Greene&Greene style house interior

Gnarly Cranium · March 7th, 2003

these pics are thumbnails, click em!

This is the Rainey Falls, a house designed by Rick Wright of Wright Design Studio. More information on the house itself can be found on moreplans.com, it's the one at the bottom of the page of stock plans. I've made a flyaround, in two sizes, both mpegs.
7 meg flyaround
25 meg flyaround

I built the 3D model myself in MAX 4.2 from floorplans imported from AutoCAD. I made everything in these scenes but the trees, and many of the textures are photos my boss took near the site where the house will be built.

The thing is immense... and now I have to do an interior walkthrough!

I've never done an interior before, and I don't know a thing about camera animation... as you will notice in my glitchy exterior flyarounds.

The whole inside of the house is full of exposed beams with nifty rounded ends and wiggly curved intricate metal-banded thingies and knicknacks-- just like you see here underneath the carport. Somehow I have to figure out how to give the woodwork the kind of nice details it will take to bring out the beauty of it, with a decent workflow, and without putting my poly counts through the roof!

The goal is a look rather like this....

I'm the only MAX user within miles of this office, self-taught, so if you guys see me making stupid mistakes as I go along, or have any handy tips, do please let me know!!

Paul Griger · March 7th, 2003

Oh Gnarly, I REALLY like this!!!

I don’t have time to give this a proper crit, but first glance it looks great. I love Greene & Greene style archi, I have always wanted to design a home on my own time just for the fun of it. Lucky you to get paid for this.

I’ll get back to you when I get a chance later

Solid 1st posting BTW!

Best,

Paul

PS, is that a book you’d recommend? I have been kicking around which books would be good for G&G arhci.

Gnarly Cranium · March 7th, 2003

Thanks Paul!

I'm not terribly into houses myself, being more of a sci-fi 'gimme an alien and teach me how to animate it eating space marines!' type person... but yeah, this house rocks, and I'm looking forward to spiffying it all up!

As for the book... I've actually got a copy of it one foot from my left elbow right now, and it's packed full of sticky notes marking pages, not to mention half its pages are about to fall out from being leafed through so much! The book isn't mine, it's Rick's-- but man are some of these pics pretty!

Gnarly Cranium · March 7th, 2003

Moving right along...

Here's a screenshotof what I'm dealing with, and how I'm doing it. I imported the floorplans, and various detail drawings, and I've slapped them right into the scene in the proper spots, tipping the detail drawings up against the walls where they go.

And here's a closeup of the metal bands and wood bits, I've worked a lot on the materials, though the lighting will be the real test of how it looks-- and that's what I'm doing last.

This is the band material I used on the exterior... I'm not sure how much I should change it for the inside, where it isn't going to get weathered the same.

Paul Griger · March 7th, 2003

Hi Gnarly!

Well, I’m back. I’m surprised others haven’t jumped in here and said something. But you really haven’t asked for any specific crits, so maybe that explains why others haven’t commented here. Plus the downloads may be too much for some [but not me and my cable modem ]

Well, upon further inspection, I have to say that everything was modeled quite nicely. The textures seem to be applied well also; no apparent stretching and such [except for what I’m gonna mention below]

If I had to crit [and I do :&gt ], I’d say:

1. the grass, um, I se the desired effect you going for, but it looks kinda poor, especially in the close up shots. Either loose the pine needle effect and try just for grass, or, I’m not really sure :shrug:
2. the glass doesn’t seem 100% transparent, and is there an environment texture applied to it, or is it actually reflecting the environment? It doesn’t seem to be accurately reflecting the environment, especially under the canopy
3. you can see the interior is all grey, maybe that’s why you handled the glass as I mentioned above
4. the soffit has no texture, or bump to it. Shouldn’t it have some rough cedar texture to it?
5. the tree to the left under the canopy you can see the seam for the bark texture. the texture for the tree to the right in the same pic, well, the texture scale looks to big to me. And the lighting seems off to me for the bark texture also, don’t know why though :shrug:
6. the overall lighting seems like it could really be improved if “fakeosity” was at least introduced. Have you tried the three ring lighting method that Delfoz has shown here? http://www.cgarchitect.com/ubb/ultim...;f=23;t=000035
7. I’m starting to see that really all of the textures seem to lack some bump to them. The brick at the sidewalk looks flat or has no bump, the sidewalk concrete is tiling and has to bump, the rocks look flat w/no bump. Are you using bump on the textures?

