Jeffrey Carlos (Jeff)

[Jeff]

Thank you very much Alberto! I am using Sketchup and Indigo Renderer and for the trees and grasses on the scene, I am using component spray tool and dummy instancing. I imagine this would be the equivalent of VRay proxies. I would love to have more variety of vegetation on my scenes but my low end computer just cannot handle it.


During the weekend I left my computer to render segments of my exterior scene which I used for photo merging test. I let go of the evening scene. The lighting on each segment does not match the segment beside it. I just reverted to the day scene again. And this day scene is the one I am trying to avoid. Anyway the tests looked promising. (I guess)

[infograph3d]

hi, thanks for you reply, I have more clear. The vegetation could support a texture map?
green color that is is something off, looks better at night if.

grettings.

[Jeff]

Thanks Alberto. Yeah, the vegetation can support a texture map, but did not use it on my scenes as it may not be noticeable. You're right, the green is a bit off. The color was initially optimized for evening scenes and does not look right sometimes on daytime scenes. I was planning to change it but with the deadline fast approaching, I just decided to just keep it that way and try to fix it in post pro work.

I just finished rendering my exterior scene. It was made from 25 individual images. Each image rendered for more than 3hrs and total rendering time took more than 4 days. I was only able to render five images at the same time and have to load each batch before I go to work or go to bed.

Full res. version

[Jeff]

I encountered some problems when I started merging the first few images for my interior scene. The DOF on each image does not match the DOF on the other one beside it. At first, I was thinking that I'll just have to ignore it and try to fix it in post production. But the differences are too noticeable and to fix these in photoshop might take even longer. With this situation on hand, I decided to use VRay for my interior scene.

I downloaded the 30 day trial of VRay for Sketchup. Read the user guide and Googled for 'best interior settings Vray'. My workflow for now would be rendering two scenes, the interior and the view of the lake as seen from the dining area of the GH house. I am currently rendering the view outside using Indigo renderer. This would be much faster as I would only be showing the view seen beyond the windows. Rendering the interior would be done around Sunday when work on the outside view is done.

I did some tests renders. My interior scene at 1200x580 res. renders for 10 mins. I assume that the final image would be 25 times bigger, so I'm thinking it could be 250 minutes. I'm not sure if that's the case. Will find out on Sunday.

[Jeff]

Finished the work this morning and uploaded everything immediately. I updated my first page to show the final images.

Good luck to all!

[annkos]

Great renders Jeff!!! Beautiful colors!! I wish you good luck m8!!!

[StompinTom]

Hey man, the final images look great! I love what you did with the colors and toning! You can usually tell when something is made in SketchUp, not so for this one!

[Jeff]

Thanks a lots guys!

Annkos: since I was not able to put in quality materials for my scenes, I just made it up with colors.

Tom: playing around with the toning, colors and vignetting was the only way I can think of to somehow take out the uniformity of the forest. I think Indigo's support for instancing took away that SketchUp look and feel.

[Jeff]

Although the challenge is over, I kept on working on the GH house to solve some problems which I failed to address during the 3 month duration of the contest.

One item I was able to finally overcome was the lack of variety for the vegetation. After some research and experiments I was able to add not one but two more varieties of trees into the scene using the same computer without any hardware or software upgrades!

[Jeff]

I continued reading the Vray user guide and came across a topic on how to make an image to emit light. I went back to my scene in sketchup and made a billboard of the background image. Positioned the billboard in such a way that would show correctly the houses and trees in the distance and made it to emit light. I re-rendered the scene. Since I'm no longer in a rush, I used much higher settings. The render took more than 13 hrs. The higher settings also took away the artifacts on the walls which I had before. The reflections on the glass can now also be seen because the background image is already inside the scene. Before, it was just installed in PS. Had I known about this two weeks earlier, this could have well been my final image for the interior.

Full res. version

[isucur]

Nice realization with billboard Jeff, to bad you couldn't manage to fit this before. This new composition looks crisp, with some sweet details (although in my taste i would get this CA on smaller scale-especially on the chair).

I was wondering, when you compare calculation and rendering time with Indigo and Vray, how does your machine behave? Of course there should be a difference, but what do you say? Stability? Resource usage?

Thanks,
Nicely done

Cheers
Ivo

[Jeff]

Thanks a lot Ivo!

The CA was done excessively in the hope of blurring the low poly chair. But it looks like it did not work.

For me both rendering apps are great. Each one has its own strengths and weaknesses. I prefer Indigo for exteriors and Vray for interiors.

Right now I'm playing with post processing work. The last image I posted just looked so wrong.