Kris, thanks for the helpful suggestions. I tried to rotate the grass texture, but it doesn't seem possible since I have a sandbox mesh with bumpies all over (am I missing something or is it not possible to rotate a texture on a mesh?).

The pergola is made out of extruded PVC vinyl. The 7/8"x3" louvers run through routed holes in the 4x4 cross pieces. They are actually only half the total length and have a crimped edge that snaps into place inside the center 4x4 (see picture).

I'm posting some new iterations. I'm experimenting with it because it's fun, but I'm also planning to submit this as a sample of my work in a job application, so any suggestions or constructive criticism is very welcome. I didn't have any architectural samples in my professional work, so I threw this together - hopefully somebody likes it!

Does anyone know offhand where is the thread with some posted work similar to the second image below? I searched for a long time but couldn't find it - whoever it was did it better than I and I'd like to learn from him

One more thing - does anyone know if there's a way to change the orientation of the sun without rotating your whole model? It appears that the time of day/year adjustments only allow me to get the sun coming in directly overhead or into the opposite face of the building (as though the back of the house is facing north here in the northern hemisphere). When I rotated my model, the openings (windows & doors) wigged out and filled in with walls.

Thanks all for your comments and help.

A pergola next to a house. Any comments or suggestions are welcome. Btw, maybe it's obvious, but it's about the pergola

Reg,

A general tip for selective smoothing is to use the eraser tool ("E") and hold down the control key (on a PC, not sure if it's same on a mac) to soften the lines.

Sounded like you lost more definition than you wanted when you attempted to "smooth" some of the lines.

Then, if you have lines that you want to "un-soften", you can turn on hidden geometry (in the view menu) to see all of your contour lines. The softened or hidden lines will show up as different dashed line styles. To unsoften, use the erase tool again, but hold down Ctrl+Shift.

hope this helps.

cool project. looks like you're making progress and learning plenty along the way.

I faded down some of the saturation in the grass, trees, background, and bushes. And made some color balance adjustments to the grass. I think they were a bit overblown - in the context of the fall colors, but also in relation to the house they took your eye away from the house a bit, I think.

Thanks again for the tips, everyone. Very helpful.

rev1

Thanks for sharing your experience. It's pretty great to have specific suggestions to go back and work on. And techniques to add to my bag of tricks.

Kris, that was a very helpful tip for a young buck like me. And very much appreciated. I'm like a sponge... a really big, human-shaped sponge.

Thanks again! I learned a lot from everyone's responses.

Thank you all for your complements and helpful suggestions.

Justin, I agree totally that it could benefit from more lake view action.

Eric, thanks for the great artistic finish tips.

And Kris, thanks for the great workflow/library tip.

Here's a recent view of a lake house that I did. I'm thinking about doing a lake side view (from the middle of the lake).

c&c welcome any thoughts on how I could have done this better?

btw, background and painty effects added in Photoshop.

The budget unfortunately doesn't allow for much at the moment - they're working on raising some money to cover costs right now. Thanks for both points of view on the space though. Ha! Frappucino and romance...

Edson, here's a crazy connection for you. My good friend who will be managing this coffee shop is dating a girl from Sao Paulo who will be spending a year at a university in Porto Alegre. I haven't yet found out which university, but she will be in your city and maybe even in your neighborhood.

oh yeah, and thanks to RonS for the moulding profile I used on the top edge (see attached) click here to see thread

I'm doing some work for a small coffee shop that will be donating 100% of its profits to various charities. Cool idea.

Here are some early sketches.

The biggest issue at this point is how to best make use of the very limited space. The tentative plan is the put the main counter in the upper-right hand corner (looking at the plan view). Next step is to put in the counter and furnish the rest with tables, chairs, couches, etc. I'd also like to do a storefront view for them.

Thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

Nice work Mateo. Very satisfying, I imagine, to see your designs constructed.

Richard, I would like to second that inquiry. I am in a similar position (have enjoyed 3d for a long time, but limited in the "professional" experience). My job is actually disappearing in a couple weeks (company is downsizing) and I'm exploring the possibility of doing some independent 3d work as well as seeking architectural firms, etc. in the area.

If I could just find the people who would pay me to do this work!

The snow is much too bright and therefore emphasized in the eye of the viewer. I would try to draw more attention to the building, your main subject. When I think of the cozy chateau, I think of the glowing light from within, drawing me in to its warmth. Can you make the windows glow?

Anyone here ever heard of 3dPaintBrush?

I received an email invitation from the Senior Product Manager at Geometric Ltd to join their beta program. I visited their website: http://www.geometricglobal.com. It looks like they're responsible for eDrawings. I guess it's not surprising there's no reference to 3dpaintbrush considering it's still beta.

Any thoughts on this?

Kim, thanks for tips and for the encouragement.

I'm new at this, so any tidbits of basic information would be very helpful.

I just used a standard glass material for the water (as you said in your tutorial), but didn't apply a bump map because I made the model itself bumpy. Does this answer your question?

I have generally been using the Photonmap - Quick render setting, as anything with caustics or AA seems to take multiple hours to render. Is that normal or could it be on account of the many lights and large model? I am running on a Pentium 4 3.20GHz, 1G RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT 256MB. I had amended the Global Illumination settings as you desscribed in your tutorial, but I gather now that it doesn't matter if you don't use a render setting with caustics... I am gaining understanding every day!

I will take a look around the KT forum for water materials - thanks for the tip

ArchitectBoy, I'm waiting on a render with AA enabled. Thanks for the helpful tips

It just occurred to me, could the little spotty refractions be eliminated by changing the lights in the bottom of the hot tub from spot lights to omni lights? They're in little recessed cans, so it should still illuminate the tub properly - maybe with some tweaking - and then the pointy little refractions may become more like soft blobbies of light, which would be perfect...

Any thoughts on this from experienced K folks? Thanks!

mexico, I found this tutorial on a K site -http://www.kerkythea.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=18890&sid=f8b73bdaa110ecf236ef04b6620abbb7%20b6620abbb7

I downloaded the large video file but never got it to work - just audio - but it was enough to step through most of the tutorial.

As for the bumpy water, I just made a mesh with the sandbox tool in SketchUp and used the Smoove tool to make a bunch of bumps and valleys. There might be a better way but I don't know it Smile it took me probably 20 minutes.

Bruce, thanks for the compliment. It is very encouraging.

@unknownuser said:

ArchitectBoy wrote:
For the refractions you could probably just change the angle of refraction in the material properties, whatever you need to do with the water Is going to be in those properties. And I still don't see any antialiasing, are you waiting for it to finish completely?

yes, I was waiting for the render to finish. I had to go, but I'll take a look around again to find the antialiasing settings. I changed a smoothing angle for something in an attempt to try softening the refracted light... I'm still learning to crawl, you know.

thanks very much for your helpful suggestions. I'm eager to learn.

thanks Kris. and thanks for the suggestion to do a night render in Kerky too. that was the nudge I needed to download it and dig in!

thanks for the tips. much appreciated. I've smoothed the surface - it looks like the little spotlight refractions are still scattered about.

here's a cleaned up version of the previous.