley Scott, inspired from Philip K. Dick, 1982

Concept artist :

• http://vyle-art.blogspot.com/
• http://sparthconstruct.blogspot.com/
• http://www.steambotstudios.com/
• http://sydmead.com
• http://www.fengzhudesign.com/

Archviz Artists :

• http://www.dennisallain.com/
• http://www.luxigon.com/
• http://www.dougandwolf.com/
• http://mir.no/

Making of CityLIFE’s ‘Metabolic City’ by Jean-Marc Emy is a post from Ronen Bekerman's 3D Architectural Visualization Blog

Ramon Zancanaro is sharing 3 models he made with you all! The great looking glass blobs pendant lamps from his “Quarto” scene, Pink glass candle holders form a scene he is working on and and old table that has been put into good use again… Enjoy it!

Visit the Ramon’s Facebook Fan Page for more updates as he makes them.

3 Free Models by Ramon Zancanaro is a post from Ronen Bekerman's 3D Architectural Visualization Blog

Long time blog & challenges sponsor, iToo Software, created a very nice RailClone generated glass buildings 3d urban landscape scene that showcases how you can create full parametric buildings form a set of basic elements. You can download now the RailClone “Glass Buildings” scene, ready to render on 3DS Max 2010 or higher, starting with Forest Pack Lite 3.6, RailClone Lite 1.3 and either VRay or Mental Ray.

Make sure you check the readme file that comes with this scene for the terms of use.

And also their previous free scenes on offer :

• Free Lake with Pier Scene
• Free Autumn Park Scene

Free “Glass Buildings” RailClone Scene is a post from Ronen Bekerman's 3D Architectural Visualization Blog

James Shaw published a making-of the Istanbul Seaport project by Squint Opera on his blog back in January, and it was a great read… especially with the breakdown videos attached to it. I rarely dealt with such scale and never in motion, so I was fascinated by the result and intrigued about the process behind the scenes that took place to get this done. How does one (a team actually) get started with this… manage it… and so on. I asked James Shaw & Nicholas Taylor about it, and they kindly offered their valuable insight.

About Squint Opera and the Film

Squint/Opera offers full design and digital production services across moving and still image, interactive design and editorial content for all marketing collateral. They have built their reputation on their ability to communicate complex and compelling narratives and construct believable spaces, with a strong sense of atmosphere and occasion. Squint Opera have studios in London, Istanbul, Melbourne, Abu Dhabi and Sao Paulo.

The Istanbul Seaport film was Directed by Nick Taylor of Squint Opera and shows a local fisherman encountering an ocean liner en route to the new seaport development which grows out of the water before his eyes, before he samples what this new island has to offer.

The team at Squint Opera include

• Lead 3D: James Shaw
• 3D Team: Steven Fayers, Dan Fells, Bruce Garnham, Nic Hamilton, Jack Hunter
• Lead Compositing & Grading: Rory Lowe
• Motion Graphics: Jack Hunter, James Merry

Behind the scenes…

Before you dive in, do read the blog post that started it all on James’s blog. This article / interview is more of a follow-up on the things you will read there…

Istanbul Seaport – The Making Of / James Shaw – Blog

Now that you are up to speed…

Go ahead!

Ronen : The first thing I would be interesting to know about is how do you even get started on a project like the Istanbul Seaport?

James : In the initial contact with the client we discuss what they want out of the project and possible ideas and information they want to see. From this we start to draft up a storyboard, trying to encompass their ideas and come up with a storyline that might complement those ideas. These idea sessions often take place downstairs in the Doodle bar over several cups of coffee, and are usually quite a fun way of collaboratively coming up with storylines.

Storylines within our animations are an important part of Squint Opera’s work and give an all important character and flow within the films. It’s also a good time to set pace, look at timings overall, lighting, graphic element integration, whether it all fits within budget, and generally plan the thing out. It is this stage that sets up the rest of the film process. This static storyboard is then taken to the clients and discussed to see whether everything fits well and that they are happy with it.

At this stage this is only really sketching and after this point we start to think about possible locations for these shots to be taken. In the case of Seaport we wanted to shoot in location to get a real, local feel. Nick talked with the client about possible locations and a number were set.

