an overcast/dusk shot..

and another one..

same image as above but with backlit trees casting shadows

one more night shot

Attached is the visopt for the last nightshot above(with the pinkish hue on the plaster)
Obviously, as you cannot upload VISOPTS, here I have renamed it nightime 001.rb.Simply rename the.rb to .visopt and it will work.
Also attached are the 2 images I used for the G.I. lighting and the background.Sometimes I find that the image used for background does not give the lighting i am looking for so i will use a different image for G.I.

The only other lighting in the nighttime scenes are rectangular lights and emmisive materials allocated to the garden lamps.

night time 001.rb

another domestic night time shot

the original render is no great shakes but these are just some exercises in playing with depth of field and photoshop

I have a considerable reference library(4.5GB!)and I have spent the last few years adding to it and revising the structure,moving images and creating new folders/directories.Attached is a screensnap showing the current setup.some of these folders have subfolders and I am sure I'll be adding new ones soon.

attached is a latest image rendered in vray with new sky and foreground added.

attached is the foreground image for the first of the overcast images above.(normally i use the clone brush in photoshop to copy to the rendered vray image)

attached are some similar images but with different post processing.

attached are a few images ,modeled in sketchup and rendered in artlantis studio.

the backgrounds are basic jpegs .the problem is that I still cant get the hang of the positioning of the background so I will normally render the image with the background as close as I can get it and then replace this rendered background in photoshop with the original jpeg.that way I get reflections and lighting as close as possible to the jpeg image.(does that make sense?)

some additional external renders with a different building,modeled in sketchup and rendered in vray

Again apologies for posting in different threads,
What i am trying to do is show the difference between basic vray output and post processing.
Certain models lend themselves to basic modeling but sometimes extra processing
lends itself to a particular project.
some of my images have disappeared,I hope I am not overstepping the mark by attaching them here?

Im sorry for not posting all in one thread,this was my first post and was trying to find my feet.
apologies

attached are 3 nightime renders,the first 2 are more a study in atmosphere and playing around with different skies.Again all are rendered in Vray.
I use 2 programs for rendering, vray and artlantis and I will upload a few artlantis images tomorrow.

hi dale,
I was doing the exact same thing for a long time,trying to render out large expanses of foreground,particularly vegetation and usually found the time taken for rendering frustrating compared to the result.most of my renders now take about 15-20 mins on an Acer laptop 1.66GHz with 1GB of RAM.
If I have an object intersecting with a large piece of foreground,I will normally just model the local area around the object to get context and post process the remainder ie. photoshopping grass trees etc.

hi dylan
ther are 3 images involved in post processing.
1.a background with sky and mountains
2.a main grass/field foreground
3.misc grass elements in the foreground,blurred to give depth.

I have collected a lot of images over the years which I use as a library - skies,grass,trees etc and I like to experiment with different ones.I have found that the same model with the same vray lighting can look completely different depending on the surroundings.

Hi there,
Ive been using sketchup for 2 years and Vray for the last 12 months.
What I have found is that in order to get the best image,post processing is vital.
attached are 2 images showing the same image,the first a basic render from vray,the other the same image post-processed in photoshop - i.e new sky,vegetation and contrast & saturation increased.
I have done a second version with an overcast sky and different landscape and hope to post soon.

david