Yes, the gloss is a bit exagerated and the bump map could be improved as well.
The original concrete panels are coated so they do have a glossy appearance seen from a tangential angle.

The thing I enjoy the most about making these renderings is learning how the light get's distributed and I agree that texturing in general can probably be improved to obtain more photorealism.....But sometimes the 80% effort one has to invest to make 20% improvement...well you know .

Thanks for the remarks.

Cheers,
Kwisteniebel

Thanks guys,

@Frederick,

It's Vray for sketchup. I wouldn't dare to go the 3dsMax route as I find it very complex (even setting a view seems tedious).

VfSU is fun to use when you discover which buttons to touch and which you have to leave alone. Mostly that second thing is important.
I only touch about 5% off all the buttons it has....and to be honest, the other 95 % scare the living sh*t out of me .

Some people often say that only unbiased render engines like Maxwell, Indigo and Fry can produce physical correct light...but in my opinion it's very easy to get 'fake' results as well with those engines.

More and more I like the benefits of biased rendering (Podium, Vray and Kerkythea) over the unbiased ones. Once you see the joy in rendering with those you don't want to get back to the annoying render times of unbiased.(unless you only do exterior views)

As for Kerkythea, I hope development on their biased engine (improved color bleeding ?) continues as to me it has more potential than perfecting the unbiased engine cause the market is getting crowded in that department and it will take several years before hardware technology (for the masses) will make the render times (interiors) feasable.

Nice collection thanks.

Here another 'claire obscure' (bit noisy)...It's really fun to test all sorts of light conditions and Andos design is really suited for this:

@solo said:

Dang!!
I am tempted to try a clean and crisp render as soon as you do a dirty decayed one....deal?

He he DEAL.
It's just I don't have 'dirty' texture bitmaps I can use.
Do you have a good link where to find such decay textures?

Thanks guys....

Next shot is a somewhat difficult light situation.
I wouldn't dare to render this kind of 'claire-obscure' with an unbiased engine as it would take days to clean up noise even on a small render farm.

It's not the most quality shot but I am surprised how well Vray can catch even the darker parts.
Render time little more than 1 hour.

And a quick try on the interior.
I didn't bother to make the grass perfect...just loaded a texture i thought would suit it 'acceptable'.
Next time I'll try and figure out that mean displacement feature.

...And a close-up on the wassilly chairs.....does it really show they are low poly?
(antialiasing settings should be increased however)

I think Vray does a fine job on smoothing it out.
A cool feauture: the Vray depth map (it's called Z-depth) can be switched on in framebuffer tab. The depthmap works like a charm in Pshop....although overdoing the lens blur kind of miniaturises the objects in the scene:

Thanks Irsuser,

Render time on first was way too high (9 hours) because I was using 'overkill' settings (the universal Vlado settings).

Second rendering was little over 2 hours. Can be much lower probably but I am not so good at tweaking those tiny settings yet. I tend to use the premade settings files without changing much.

Here is another one:
I replaced the designer chair piece by a more 'comfy' variant....

Thanks Solo,
I actually would love to render the Frank LLoyd Right model in vray as well, but I am kind of lazy to go texture that naked model from PPB......unless 'someone' is willing to share his textured version ...hint...hint

Hi Sk'uppers,

Vray for sketchup test on a Ando model.
I threw in some design classsics from 3Dwhorehouse.
By the way: you guys want to check this 'designers collection', some of these models render quite well: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=62a74a4a7e48190eaccb1e73405b4578&prevstart=12

images:

Solo, I just see a white square....
I must be going snowblind
(Imageshack issue?)

That's another great one again you did there 'Pixar guy'

I hope you will make a little 'step by step' Poser tutorial one day.
Some time ago I tried Poser but had to give up as I could only get rubbish out of it.

Great work!

By the way,
If you really nag to JoeB of asgvis forum to get your license prolongued, you might get a another month of practicing time. I did the same and got it
Asgvis (VrayforSU) considers it as good marketing to let people post as much as they can in their gallery. A policy I like

I am so jealous about your skills to pose and rig characters....you just seem to pull them out of your sleeve as if it's nothing .

The scene setup in the shot with the guy watching telly is really nice.
I wonder how it would look like if rendered with Vray or Podium.

Cheers,
Kwistenbiebel

Thank you

The next one is rendered using fryrender...

He he this makes me smile.
Funny stuff seeing FLW's design floating on a stream. Nice mock up.

Don't be shy...This really looks better and better.
I like the glossy reflections on that last one.
Have you thought of using depth of field to get the emphasis more to the 'special' ball?

Gaeius referred to a pool table....

Why not making a nice 'green fluffy pool table surface' as background and keep the silver ball?

This is getting better and better.
My only remark, and you pointed it out yourself already, would be that the most important ball is blending too much in the background.So I would change its color (eightball black? / a golden ball?) or change the background color...

Thanks Solo,
Indeed I would like to 'custom' build the hands (fists etc...). I am trying to learn Silo for this, as I feel Sketchup is kind of limited for it (I know it 'can' be done by guys like you )...
So maybe I get back to this scene some time later.

Here's a similar shot but used Fry for it:

Slightly different version (also Podium 1.5) with depth of field applied (using the d.o.f method described here on the forum).