Often things like Google street view or Google Earth can be used to get a rough idea of what these places might look like and offer for a shoot. Because we were on a limited budget we decided to do the shoot over some places in Istanbul within a 30 hour period, so it was a high stress, exhausting time for all. It always helps to have different people concentrate on different aspects during these times, so Director to concentrate on the story overall, Director of Photography (DOP) to get the lighting and technicalities of the filming correct, and VFX supervisor to take measurements of everything to translate into the CG environments and HDR images to light them.

Nick : A film is always a collaboration between us and the client. They are paying money with a certain end in mind and we want to make good movies and have fun doing them. With some clients the two are mutually exclusive but others are more up for it.

In the initial pitch for the film I presented a montage of a cruise ship flying over the main shopping street in Istanbul. This went down well which set a good precedent for the rest of the film. The clients needs in such a project are about showcasing the things on offer to potential investors and partners, namely floor space for hotels, malls and offices, apartments, etc. Generally quite boring and standard fodder but has to be well represented and there was literally a list of spaces that needed to be shown.

The nicer thing was that it had to be clearly set in Istanbul, which is a very beautiful and lively place. We got around the problem of having a central character walking around the essentially mundane place in a state of awe by having the place come out of the sea in front of his eyes so that to him it is incredible and he is not sure that it is real, and at this point he just goes on a fantasy shopping spree ticking off the clients check list of spaces. Once we had all the shots more ore less agreed it was about hunting for ways to do them and locations to do them in.

We decided early on that our film was to be a series of locked shots (no camera movement) to make the thing easier/cheaper, no cranes or dolly tracks and much easier in post. The flying ship shots were easier to plan and didn’t change much from the earliest storyboards. The growing scenes were predominantly all 3D. There was the shopping trip for which we did most of it entirely in camera but the tricky shots were the ones where we had to get the character and his boat into shots that were clearly located in their development. We tried to cut the number of these shots as much as possible but these are the shots that the clients really wanted

Here the initial storyboard we made…

Ronen : How do you plan and setup for a real location to take footage in for later CG comp like the Boulevard Tram? what are the key points to consider before you choose and go on location?

James : With shots like the boulevard shot it does take a stretch of the imagination to compose what the shot might become. We usually discuss it out beforehand with director, lead 3D and lead compositor to see if there might be any problems. We plan with sketches and might block out the scene in 3D to experiment with lenses and composition. We also research into a number of precedent images to give visual clues as to the direction of the shot and to convey it to the team. At this point we will have a good idea of what to film and what will be present in the background. For example in the shot with the ocean liner approaching the boat, we framed the shot to allow plenty of room at the top of the frame to fit in the CG ocean liner later on.

Although we have a rough idea of what will be real and what will be CG, often the split lines between them are left till we get it all into NukeX. After CG cameras are matched to the real footage using either tracking in NukeX, or the VFX supervisor’s detailed notes on lenses and site measurements, we will begin blocking in the CG of the shot. This is roughly modelled at first, rendered and composited into the footage within NukeX.

At this stage we begin to discuss where the best place is to blend CG and real elements, and it is unique for each shot. There are always issues that arise regardless of how well you plan the shot as well. For instance the boulevard shot just didn’t show enough of the development in the way it was framed. So to fix this we had to keep the camera the same height and direction, but extended the frame to the left to allow us more room to introduce more CG elements.

Nick : We did all kinds of planning for the shots as James mentions above. I had been on two previous trips to Istanbul to hunt for possible locations. Many of them were dictated by access and permissions for which the client was responsible for all but the public spaces. For those we got a government permit.

All the planning went to pot when the clients failed to come up with the goods. On the day before we were scheduled to start shooting, with the crew all in hotels and on day rates, we didn’t have a hotel to shoot in and we didn’t have a marina or any certainty about what boats we were to get. In fact, we didn’t even know whether we were supposed to get on a plane and fly all the way down to Oludeniz in the south that very evening to do the filming there instead. We had to arrange potential boats and actors in both places for either eventuality. In the end we ended up staying in Istanbul and organizing the shoot late on the evening before filming.

We started with the hotel early in the morning. The really nice one that we had story boarded for, and done all the 3D tests for, was cancelled and we ended up in this really naff post modern place without having had a chance to scout it. So it was: get there, look for spaces, try and rope the various staff in the place into helping out and trying to get the shots done before a national football team turned up and we had to be out.

