Courtyard with Pool

jcdb · 27 Feb 2009, 00:57

View Towards Outdoor Living

xrok1 · 27 Feb 2009, 01:06

wow, i love the tones. very earthy. any chance you'll share that amazing stone floor texture?

rcossoli · 27 Feb 2009, 02:00

hi
I was looking at your images.
the lighting seems good, and would help you any more heaven and heaven is not only physical rendering engine.
maybe the shadows if you change the diameter of heaven (or not do as podium) and would help out a lot more faded andalusia realism, but also add a real material to water.
Then edit the textures more like those of leaves, tree bark, the floor and it is starting to go but I think we are fine, continued to show your work.

xrok1 · 27 Feb 2009, 02:26

its the style, i like it very unique. i wouldn't change a thing.

rcossoli · 27 Feb 2009, 02:49

Well, if the style is the style, did not know.
just think in my view has a number of details to improve

jcdb · 27 Feb 2009, 03:26

Thanks xrok1, I'll post that texture tomorrow (I have at the office)
rcossoli, I know what you mean, there is room for impovement in some of the textures. My main focus is not the rendering, I spend most of my time designing and building houses. But I like posting my rendering 'cause I get good feedback from people like you. Thanks for your comments, I was having problems with the lights 'cause there is a lot of shadows from the trees and the covered terraces and is hard to combine two spaces one in shade and another one in full sun. Is either to dark or too light, I had to fix the lights with photoshop.

xrok1 · 27 Feb 2009, 03:42

did you check use sun for shading in the shadow settings? you'll get some cool soft shadows. i know its tough to get the lighting you want in podium, if you play with the background color in your style you can affect the lighting quite a bit... forgive me if you know this already.

jcdb · 27 Feb 2009, 03:53

No I didn't know that, but I'll try it. Thanks

marked001 · 27 Feb 2009, 04:03

definitely a good start.. i think the textures are what its letting them down.. first thing that pops out are those leaves... as well as the bark, some of the smaller plants, and the grass..

that stone wall and water would look awesome with a little bump added to it.. i'd lose the chick too, she's definitely not helping...

could def be a cool scene with a little more texture work

xrok1 · 27 Feb 2009, 04:04

OK one more important thing you should know then, only the dark slider control the brightness, not the light slider . i was amazed when i found this out because i was tweaking both thinking it was some kind of ratio or something??

PS i'd love to see your results with use sun for shading option.

xrok1 · 27 Feb 2009, 04:18

look at this, you can even make a night render if you use the proper background color.

jcdb · 27 Feb 2009, 05:13

Yea I think a night shot would be cool. I already have the light fixtures for a night scene.

Alan Fraser · 27 Feb 2009, 08:30

Very nice renders. I'd agree about the tree and figures though. Those people were never created with the intent of being used anything like that close up in a photoreal render; although they work OK as straight SU output. This is about as close as you can get and still have them look reasonably convincing in a photo render. I doubt if even photomapped 3D figures would be entirely convincing at that close a range (they tend to look a little 'melted' when you get too close)...probably better to use 2D photo billboards, if not 'ghosted' silhouettes.

Regarding the stone floor texture...sorry to say it, but that's a commercial FF texture that took me quite some time to get seamless, so I wouldn't be too happy about it just being given away. I appreciate that it's sometimes difficult to remember where you got stuff from.

DzineTech · 27 Feb 2009, 09:19

Without knowing what style you are trying to achieve in these images I could be easily too critical. If its photo-realism then you have a long way to go. As many others have said the textures need a LOT work as does the UVW (texture alignment) mapping of your textures. One aspect that I see in these images (and also in many others in this gallery) are flat surfaces with a texture applied and the user expects the texture to make the scene look realistic. This simply doesn't cut it and there's no replacement for additional geometrical detail to make the scene more believable.

Here's what I recommend you look at to help improve the scene:

Roof tiles: I'm pretty sure it wouldn't take to much time to make a component of a tile and to array that along the roof surface.
Grass: This would benefit from some displacement.
Lights: Turn them off. Having them of on such a bright day looks plain wrong to me and I think your images would have better contrast if the shaded area was unlit.
Water: Lose the fake baked caustic map and creat a shader that uses transparency in combination with reflection & refraction.
Arches Recreate with a greater number of faces to lose the faceted look.
Woman Lose the woman as Jason suggested as she becomes the focus of attention when its the building and landscape you want the viewer to explore.
Trees I cant see these ever looking realistic so try and find a better one or try using a suitable clip-map

I've never used Podium so I dont know what texture modifiers it has so you may need to try an alternative renderer to get more realism into your images.

jcdb · 27 Feb 2009, 14:17

Alan, I didn't realize that the floor stone texture was from FF, I thought about it after I said it and thought that it could be from FormFonts. By the way that is a nice texture some other people outside this forum commented on it.
I like your idea of using silhouettes, thanks for your comments.

DzineTech, good pointers about the different elements on the rendering and I agree that the lights turned on in the middle of the day it just looks silly.
Thanks guys.