Residential Exteriors

Cheers for all the feed back.. really good stuff.. I will try and answer each comment: Once I uploaded these images to this thread, they have really blurred. Obviously compression issue. They are much sharper on screen, honestly...;) The grass is a displacement map, with a 4 fold UVW map applied to avoid tiling. I did add some bump and noise to the stucco map, but yes, it could do with a bit more "roughness" to it. Hold my hands up to the roof tiles.. absolutely 100% flat..! I was thinking about displacing them, or adding a simple relief in the model.. but didnt.. I will look into a simple way of repeating a modelling solution for these I think.. Sun from behind camera.. One I am always wary of, hence a few trees behind the camera to try and break it up a bit. But yes, they could do with some contrast between surfaces. Plants.. I keep meaning to go thru my library of plants and sort the materials out, as I am pretty sure that with some good materials, they would look a lot better.. Cheers guys, always good to hear from fellow pro's.. :D

Some additional crits for consideration: 1. The modeling looks good, but I think the materials in general fall short. They all appear flat. Not sure what the white material is? Maybe stucco or plaster of some sort? Could use some bump or subtle dirt/grunge variation to give it some life. The bricks and shingles suffer the same problem. Also, give the glass more reflections. 2. The biggest issue with your lighting is that the sun is coming from directly behind the camera. This results in images being over lit with no depth or contrast. You need shadows to get contrast and depth in the image. You should cross light your scene to some degree. Try getting the sun so your less dominate building facade is in shade. I think this alone will significantly increase your rendering appeal. 3. I second the blur factor comment. 4. I actually disagree with the plant comments. I think they're actually pretty good - would focus on other aspects of the images before touching them up.

The plants do look out of place, but if the customer is happy, then yes, the work is finished. I like the house though. John

If the customer is happy, yes, the work is done. However, did you try to go down to 0,1 on bitmap blur on the bricks? I think the house is too blurry, whether it be dof, photoshop post or bitmap blur parameter. How did you do the grass?

Fair enough Andy, but once you start to build up libraries etc it doesnt have to take too long, but we have 3d plants for those occasional quick jobs with minimal fee..

Very true.. I am in the process of sorting some of these out, so time to focus I think...!

Fair enough Andy, but once you start to build up libraries etc it doesnt have to take too long, but we have 3d plants for those occasional quick jobs with minimal fee..

Yes, I have done that before. Im trying to get to a point where I can keep the PS work down to a minimum, especially adding plants, shadows, making it tonally correct etc.. Cheers

Andy, If the clients happy then job done. We tend to photoshop plants into stills, we feel it provides the best results.

Hi Andy, It could use some AO, or better lighting. In the last picture I almost can't see the edge between the 2 houses. Second comment is about the greens, In my opinion they are to saturated, could be more yellowgreen. Good Luck, And i hope that you get more work, things are picking up also in Holland at the moment.

Luc, It has a seperate AO pass on it, multiplied in PS.. So not sure what more I could do on that.. Its set to 30% opacity, and any more starts to look stupid. I didnt think the lighting was that bad.. maybe its my the monitor.. Could you elaborate what you mean..? I did try and de-saturate the greens.. they have already been toned down in PS. I did notice they have been compressed somewhat on upload to here, so I dont think that is helping.. Neil yes, I may have to look at some different plants, or at least the materials in them.. Any suggestions as to what makes a better job of it.. Im trying to keep the rendering over head low. They are evermotion plants as Vrayproxies.. Any suggestions on better solutions would be great.. Having said that, bottom line is, the client likes them.. ;) Cheers guys

Not sure the 3d plants work.

Hi Andy, It could use some AO, or better lighting. In the last picture I almost can't see the edge between the 2 houses. Second comment is about the greens, In my opinion they are to saturated, could be more yellowgreen. Good Luck, And i hope that you get more work, things are picking up also in Holland at the moment.