You’ll notice that the lobby shot is all but the desk of the original place and everything else is quite tight except for the room which we couldn’t get around. (you can check out the location here) Not exactly the modern designer place that they were initially calling “the worlds first 8 star hotel”.

Because we had a good idea about what we needed for the shots we were able to improvise it. That was a 14 hour day. In bed by 12. The following morning we were up at 3am to meet the boats for the Bosphorus shoot, which went on till sunrise then the shots from the castle wall. followed by 3 hours rest and then to a private apartment where we shot some scenes we ended up cutting followed by shooting the night shots around Istanbul till sunrise for the mosque sunrise shot.

All in all, a total of 48 hours of filming with a 3 hour rest. We then had a normal sleep and then off again for the marina shoot which was again a case of getting there and working out how we were going to work it with 3D and post while we were there.

We had a number of shots to do and had scheduled to start at around 10am but the clients didn’t manage to get clearance with the Marina owners as they had said they would!!! So we just had to sit there watching the sun arc over until about 3pm and we just decided to start filming regardless. Luckily no one stopped us and we got the last shot with the guy leaving the marina in the setting sun with just minutes to go.

The last day was in the shopping street where we did the tram shot and the balcony scenes. Even though this was one of the locations we had found before it was still chaotic but mainly because it was a public boulevard and we were blocking it with a big green screen and it was windy. All we really needed was nice paving and this was the only place we could find. We couldn’t get permission around any malls and most of the city is quite messy or old and wobbly. This was a high end shopping street with patches of nice paving. We got hassled by the police a fair bit and had to move along a couple of times.

I would like to say it was all smooth planning and not a total chaos in execution as we somehow managed to nail it. Mainly down to having gone through everything a lot in advance, knowing what we were looking for and Murat, our amazing production manager. Who with two phones to his ears at all times somehow managed to pull things together at the last moment with no sleep. Getting the boats to arrive, equipment, actors and extras, dealing with shop owners, etc.

incredible!

You can see how we hoped it would be before we left England in the pre shot plan PDF below…

Ronen : What were you using for the architecture buildup animation (broken apart to ordering)? How do you key frame this? and make sure it looks ok in render? I loved the lobby light drop down very much!

James : A lot of the animations were done manually. We have tried a number of particle and physics systems, which are fine up to a point, but become progressively harder to customize or move in specific directions.

We have some free scripts that move, rotate and scale geometry numerically in whatever direction you give coordinates for that we used, and key transfer tools that allow you to get one fragment perfect and copy that motion offset for the others. If you set keys at the end as a fully constructed form, then go to the beginning of the time slider and key the random positions in space then adjust the curves you can get this result.

The lobby light animation was all done manually with various dummies and controllers to get the timing exact for the shot.

All these where rendered out as viewport animation previews so we could quickly critique the animation before rendering with VRay. Using the shutter speed on a VRay camera at 1/50 second with motion blur enabled gave us all the motion blur in 3D as we found NukeX’s post motion blur gets confused with this much movement.

We usually render out animated objects as a completely different single frame render pass and composite this on top of a baked GI render of all the static objects in the scene. This saves us a huge amount of render time.

We have developed scripts that do this automatically to save us time in sending renders.

How do you tackle 3d people in this work?

For foreground characters we always prefer to use real people, as CG characters are just not believable. Mid and background characters we use a collection of various 3D people meshes with mocap data loaded onto them.

We have developed an automated process for loading mocap data onto a biped character and outputting this to a point cached mesh so we can drag and drop people into scenes easily.

Cheers,

James & Nick.

Istanbul Seaport by Squint Opera is a post from Ronen Bekerman's 3D Architectural Visualization Blog

Matheus Passos created the Loft scene as a personal project inspired by the works of MIMO Studio and Insomia Architects from Poland in tandem with the 2011 Forum Summary – as an entry for it. He did a great job on this one, managing to achieve high levels of realism… especially in the detail shot you see up above. Read on as Matheus shares more information about his workflow in the creation of this scene.

Introduction

The work on the “Loft” scene was carried out in tandem with Ronen’s 2011 Summary on the forums, and inspired by the work of Insomnia Architects & MIMO Studio from Poland. I loved the Loft project very much and decided to give it go myself… modeling and rendering it.