But this is I suppose just things for personal growth if the client is really happy with everything. Right now I would say that the look of the renders is somewhat stylized and not photoreal. If you are looking for a more photoreal, I think that some of the above points could be looked into.

Also, as far as I can tell, the animation does need some work. Now mind you, I am just learning this myself, but a fresh eye always helps. One thing I would say is that there wasn’t a need to circle the house a couple of times before zooming in on the house. Before the camera zoomed into the canopy area, I thought the movie was just looping! And you know this already, but the camera transitions at times spun too fast and sped up/down at an unnatural rate.

I still have to perfect this myself in w/C4D, but I’m sure there is a way in Max to ease in: ease out with the camera as it’s called in C4D.

For transitions that are really tuff without doing a dramatic, rollercoaster style spin, maybe try fading out one camera view and then fading in a new camera view. I’m thinking specifically of the point in the movie when you have the camera at the tip of the canopy interior and then it spins around towards the exterior and then rapidly speeds up along the exterior path.

If you could have faded out the canopy camera and then faded into a camera gently showing the rest of the exterior, that may have been more natural.

Anyways, that’s my input for now. I seem to be able to pick things apart really easily, it’s the execution of the actual work for me that’s tougher

best,

paul

P.S. I just got downloading the 2nd movie, I see that it is different from the first.

First off on this animation, for 00:00:33, it has a rather low quality IMHO. What resolution did you output at? What compression software did you use?

This one is smoother than the first. The 1st looked like it was at 12fps or maybe 15 fps, this looks more like it maybe at 29.xx fps or in that neighborhood, right?

But here the grass is BAAAADDD! Sorry, but it appears so saturated compared to the backdrop. Plus the trees in the first did help. The overall brightness level of the house and grass doesn’t match the backdrop.

Plus, the grass tiles really bad, and the terrain has some dramatic drops, especially by the canopy, and then the grass stretches over the terrain here.

I wish you the best! Animation is another beast altogether. In a movie, they have people to model, others to tex, others for animation. We have to do all these jobs and well otherwise people pick up on it. It is not easy by any means.

That's why we make the big bucks!

I wish you the best!

Gnarly Cranium · March 7th, 2003

Doood!!! You weren't kidding!!

Okay, I can chew on this!

Quote:

you really haven’t asked for any specific crits, so maybe that explains why others haven’t commented here. Plus the downloads may be too much for some [but not me and my cable modem ]

Gotta love them cable modems... boo-yah! :angecool:

As for specific crits... um... I'll come up with some more questions as I go along, for now all I can really say is ANYTHING! Does the wood I posted look like wood? How about the metal banding? Is the weathering on it okay? How does my work look overall?

Quote:

1. the grass, um

Say no more... the grass is my fricken BANE. I can't tell you how long I've messed with ground textures and driven myself up the wall and down it again with frustration-- and that was the BEST I could come up with.

If anybody knows of a better way, now's the time to mention it... cause I'm fed up.

Quote:

2. the glass doesn’t seem 100% transparent, and is there an environment texture applied to it, or is it actually reflecting the environment? It doesn’t seem to be accurately reflecting the environment, especially under the canopy

The glass isn't entirely transparent, you're right-- and it's supposed to be reflecting an environment map identical to the background, but I mucked up the settings before running the flyaround, and by the time I realized it the thing had already been run. :angesigh:

Quote:

3. you can see the interior is all grey, maybe that’s why you handled the glass as I mentioned above

Aside from the reflection muckups, yeah.

