Hi Darren, glad to see you are posting on here now since the death of the old SU forums . I'm not really much of a fan of water colours either digital or manually painted tbh and there are far more qualified opinions in this area here than mine but my £0.02 worth would be to try outputing without using the tiled SU grass and build it up manually in PS perhaps with the addition of some grass blades/weed at the intersection of the stone wall. At the moment its just too 'clean' and needs a bit of saturation variation in the tones for me to feel as though it is a watercolour.

Be sure to post your updates

Wow brilliant work, I really love the stairwell section. I'm almost certain its vray that's been used. The lighting and textures are top notch. How much post processing was used?

If we had a hall of fame gallery then this should definately be in it.

I second that.

@lewiswadsworth said:

@dzinetech said:

Lewis,

I share your annoyance at the viewport & rendered output mismatch. The only workaround is using a zoom at about 0.7-0.8ish and also low lens shift values if there is a requirement for proper 2 point perspective seeing as that function also isnt replicated correctly in VfSU

I do like the style's of both Solo's and your image.

I'm almost certain I have tried those settings and everything else by this point...I generally resign myself to converting either the SU ouput or the VRay rendering to a Smart Object in Photoshop and then painfully tweaking it with the Warp transform tool until the one overlays the other acceptably.

It definately works but there is no set of magic numbers for every desired camera/viewport position; its much a case of trial and error till it you are happy with the results. What I did was to test a low quality render with material override on (found in global switches) so that you get a quick result as to how your geometry will be represented in the VFB. As I say the ideal zoom values are around 0.7 to 0.8 and lens shift I think was about 0.1-0.15

Lewis,

I share your annoyance at the viewport & rendered output mismatch. The only workaround is using a zoom at about 0.7-0.8ish and also low lens shift values if there is a requirement for proper 2 point perspective seeing as that function also isnt replicated correctly in VfSU

I do like the style's of both Solo's and your image.

Its not a bad start but I think the texturing could do with a little work and some modelling tweaks:

• Dont use the same roof tile material on the velux window frames
• Add a downpipe from the gutter
• Reduce the scale of the timber cladding on the eaves
• Add some detail to the roof verge (either texture for mortar fill or perhaps add a plastic dry verge)
• Investigate what has happened to the gable - You have a fairly large colour difference on what appears to be the same plane of brickwork so you might have a problem with the having 2 wall planes that arent coplanar.
• I've never liked SU default vegatation, i'd try and source better components from Formfonts or 3D warehouse etc or perhaps go down the route of using clip maps.
• The same with the car, there are better modelled cars than that so try and find one that looks more realistic with higher poly's but remember to only insert it at the end else it will slow down working in SketchUp

It looks like you are using QMC and Light cache as you render engines. I'd recommend switching the primary engine to Irradiance map. It also looks like you arent making use of the SketchUp sun so make sure you are happy with how the shadows appear in SketchUp and then turn them off, go to the vray options and global switches. Turn on Default lights and ensure that your environment and background maps are set to sky. Make sure you are also using the physical camera and try using the following settings.

• Shutter Speed=125
• F-Stop=12
• Iso=200

These are only a starting value but it should give you an improved image to develop onwards. When you are happy with what you are seeing you can then add to that by using bump or displacement maps, fresnel reflections to glass & car paints etc...
Remember, the more detail you add and the better your textures are, the more realistic your image gets.

Always a pleasure to look at your work, Jason.

I know what you mean as I'm biased to vray and its the image I like the best, although I would have used IR+LC for the render which I'm sure would yield a better image than the Universal settings. The Podium image is pretty nice though.

Really nice job there Pete, the clay render is so often underused.
Biebel, there are episode's constantly on Virgin Media.
Not fussed with what was the best but I used to love episode's with the Borg. The music associated with them was so cool.

Happy Birthday Kim

Nice website Chuck. The QTVR's are a very good idea.

Ours used to involve sending out office juniors to buy one of the following:

  A long stand

  A left-handed screwdriver

  A tin of tartan paint

Argh bag-pipes! There is a time and place for them. So annoying when I pass people busking with them as you walk by Waverley Market or down Sauchiehall Street. GRRR!

@krisidious said:

or are they using word play on the old Germany/Japan Axis?

I would say this given the reference to the third reich etc..

Lovely images Tina; you have a very unique style thats instantly recognisable.

The only critism I have is that the trees in the foreground of the 2nd image look to me to be pasted images that have been manipulated in post production whereas the trees in the 1st image are far more matte with less detail and a larger constrast between colour tones.

Well... Why not go to the KT website and find out for yourself?
[spoonfeed]
http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=63&Itemid=1[/spoonfeed]

@goodonline said:

Is it possible to add bump maps in your rendering with vray? I have not used it with sketchup as of yet, and haven't seen the interface within sketchup. Is there a material editor for / within sketchup?

Yes and Yes. Displacement is also a feature along with many many more features. The material editor work in conjunction with SU because VfSU relies on SU for UV mapping (at least for now!)

Nice work again Rob

Jackson,
Vray is apparantly setup for Linear Workflow so that is probably why you are finding desaturation of colours. If you aren't happy with the results you can either

• Change the output gamma from 2.2 to 2.6 (vray system settings box) * Apply a colour correction curve in the VFB * Save the image as .exr (32-bit full float) and play about with the gamma in photoshop

Wow! 8O

I'm intrigued to know what the big money guy's reaction was...