Units

Working with good reference plans is very important, and keeping within real world units (no matter what you use… mm, cm, M) and have all elements scaled and proportionate to the scene. Here is my units setup.

Linear Workflow

I usually use LWF in my work, although it seems many have their own take on what LWF (Linear Work Flow). There are several tutorials on the internet where you can read about it – one of the best was posted on this blog at Linear Workflow Made Simple by Matt Gorner.

Modeling

Before I begin the 3d modeling, I prepare a 2d blueprint lines model serving as a base. I then use extrudes to push this base into 3d form and further detail the structure adding bevels and chamfers were needed to enhance the look.

To create the wall openings I use a method that some of you might consider odd – I use Pro Booleans for this… For me it’s the easiest way.

Here you can see how a small chamfer is used to soften the edges of the wall that aren’t perfectly sharp in real life.

The floor was modeled using the great Floor Generator plugin. It has been featured on this blog so many times, and for good reason! Check out Bertrand’s write-up about it at Using Floor Generator Script. It would be nice to see this work on vertical surfaces (or any other type of surface) too.

Lighting

The main lighting source for this scene is a VRay Sun that work in tandem with a VRay Dome light loaded with an HDRI map.

I also added VRay Lights as Skylight Portals to the wall openings, to help with the faster calculation and light spread in the interior.

You can see my lighting setup below…

Viewpoints / Cameras

Picking good viewpoint… good compositions is super important , and so I setting up the cameras. I use the VRay Physical Camera due to the correlation with real-life camera settings.

Notice the color balance tweaks I made due to the warm nature of the scene having lots of wood… I use WB to counter balance that for the end result.

I great advantage we as CG artist have vs. real world photographers is seeing behind walls! Like Superman!!!

You can only push the wide angle so far before it looks way too odd and you still did not capture enough of a given room. Here’s where the camera clipping plane feature comes to your rescue.

I place the camera outside the room behind the wall and the clipping plane was pushed forward just so I pass that wall slightly and so uncover the room interior for the camera.

Furniture 3D Models

Many people asked me about the furniture I used in this scene. Did I model them myself, or purchased ready made models?

Well… there’s nothing wrong with buying ready made models (as long as you do keep trying modeling some yourself, perfecting your skills… you can learn a lot form the works of other this way).

I did some shopping prior to my work on the “Loft” scene, and tested the models in it. Some of the 3d furniture models were made by Bertrand Benoit (BBB3viz). He is a great inspiration to me and his work is of the highest quality in our industry.

I also used 3d furniture models by designconnected which I like to highlight here. Using them for the first time I was very glad to find they were well modeled and have great realistic quality… in textures too (even though I tweaked those for my own purpose and taste). They are also very affordable, which is super important for me and anyone else I assume. The balance between modeling it yourself vs. buying them depends on that greatly, so this helps.

In this experiment I found it very important to use professional models, which made ​​my work faster. I used 5 DC models : Cityloft Sofa, Lanshire Clock Works Dancer, Ligne Roset Africa, BD Barcelona Flamingo and an N/A Pendant Lamp.

Materials

Sofa Fabric

The material node view…

One bump on the top right and variations of the diffuse color.

Wood

The material node view…

Wood Floor

The material node view…

I used the MultiTexture plugin for creating the variation in the floor wood planks.

Rendering

Here’s the viewport camera view selected just before I went to rendering the final image…

You may find that the irradiance map method quality is low, but it can be easily solved if you increase the number of the global subdivision multiplier…

In the original rendering I used the value 3. But I re-rendered with the value of 8 which gave me a result of walls without spots…

I might have started to low, but this is none important… what you need to know is that you can and should play with the settings to learn what they do and thus better optimize your rendering process (or get a monster computer and just use brute force… even then you will quickly demand more of your workstation, since we always want more – so learn to optimize).

Here is the new render with the global subdivs multiplier at 8…

Post Production

I did very little post production in this project and aimed for getting it all done in pure render as much as I could. I do output some passes just in case I need them, but mostly do a few color corrections and that is it!

This is how it came out the renderer.

And this is the result of post-production. To simulate the light from the lamp I used Magic Bullet for Photoshop.

