never run into that before. can you post the skp?

Ok, all done. Let me know what you think. Below the pics are links to the full resolution versions.

Rendered Output

https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/384281/FINAL%20output.jpg

Post-Processed

https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/384281/FINAL.jpg

Aidus,

Just found this thread. I've played with displacement a bit and it looks like we've pretty much gone through the same learning curve. Whenever I use it I curse myself for trying although it CAN give great results. What I've found to work pretty well is the Soap Bubble plug-in. It's free and there's a tool there which will subdivide everything into a grid of squares (you get to determine the number of squares).

Just to add a bit of detail to what Stinkie said, you don't HAVE to subdivide. You can get the same results by checking the Adaptive box next to Precision setting. That gives you the maximum possible precision, but the cost is a very slow rendering time. You could also crank up your precision enough to get it to work but at the exact same cost. The way I think about it is that Precision/Adaptive sort of subdivides your faces for you in order to give you better detail. So if you subdivide them yourself before hand you can lower the precision because maxwell won't have to do much subdividing to each of your little faces in order to get the same results.

As for the edges the word on the street is that the way to do this is to go to Window -> Soften Edges and set that to greater than or equal to 90 degrees. Haven't tried it yet but sounds like it works.

Let me know how your results go as I haven't found a situation yet, for my projects, where it's been worth the hassle and extended render times of displacement.

-Brodie

honoluludesktop,

Good thoughts on making the building stand out more. I'll work on that in photoshop. I'm thinking to blur out the distant areas in the back slightly as well which should help bring the focus onto the building. As for the road material, you've picked up on something there I noticed as well. I changed the map and adjusted it so the variation is much more subtle now. I'd considered adjusting the white material but in the end I decided to leave it for now with plans to adjust it in photoshop later - good catch though . Thanks for taking the time to show me what you were talking about by adjusting the image in PS.

Tom,

This is actually a project we already have. In fact I think they've begun construction if I'm not mistaken. So this image is as much to sell our firm and it's capabilities as anything else. That's one of the reasons I liked this view so much - it really shows off the scale of the project. It also meant I had a full set of working drawings to go off of! Beats little pieces of buff paper, but then you almost have to put in all the details - blessing and a curse

Yeah, I can't argue with the black windows. I think the material looks better when it's reflecting the sky than the ground, when you can differentiate the spandrel from the visible glass. But this is sort of where I ended up. Any thoughts on what you might do to it in post-processing?

It's a bit too late to lower my camera angle but I love what you did there with lowering the trees. I might have to take a crack at that and see how it looks. What did you do there, looks like you just took the top have, minus the building, and scaled it down. About right?

Thanks,

-Brodie

@daniel said:

Brodie, in my opinion the number of cars is okay - they illustrate the context, and who knows it might make the client decide to add some trees to that parking lot. Your rendering appears absent of people, which is odd considering how busy the building is.

Daniel,

Thanks for the comments. Yeah, it's quite a huge pad of pavement they've got there. Some more shade never hurts. Actually, I did go back and add some large trees to the front to cover up some of that green space and added some bushes. I played with changing the FOV as had been recommended but ended up going back to what I had originally.

As for people, I typically put them in during post-processing. I've just finished with my updates and am about to click render one last time. I'll let it run over the weekend and then do my PP on Monday. I'll come back and post the final image when I get done.

Thanks all!

-Brodie

Good suggestions.

This one was actually a bit more zoomed in than I started with. I wanted to make sure and give enough context that it felt like the huge building it is. But I think what Sir and Remus suggested could be interesting. I'll see what happens if I squeeze in a bit and increase the FOV. That could still give me the feel I want and focus on the building a bit more.

Remus, I agree that the building meets the grass too abrubtly. What sort of "junction" do you mean? I can't change the building design but perhaps bushes and such could help. I was at least going to work with that in photoshop so smooth the transition a bit.

Aidus, Yeah, this is by far the biggest project I've ever worked on. It's been quite a learning experience! You're spot on about the asphalt map. That is one of the textures I need to tweek. I like the variation but it's way to dramatic which makes it look splotchy. The other one that you probably can't see in the low res image is the map on the roof. I made a really large map for variation but it was taken from a low res image so you can actually see the pixelation Actually, the model is even way bigger than you think. It stretches out to about 1 square mile. Eventually I'm planning on doing a 3d max animation with it so I wanted to be able to zoom out to provide even more context.

Thanks guys,

-Brodie

Wow, that looks like an absolutely ridiculous amount of modeling. Very good job!

I think pretty much all of the modeling and texturing looks really great. Only critique I'd have is that the faceless people staring at me sort of creeps me out - mostly just in the first 2 images.