Quote:

4. the soffit has no texture, or bump to it

Um... what's a soffit? [img]redface2.gif[/img]

Quote:

5. the tree to the left under the canopy you can see the seam for the bark texture.

I must admit I was rather at a loss as to how to properly use photos of tree bark to texture those darn things-- I can't exactly stretch the picture far enough to hide the seams without it looking silly, nor tile it enough to make the bark small enough without it looking silly for being too tiled. Bah!

Quote:

6. the overall lighting seems like it could really be improved if “fakeosity” was at least introduced.

Ah, indeed-- if you'll notice, the shot I put up in my first post of the area under the carport features that very thing, which I learned how to do only AFTER making those flyarounds. When I run them again, the lighting will be different. As for the example you posted... the pics don't seem to be working for me. Drat.

Quote:

7. I’m starting to see that really all of the textures seem to lack some bump to them. The brick at the sidewalk looks flat or has no bump, the sidewalk concrete is tiling and has to bump, the rocks look flat w/no bump. Are you using bump on the textures?

Most everything (except the darn ground) has bump mapping on it. I guess I should turn it up a lot? Or maybe it's just the bad lighting... hmmmm.

Quote:

First off on this animation, for 00:00:33, it has a rather low quality IMHO. What resolution did you output at? What compression software did you use?

I don't remember the exact settings for each of those files-- that was quite a few months ago, and we're STILL trying to figure out how to use Cleaner 5. As for the animations being different... they were both encoded from the exact same set of frames, so except for the settings I don't see how different they could be.

Quote:

and the terrain has some dramatic drops, especially by the canopy, and then the grass stretches over the terrain here.

The terrain was made from topography lines imported from AutoCAD, with the handy Terrain tool.... I think I may need to just make it myself from scratch.

Quote:

That's why we make the big bucks!

We do? *looks around wondering where my own computer, tablet, bike, car, classes, and new place to live went*

Quote:

I wish you the best!

Thanks a lot for taking the time to look at all this!!

nisus · March 8th, 2003

Hi Paul and Gnarly... I guess you beat me on nisus-long posts ;-p loooool!

rgds

nisus

Gnarly Cranium · March 8th, 2003

So what are you waiting for, nisus? Can't let him get away with that-- show him up!!

Course, I already have to thank you for the conversation we had in the live chat-- I still can't BELIEVE I didn't think of the world-noise solution to the rock detailing... I tried it today, hooking up a bunch of my rock-objects to a Displace space warp with a noise map on it... all I have to do is MOVE them, and they just slither right together to fit!! I am SO ENRAGED!!

nisus · March 9th, 2003

Glad I helped you out

nisus (<-- learning to K.I.S.S.)

Paul Griger · March 10th, 2003

Quote:

… How does my work look overall?

Overall Gnarly I’d say that your looks very pleasing for client presentation. The points that I brought out are more fine-tuning things that the average client I would.

Quote:

what's a soffit?

it’s where the top of the exterior wall meets the underside of the roof. You typically would see exposed rafter tails here for this style of architecture, as you show on your house here.

Quote:

Most everything has bump mapping on it.

hummm, that surprises me a bit. Maybe it needs to be turned up :shrug:
do you have an actual texture map assigned to the bump channel in Max? I’ve never used Max, so maybe my guess here is way off.

Quote:

they were both encoded from the exact same set of frames, so except for the settings I don't see how different they could be.

I’m new at animation, so your guess is as good as mine. I have been using QT Pro, but I still have a lot to learn

Quote:

The terrain was made from topography lines imported from AutoCAD, with the handy Terrain tool.... I think I may need to just make it myself from scratch.

can you just fix that existing mesh?