I hope this article helped you in some way. I enjoyed writing it and please feel free to ask anything you want in the comments section below.

Thank you very much,

Matheus.

Making of Loft is a post from Ronen Bekerman's 3D Architectural Visualization Blog

What a remarkable house in a remarkable location! The River Bank House, designed by Balance Associates Architects, sits along Gallatin River, just outside Big Sky, Montana. I probably had to many (render) buckets than it is good for anyone… since looking at these photos I see a wonderful forest pro location under a gorgeous 2003 Dusk Blue Peter sky. Who’s not inspired to try and give it a go? especially that cloud between the peaks in the daylight photo! Steve did a great job capturing this house with his camera lens.

Photography by Steve Keating

original post River Bank House / Balance Associates Architects at archdaily

River Bank House / Balance Associates Architects is a post from Ronen Bekerman's 3D Architectural Visualization Blog

Here’s something you don’t see too often anymore, even though many of us still sketch by hand here and there. I used to do that a lot but I’m guilty of slowly neglecting that part of my art ever since I picked up my first Wacom tablet. Being good at architectural visualization is all about observing the real world around you… learn from it and carry it out in your work. Stumbling upon these sketches by MATERICA D_SIGN today reminded me how valuable it is to actually sketch what you see and take the time to study it. Sketching Ginger and Fred, or even more so – that elaborate brick work facade will go a long way when it is time go all 3d about it in a later project.

It would be very interesting to see sketches like these made by you, so if you are in the habit of drawing like this and willing to share it – send it over my way and I’ll post collections from time to time on the blog.

original posts Freehand Renders!, Sketches madness pt. 02 & Sketches madness pt. 03 at MATERICA D_SIGN

Hand Made by MATERICA D_SIGN is a post from Ronen Bekerman's 3D Architectural Visualization Blog

I never heard of Peter and Alison Smithson and their Upper Lawn Pavilion that they designed for themselves as a weekend house. Loving brutalist architecture, I have to thank Lasse Rode form studio xoio for doing such a remarkable 3d recreation of this house. This set shows the house in the way it probably looked early on in its life. Brutalist creations have a tendency not to age so well if not kept in check… especially in landscaped, humid areas. However, I kind of like that derelict, rustic look.

Visit Lasse’s original forum thread at – Peter + Alison Smithson – Upper Lawn Pavillion // Lasse Rode, xoio

You can find more information about this house following the links below…

• Alison & Peter Smithson’s Upper Lawn Pavilion
• Upper Lawn Pavillion

(A negative viewpoint about it)

Peter + Alison Smithson / Upper Lawn Pavilion 3D Recreation by Lasse Rode is a post from Ronen Bekerman's 3D Architectural Visualization Blog

Guillaume Favre takes us into the process of making his January 28 Best of Week forum entry – The Narrabeen House 3d recreation, originally designed and realized by Choi Ropiha Fighera architecture studio. Located in Sydney, Australia, I fell in love with this work for the same reasons Guillaume picked it as his personal project subject… great contemporary design with generous use of wood. I love the wood treatment in the 3d version and the end result as a whole, which has a stylistic feel to it vs. the real project photos.

Introduction

It all started when I first discovered the Narrabeen House, designed by the architectural studio Choi Ropiha Fighera. A superb contemporary villa built in the area of Sydney, Australia. with Large volumes, a remarkable swimming pool and massive use of wood both in and out. Also contrasting the warm wood with cold concrete and plaster interior. All this compelled me to want to make some visuals of this house as seen in the reference photos below!

I had to elaborate on the plans and elevations I had to work with, since they weren’t too detailed. The reference photos played a big part in the modeling stage, helping me get the model a near as possible to the real thing.

Modeling

I used very simple and basic poly edit method for creating the house model, while the walls were initially derived from splines. You can see how the basic model looked below…

On top of that base, I added all other details.

The Floor Generator script by CG-Source was used for all the siding and flooring with settings as follows…

After the general modeling of the house was done, it added furniture. I drew on my previous personal models (the Tolix or Eames for example). For important parts missing, I used 3d models from DesignConnected and model+model.