-Brodie

Here's a low res version of a building I'm working on. At this point it's just coming out of Maxwell. I feel like it needs a bit more tweaking on the modeling/rendering side before it's finalized enough to begin post-processing. Any suggestions?

One of my main concerns is that I don't really find it to be a great camera shot. Any ideas on how to shoot it better (I think the camera has to be in this general location though, later I'll be doing some ground level shot(s)) would be appreciated. Or if you think there's a good method in photoshop to add focus that would work too. The main entrance is the canopy on the right side which sort of feels like it's a bit too dark?

Also, what do you think about the cars? Too many? Should the colors be different?

From this angle I can't think of a good way to add any foreground element which I'm not real comfortable with. I think it's way too high for any vegitation and probably too low for clouds or anything like that. Hrm...maybe I could photoshop in the back of an eagle's head in the lower portion so it looks like you're riding it.

I've also got some texture issues I need to fix but I'm not sure how well you'll be able to tell w/ the low res version.

Any other ideas or recommendations are appreciated. Thanks,

-Brodie

I've been doing some experimentation and research in regards to the instancing issue with maxwell and found some interesting info.

There seems to be a bug that can drastically increase render times with instances. Without going into details of my test and forum discussions, here's the deal. If your instance AND/OR the original object from which your instance is taken intersects with any other object in the scene your render times go WAY up (my tests were showing like 15x longer). However, instances CAN intersect with other instances.

-Brodie

Yeah, that's the way it goes. I probably started a month or two before you so I'm not more than one step ahead at most. I've played a lot with textures though so I feel like I'm starting to get the hand of it. Fortunately we don't do anything real crazy material wise so as I continue my projects I keep refining my primary materials and reuse them - grass, asphalt, glass, stucco, brick, sidewalk, aluminum, concrete, and then there are always a few unique ones depending on the job. Probably my biggest problem right now is that I'm not good at widdling down my materials. I just start with a material from the maxwell website and then sort of tweak them based on a bit of knowledge and a bit of guesswork until they look right. In the end I might have a few settings or a layer that I could delete but at least they're looking better. Maybe after I'm done with my current project and get all the materials right I can send you the ones I've been working on.

Problem with learning as you go is that I look back at some of my old renderings (you know, the ancient ones I did like 2 months ago) and cringe!

-Brodie

Aidus

looking very nice. Sounds like you've got a pretty good workflow going. I think your modeling, the trees, etc. are all really impressive. I think my primary criticism would be that many of your textures seem like they could use some work. They seem to come off a bit too cartoony, if you know what I mean. Mainly I'm talking about the building and fence textures (as well as your road texture). I'm still learning how to tweak textures to improve them. One thing I learned recently (from Richard via these forums) was about that benefits and how-to's of give materials more variety.

For example, what I'm doing with my grass now is adding another BSDF layer with a map placed into the Blending Weight section (I use random bump map I found that has various shades from black to white in sort of a weird random pattern). For the BSDF map I'll use either a dirt image or maybe an the same grass image from my main BSDF but darkened or lightened some. What that does is it'll blend in the dirt or various shades of grass into your overall grass texture and add some variety. Helps quite a bit. Same method also works well for large flat surfaces like stucco, asphalt, etc.

-Brodie

@unknownuser said:

Yeah, it is pretty handy. Mind you, using instances will slow your render down.

eh? Sounds rather counterintuitive.

-Brodie

Crass,

I have an 8800GT on one of my works computers and it works really well. What driver are you using?

-Brodie

what graphics card do you have?

that's what I've heard. How did you overclock it? I've never really gotten into processor overclocking before.

-brodie

oooo...external proxies? That would be absolutely wonderful.

Did you notice the bit at the bottom about an updated SU plugin as well?

-Brodie

If you're going for photorealism I'd suggest at least looking into Maxwell. Check out the image gallery at http://maxwellrender.com/ (If there's an engine out there with a better gallery, I don't know of it). And here's an old post with some of Richard's Maxwell renderings, http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=11121

-Brodie

Great look forward to it.

Your sig shows that your e6750 is at 3.2GHz. Is that overclocked or is that what it runs out of box? I finally got my home computer built (well rebuilt after I screwed up the bios) and I'm thinking of overclocking my e8400 which is 3.0 GHz stock.

-Brodie

Looks excellent. BTW, if you don't already have it here's a link to a photoshop action from Maxwell's Think website. You open up the color image and the alpha in Photoshop and it deletes the background from your color image for you by using your alpha.

http://think.maxwellrender.com/maxwell_alpha_photoshop_action-110.html

like that tree on the left side btw