Quote:

We do?

that’s what I hear anyways. It’s yet to come true for me

best,

paul

March 7th, 2003	#2 (permalink)
Paul Griger Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Milwaukee WI USA Posts: 437 Name: Paul Griger	Oh Gnarly, I REALLY like this!!! I don’t have time to give this a proper crit, but first glance it looks great. I love Greene & Greene style archi, I have always wanted to design a home on my own time just for the fun of it. Lucky you to get paid for this. I’ll get back to you when I get a chance later Solid 1st posting BTW! Best, Paul PS, is that a book you’d recommend? I have been kicking around which books would be good for G&G arhci. __________________ When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness. - Emo Philips

March 7th, 2003	#5 (permalink)
Paul Griger Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Milwaukee WI USA Posts: 437 Name: Paul Griger	Hi Gnarly! Well, I’m back. I’m surprised others haven’t jumped in here and said something. But you really haven’t asked for any specific crits, so maybe that explains why others haven’t commented here. Plus the downloads may be too much for some [but not me and my cable modem ] Well, upon further inspection, I have to say that everything was modeled quite nicely. The textures seem to be applied well also; no apparent stretching and such [except for what I’m gonna mention below] If I had to crit [and I do :&gt ], I’d say: 1. the grass, um, I se the desired effect you going for, but it looks kinda poor, especially in the close up shots. Either loose the pine needle effect and try just for grass, or, I’m not really sure :shrug: 2. the glass doesn’t seem 100% transparent, and is there an environment texture applied to it, or is it actually reflecting the environment? It doesn’t seem to be accurately reflecting the environment, especially under the canopy 3. you can see the interior is all grey, maybe that’s why you handled the glass as I mentioned above 4. the soffit has no texture, or bump to it. Shouldn’t it have some rough cedar texture to it? 5. the tree to the left under the canopy you can see the seam for the bark texture. the texture for the tree to the right in the same pic, well, the texture scale looks to big to me. And the lighting seems off to me for the bark texture also, don’t know why though :shrug: 6. the overall lighting seems like it could really be improved if “fakeosity” was at least introduced. Have you tried the three ring lighting method that Delfoz has shown here? http://www.cgarchitect.com/ubb/ultim...;f=23;t=000035 7. I’m starting to see that really all of the textures seem to lack some bump to them. The brick at the sidewalk looks flat or has no bump, the sidewalk concrete is tiling and has to bump, the rocks look flat w/no bump. Are you using bump on the textures? But this is I suppose just things for personal growth if the client is really happy with everything. Right now I would say that the look of the renders is somewhat stylized and not photoreal. If you are looking for a more photoreal, I think that some of the above points could be looked into. Also, as far as I can tell, the animation does need some work. Now mind you, I am just learning this myself, but a fresh eye always helps. One thing I would say is that there wasn’t a need to circle the house a couple of times before zooming in on the house. Before the camera zoomed into the canopy area, I thought the movie was just looping! And you know this already, but the camera transitions at times spun too fast and sped up/down at an unnatural rate. I still have to perfect this myself in w/C4D, but I’m sure there is a way in Max to ease in: ease out with the camera as it’s called in C4D. For transitions that are really tuff without doing a dramatic, rollercoaster style spin, maybe try fading out one camera view and then fading in a new camera view. I’m thinking specifically of the point in the movie when you have the camera at the tip of the canopy interior and then it spins around towards the exterior and then rapidly speeds up along the exterior path. If you could have faded out the canopy camera and then faded into a camera gently showing the rest of the exterior, that may have been more natural. Anyways, that’s my input for now. I seem to be able to pick things apart really easily, it’s the execution of the actual work for me that’s tougher best, paul P.S. I just got downloading the 2nd movie, I see that it is different from the first. First off on this animation, for 00:00:33, it has a rather low quality IMHO. What resolution did you output at? What compression software did you use? This one is smoother than the first. The 1st looked like it was at 12fps or maybe 15 fps, this looks more like it maybe at 29.xx fps or in that neighborhood, right? But here the grass is BAAAADDD! Sorry, but it appears so saturated compared to the backdrop. Plus the trees in the first did help. The overall brightness level of the house and grass doesn’t match the backdrop. Plus, the grass tiles really bad, and the terrain has some dramatic drops, especially by the canopy, and then the grass stretches over the terrain here. I wish you the best! Animation is another beast altogether. In a movie, they have people to model, others to tex, others for animation. We have to do all these jobs and well otherwise people pick up on it. It is not easy by any means. That's why we make the big bucks! I wish you the best! __________________ When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness. - Emo Philips