Here are some worked on areas…

The next step was the placement of vegetation. This was done in 4 steps:

1. Vegetation “target” is the placement of some readable elements, giving specificity to the whloe. Here I speak about large and small palms, bamboo and trees in foreground in general.
2. Then I just put many generic trees in the bachground. For little scenes I used “Object Paint” Max tool.
3. Next, the grass. Very simple. Two modeled tuft of grass, converted in vrayProxy, distributed with multiScatter. Simple, fast and efficient.
4. Finally, depending on the camera, I just clone trees to generate shadows cast in the image.

Lighting & Camera

The setup works on a basis of a VRayDomeLight + HDRI linked with a vraySun. Here I used Peter Guthrie’s hdri-1614-sun-clouds.

And this is how the exterior view looked prior to the texturing work done on it…

Next, I work on interior lights. Depending on the situation:

• VRayLight plane for root spot.
• VRayIES for classic spot.
• VRayLight sphere for bulb.

I added a standard omni light in the large suspended light above the diner table for better shadows projection control, given the fact the light had to pass the light fixture holes and cast all over that area walls, floor and ceiling.

Here’s also the top layout and light list so you have better understanding of how much lights I added in.

This is how I setup my VRay Camera for this scene…

I always turn vignetting off since I do it in composting. If some settings are animated in my screen-shots its due to me working on one animated camera for all shots. Not necessarily the best way… not very flexible.

For the camera placement, I adjust it throughout the process. Drafts are placed at the early stage and adjusted all along the construction.

Here is a quick animation, made with Nitro. To get a better overview of the entire modeling + basic lighting. Not very qualitative, but it allows a clear view of all things…

Textures & Materials

For me, the work on the materials is one of the most interesting parts of the work. At first, I search for texture… Mainly on CG Textures.

Here are the most important material details…

Brown wood siding. Based on a set of MultiTexture by CG-Source.

Black wood siding. Based on a set of MultiTexture by CG-Source.

Polished Concrete. Based on CG Textures image.

Wood Veneer (Kitchen, furniture, …). Based on CG Textures image.

Rendering

I used the classic Irradience map + light cache, and a hybrid gamma 2.2 method similar to the one Peter Guthrie uses. I do not change the main gamma setting of 3dsmax, just work on the VRay Color Mapping setting.

Here are the settings detail…

To be able to work comfortably in compositing, I took out a series of render elements. The dirt pass is pulled with a VRayExtraTex + VRayDirtMap.

Finally, also in anticipation of compositing, I draw a series of alpha passes. I used the “QuickPass” script for that.

Launch rendering with backburner in 4K, on 3 station, in TIFF 16bits.
A good night’s sleep later, all render are done.

Compositing

I’ll showcase the post production process on the backyard exterior image. This is the raw render straight out of the oven…

And now the passes being layered out on top of each other with more post operations.

Fire up Photoshop, and let’s go…

I always start by stacking all may render elements in one layer folder which is then masked with the general alpha.

After turning on all 3d elements, this is what it looks like.

I then added the sky with some contrast and color correction.

Adding 2D trees in the background, adjusting their color too.

Adding a series of global or selective correction on top of it all.

I then worked the general details. I paint shadows to force some contrasts. Add clouds and palms reflection on windows upstairs. I start the shades of blue / red tint. I used a ZDepth pass in negative to simulate depth fog.

The Lens Effect! a delicate subject. In these images I wanted to work atmosphere more than photo-realistic rendering. So I forcing the line through the lens. While waiting the budget to pick me up a dedicated plug-in, here is some free-hand work. Thanks to Google images.

Another step of effect and correction. Contrast, lead to dark areas, overall coloring with curve tool.

For the vignetting, I duplicate the entire composition and collapse it. Darkened with curve tool and paint a simple mask.

Finally, I collapse all the composition and apply the “Lens Correction” filter to add focal blur, with help of ZDepth pass.

A final stamp tool for small details, and voila!

For making selections easy during the composting process, I used VRayWireColors pass and some masks.

That’s what it look like…

And this is the final result for this camera…

Exactly the same method was applied to all seven other cameras.

Conclusion

I wish to thank Ronen for his invitation and the wealth of information that constitutes this great website, and also thank all whom I learn from more and more every day.

Special thanks to Choi Ropiha Figher agency.

All the best,

Guillaume.

