Yes, your analness knows no bounds Actually, those are pretty good reasons. I hate seeing those extras colors in my studio material list as well when they crop up. Besides, I can't knock on your anality too much (wow, that sounds dirty) ever since your tip about using bump maps to texture map brick and such. That's been quite useful. -Brodie

Cool, that looks great Richard. Thanks for the update!

Thanks so much for the sounding board mate! You are right on both counts the sketch style is a bit advanced, I'm not sure I'll try and incorporate your idea about the showing of development toward the render cycle. I want the full renders to be as really as photos so aka devoid to much vegetation (the realism dropper in most cases). So I guess not eluding to there 3d origin. Most wont know they are rendered. The sketch I need to show enough to demonstrate the material allocations and tie to the renders. Should mention the sketches will all be of varied home styles, each matching the 3 full close up full renders. I was thinking earlier toward a napkin laid on the page "designers back of napkin sketch, even introducing the facade style name by a monogram on the napkin as if conceived in travels or dicussion at a high end resort or restaurant - this would fit the scheme and add some funk and maybe building some associations! As even the tagline is based on the client's expansion from a resort area to a more urban market. Yeah like you suggest I need to get more from the sketch, I guess what's being tried with the renders - build intrigue! The floor tiles are lower weight (0.25) than the furniture (0.5) but the furniture could still do with a beef up. Want to be careful the heavier they are the smaller the room feels. Though need to test more first as high quality printing holds the line weights much better. Looking at about 30,000 print run over the suite so needing to get ALL sweet! So thanks again mate! I like being told what for - makes me work harder!

Hey thanks guys. I'm making great use of the technique I worked out for positioning foreground clip mapped trees to get shadows exactly where I want them, which for most shots to break up larger plain surfaces. Fairly simple trick of turning off perspective and orbiting till your camera and shadow cast match then where ever you want the shadow you can position the billboards (clipped trees) exactly WYSIWYG - very handy and very simple with NO testing needed! BTW yep the image is a little over sharpened, resulting from resizing for the web and a bad job of sharpening the reduction. @lapx said: I see you've moved to maxwell from Kerythea. What was the reason for the change? And which do you like most? Sorry mate, I've actually never tried Kerthy! I've been using maxwell since the early betas and now with the new plugin liking it just so much more! Now there is only a need to go into the studio application to include really high poly trees etc that would grind SU to a hault. The little ground plants in this scene if all present would do the same but the proxy and instance feature works a dream. The new plugin includes a trick little feature that includes it's own paint bucket tool to avoid the nature of SU opening the material browser (what a drag) each time applying materials. Another new feature is the ability to assign mapping direct in SU as cylindrical, spherical etc. Here is a shot of the SU scene! [image: KyMu_RANGE-2-HABITAT.jpg]

@michaliszissiou said: Great taste indeed. excellent work! But I'm so familiar with the adobe suite, I really love illustrator but I mostly use it with the wacom pen. Thanks Michalis! Mate I'd love to get my head around illustrator though I find it so unintuitive. It is certainly WAY ahead of LO in respect to what can be achieved though for simple stuff like this logo it is really hard to beat LO for shear simplicity and fast workflow. In the Karrara brochure above, the architects supplied the floor plans generated from DWG import to Illustrator and then to PDF at between 200-300mb per plan and 9 to be used through the brochure I was stuffed as it ground indesign to a hault! The equal LO plan like those Marcus (d12dozr) did up for me recently generally weigh in about 50-60kb and SO clean! The example plan above if using image based furniture weigh in about 2Mb due to the raster inclusion. That said like you I'd still love to get my head around illustrator, only remains on the wish list for now!

@chris fullmer said: Sounds interesting. I lost a lot of faith in Maxwell after they messed up their original beta soooo badly. I half expect them to look for every cool feature of this new software and then tweak it before public release so it no longer works as desired. Chris, mate I can certainly support what you are saying about the earliest beta's being a bit of a mess up! But I guess we need to stay mindful they were then heading into unchartered waters then with unbiased rendering! No other unbiased render engines existed, no proper ruby support for SU, also given the new comers aiming to emulate their model are yet to produce the same image quality or for that matter meet their promised deadlines by almost a year one has to have some sympathies and given support for their breaking new ground. I'd suggest even the new comers would not be so advanced with apsects like re-lighting and a stack of other features had they not headed the way. And I'd suggest with this new plugin further development in the competition will follow in an attempt to keep pace and again somewhat aim to emulate!

@jo-ke said: This looks indeed very professional! I like the design a lot! Thanks mate! The client had one simple change just to zoom in on one of the photos and awaiting delievry of the air photo then off to print 2000 copies at about an eight week turn around! So a while to see in print!

Thanks guys I have some help on this now!

That's really better IMO Richard The warmer tones and the stronger shadow of the tree on the facade help a lot.

Like the render but a little sinister!

@olishea said: @unknownuser said: Hey surprised you didn't pick my crap tile mapping at the front door mate i really havent picked up on it....whats wrong with it? looks fine to me..... The entry apron and step to the door are in the same tile but not aligned! Naughty me, normally anal about stuff like that!

That's a good idea. I've always done this on a hit and miss quest myself.

@anssi said: To me it seems to be part of your professional ethics to do it well even if you don't like the client's idea. I have always admired the way you work with SU output. Anssi Thanks mate! Funny though if I don't like the way the client wants to do it I just tell them sure, I can do it that way it will just take longer and cost more! Hopeful!!!

Thanks Richard, I will investigate both the book and your workflow suggestions. Appreciate your help. I hope to post the outcome (if the client and my boss agree).

That looks pretty nice. Good work.

Thanks man.. nice texture (díky chlape...pěkná textura) CZECH

Richard this looks good. Looking forward to see some trees as well.

Hey thank all for the positive comments! @ Dermot - Mate I hope the scene setup I posted helps somewhat with your own kitchen, one of the beauties of working with Maxwell, Indigo, Fry or soon Thea is support for lighting adjustment during or after rendering. This tends to make lighting a no brainer!! Though some effort / testing was needed to get the panel located and directed where they would have the desired effect! That said I possibly could have reduced the number of panels as a few were effectively reduced to very low power in the final - though handy to have there just in case! @ Tianne - (Hmmm, don't think I can say mate here - oh no, oh um, help I'm lost, oh well) Mate as I posted to your tests make those panel lights your friend - though this was my first proper interior I have had the advantage of reading so many posts on the maxwell forums in the past only to realise you just can't get good scene lighting without them. Any real photos of interiors you see in mags have been supported by quite a lot of artificial lighting generally! @ Oli - Yes mate the lighting is the same with maybe only some minor positional and directional changes to the emitter panels! Again thanks all for the comments!!

Good luck Richard. I didn't take you for the lying type Hope you do well, -Brodie