March 8th, 2003	#7 (permalink)
nisus Super Moderator Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Gent Flanders Belgium Europe Age: 33 Posts: 3,277 Name: Evert Vandenberghe	Hi Paul and Gnarly... I guess you beat me on nisus-long posts ;-p loooool! rgds nisus __________________ www.ams.be / www.nisusarts.com http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=nisusCGA&p=r

March 9th, 2003	#9 (permalink)
nisus Super Moderator Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Gent Flanders Belgium Europe Age: 33 Posts: 3,277 Name: Evert Vandenberghe	Glad I helped you out nisus (<-- learning to K.I.S.S.) __________________ www.ams.be / www.nisusarts.com http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=nisusCGA&p=r

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

March 7th, 2003	#1 (permalink)
Gnarly Cranium Member Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Oregon Posts: 79 Name: Leah Cooper	these pics are thumbnails, click em! This is the Rainey Falls, a house designed by Rick Wright of Wright Design Studio. More information on the house itself can be found on moreplans.com, it's the one at the bottom of the page of stock plans. I've made a flyaround, in two sizes, both mpegs. 7 meg flyaround 25 meg flyaround I built the 3D model myself in MAX 4.2 from floorplans imported from AutoCAD. I made everything in these scenes but the trees, and many of the textures are photos my boss took near the site where the house will be built. The thing is immense... and now I have to do an interior walkthrough! I've never done an interior before, and I don't know a thing about camera animation... as you will notice in my glitchy exterior flyarounds. The whole inside of the house is full of exposed beams with nifty rounded ends and wiggly curved intricate metal-banded thingies and knicknacks-- just like you see here underneath the carport. Somehow I have to figure out how to give the woodwork the kind of nice details it will take to bring out the beauty of it, with a decent workflow, and without putting my poly counts through the roof! The goal is a look rather like this.... I'm the only MAX user within miles of this office, self-taught, so if you guys see me making stupid mistakes as I go along, or have any handy tips, do please let me know!!

March 7th, 2003	#3 (permalink)
Gnarly Cranium Member Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Oregon Posts: 79 Name: Leah Cooper	Thanks Paul! I'm not terribly into houses myself, being more of a sci-fi 'gimme an alien and teach me how to animate it eating space marines!' type person... but yeah, this house rocks, and I'm looking forward to spiffying it all up! As for the book... I've actually got a copy of it one foot from my left elbow right now, and it's packed full of sticky notes marking pages, not to mention half its pages are about to fall out from being leafed through so much! The book isn't mine, it's Rick's-- but man are some of these pics pretty!

March 7th, 2003	#4 (permalink)
Gnarly Cranium Member Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Oregon Posts: 79 Name: Leah Cooper	Moving right along... Here's a screenshotof what I'm dealing with, and how I'm doing it. I imported the floorplans, and various detail drawings, and I've slapped them right into the scene in the proper spots, tipping the detail drawings up against the walls where they go. And here's a closeup of the metal bands and wood bits, I've worked a lot on the materials, though the lighting will be the real test of how it looks-- and that's what I'm doing last. This is the band material I used on the exterior... I'm not sure how much I should change it for the inside, where it isn't going to get weathered the same.

March 8th, 2003	#8 (permalink)
Gnarly Cranium Member Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Oregon Posts: 79 Name: Leah Cooper	So what are you waiting for, nisus? Can't let him get away with that-- show him up!! Course, I already have to thank you for the conversation we had in the live chat-- I still can't BELIEVE I didn't think of the world-noise solution to the rock detailing... I tried it today, hooking up a bunch of my rock-objects to a Displace space warp with a noise map on it... all I have to do is MOVE them, and they just slither right together to fit!! I am SO ENRAGED!!

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)