Making of Narrabeen House is a post from Ronen Bekerman's 3D Architectural Visualization Blog

Dimitris Batis shares valuable insight about creating a Mediterranean Style scene based on his Paros Homes project. In this short article he will focus on the walls modeling and material, rocks and general lighting creation.

I found these Paros images so captivating and capturing the Greek island feel so well, I asked Dimitris to share a few quick and focused tips about these scene. It is not the usual in-depth making of article, but good grounds for starting a discussion about it and giving you the chance to ask more about the work that was done here so well.

Enjoy!

We were commissioned by “Paros Home Constructions”, a construction company in Greece, to make 3d photorealistic presentation of a traditional residence, in the beautiful island of Paros, in Cyclades, Greece.

This particular project was a bit odd in that the plot of the residence was located far away from the sea. For this reason, we decided for the 3d images to focus more on the building than the views from the building on its surroundings. A view that every house – in an island – could have had.

The project was also challenging from two other points of view. The first is that the photorealistic presentation had to be extremely realistic in order to match the commercial needs of the project.

The second challenge for us was to achieve depicting the feel of a traditional Cycladic house, without having an idyllic horizon and a spectacular view of the Aegean sea. You can see some of the look and feel of the place in the mood board up above.

Generally speaking, I think that we managed to deal with these difficulties successfully. The 3d application gave us the ability to achieve the environmental planting of the building plot as well as the building technique method of construction which was one of the most difficult parts of the project.

Last but not least, an equally important aspect of the project for me was the lighting. The images had to be realistic enough to capture the feeling of a traditional Cycladic house in the heat of a summer’s day, under the beautiful blue sky at noon. I believe that the final result shaped this familiar image to all of us, the Greek people.

Modeling

1. Creation of Traditional Realistic Masonry

An important part of the modeling was to realistically present the masonry of the project. This must not have sharp corners but quite smooth ones with embossed surfaces.

I started with a very simple box model of the shell walls, with properly positioned basic edge loops… derived from all the corners and holes intersections.

More edge loop were introduced into the model to allow for a proper smoothing process of the mesh.

The Turbo Smooth Modifier made it easy for us to handle the geometry bringing it exactly where we wanted. A disadvantage was that a lot of polygons were produced but we got over this with the iso-line display.

Finally, we used a noise modifier to create uneven shapes on the masonry.

2. The Fence of the Compound

In the same way, we dealt with the fences on the project’s perimeter. The bottom of the fence is simple geometry with a subdivide and a VRayDisplacement modifier to adjust the stone’s texture while the upper part, the top of the fence, had to look more molten and embossed and embrace the fence.

Environment

1. Rocks

I used the Rock Generator Script by Alessandro Ardolino to make the rocks in my scene.

Alessandro created this great script being inspired by a great tutorial by Sasha Henrichs published on Autodesk AREA and embedded here too.

You can also learn more about rock creation by following Daniel Hatton’s Realistic Rock Creation Tutorial Part 1

And Realistic Rock Creation Part 2

2. Scatter

To produce my grass I used the MultiScatter plugin which facilitated its management…creating a variety of grass with both dry and green kinds, various bushes and short trees resembling the ones that are in the project’s area but also for the depiction of summer in Greece.

Textures

1. Walls

The most difficult material to depict was that of the wall. We had to create a clean white color that suits the style of the region, but one that will not “washout” and have the little imperfections such wall surfaces have.

You can se the diffuse and the map we used for both bump and reflections below… as well as the general material settings.

2. Stones

We had to stress the joints of the stone which constitute the fence and we achieved that by using the displace maps in Photoshop.

Another approach to this would be to use the Stone Placement Tool Script by Alessandro Ardolino to build such a stone wall from actual geometry. I didn’t have these walls near camera too much, so the texturing solution worked pretty well.

Lighting

To depict the lighting we used an EXR file made by Peter Guthrie (EXR 1224).

By combining a VRaySun and VRay Dome Light we were able to show the summer’s midday sun in Greece.

Render

The final renders were meant to be in a commercial handout thus the resolution had to be high in 3508 x 2480 pixels. Being pressured by time, the render resolution had to be done quickly without too much impact on the quality of the images.

That’s it!

I hope this short article offered you some insight into my work and that it will help you, even if little, in your own work.

Cheers,

Batis.

Making of House at Paros is a post from Ronen Bekerman's 3D Architectural Visualization Blog