Rendering of proposed construction in existing urban area

[jgmrussell]

Hi, I may be asked to provide a photo-realistic rendering of a proposed structure (new construction) in a small city urban island (area surrounded by streets). I'm looking to see if there are any good examples done in VW. I did a search, but nothing came up. If anybody has a link to any examples, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you.

John

[Tom Klaber]

VW tends to fall short of Photoreal. I am as big a fanboy as there is - but you are not going to get results that match what Maxwell or V-Ray can do.

Attached are some renderings I did while at The Turett Collaborative. We were doing a 9 story condo here in NYC. They were OK for public hearings.

I used Camera match to line up the with the photos - would have been nearly impossible otherwise - then photoshop work to try and match the shadows. Also - these were done in VW2012 (maybe 2011. VW rendering has seen some upgrades since then.

Edited May 19, 2016 by Tom Klaber

[jgmrussell]

Thanks Tom. Great examples.

John

[PVA - Admin]

Thank you for the examples as well.

You CAN get photorealistic in Vectorworks but it is significantly more work and time investment than it would be in the above mentioned packages. They have many more rendering-specific workflow optimizations in addition to some of them having more advanced rendering engines fundamentally that can take advantage of GPU rendering or spread renders across multiple machines and do advanced animations, etc.

Our prescribed path at the moment for taking it to the more advanced levels is Vectorworks > C4D (where you have much greater control as well as a wide selection of rendering engines) and there will be more improvements to that pipeline coming.

[zoomer]

You CAN get photorealistic in Vectorworks but it is significantly more work and time investment than it would be in the above mentioned packages.

I don't think it is more work. In contrary.

But there are some limitations that, ah ..., limit,

while on the other hand making things easier and faster.

And UV options aren't that bad in 80% but they should work for all kind of geometry

and in the same way, to allow basic Plane/Cube/Cylinder/Sphere mappings from

an explicit origin. Needing some additional work with Attribute Mapping Tool is ok

I think. A little missing in control for organic geometries.

Render default settings are quite good without much need for tweaking.

Just Material Settings aren't optimized for photorealistic purposes.

They stuck in the time when C4D told users that units are unimportant, could be

anything and everybody modeled 200 m chairs and played with fakelights

without proper attenuation, even after GI implementation.

Missing brightness amount slider when using image textures (filter color only)

to set correct absorption values and no image transparency slider to desaturate

or color correct textures in a controlled way make materials not look better.

So you may have to do more work on the texture side outside of VW, yes.

The rest is some knowledge and experience in Material/shader Setting where the

software can't help in most cases.

[Tom Klaber]

Renderworks certainly has gotten a lot better. It really is leaps and bounds better than it was even 4 years ago. But it is still best not to go into thinking it has the power of C4D, Maxwell, or V-Ray.

I really like it because it is easy to use, fast, and the outputs can be quite good for most applications. Jim and Zoomer are technically correct - you could get something out that you could claim is photoreal - with a significant amount of back-end work to make the textures - but even so - it is not going to be of the quality you can get with one of those other packages.

I would love a better "Photo-Real" texture and object library - messy beds, better soft goods, couches with throws, and better fabric textures.

[jgmrussell]

I've got a book here that I bought along time ago, Images of Cad by Nemetschek from 2004. It has some amazing photo-realistic designs that are breathtaking, the one of the SS pots and kettle on page 113 is amazing. Now I'm sure these were not all done on VW but I'd be surprised if most are not as it would be a major scandal if Nemetschek stole these deigns for themselves lol.

John

[PVA - Admin]

There's also some discrepancy about "photorealistic" as a word, the general definition is "this is a realistic style of rendering" as opposed to an artistic style like hidden line or a cartoon-esque style like openGL with edges.

There theres photorealistic as "I thought I was looking at a real thing." which is orders of magnitude harder to get to the level of.

[zoomer]

For me photorealism isn't important.

I like hard edged geometry, cleaner as it will be built in the end.

Important for me is the flow of light by direct and global illumination

to understand spaces.

I'm no friend of photorealistic textures, I prefer simple colors with correct

attenuation.

Some of my clients may see this different but often I am lucky.

Still think, for the average VW user or architects, it is important that ease

of use is more important than unlimited features, which contradicts.

And that is very ok to have to buy specialized solutions if visualization

gets a larger importance in individual needs.

If other needed improvements of VW and ease of use wouldn't suffer,

of course, include the whole C4D program, as it will be always less loss

when doing all in one software.

But the next full features wishes will come from energy consultants,

drainage experts, fire department, theatre directors and such

[PVA - Admin]

Well yeah, but the thread topic here is specifically regarding photorealism. Don't worry about making requests at the expense of others or anything like that, the balance takes place here internally.

[zoomer]

Well yeah, but the thread topic here is specifically regarding photorealism. Don't worry about making requests at the expense of others or anything like that, the balance takes place here internally.

My point of view only, doesn't mean that is valid for everyone.

If it is that most non RW users don't do much rendering at all but the large

majority of RW users wants and needs photorealism,

I don't think there is much to balance internally

So it (or I) should concentrate here on what is currently missing in RW ...

[zoomer]

I think screenshots like this are quite ok for me,

from inside a "CAD" App.

Everthing still WIP.

Not much texture work, pure RW.

Beside the semi-conductor look of the columns as there is no way to have

a fresnel effect and realistically dimm the specular reflections.

Edited May 21, 2016 by zoomer

[J. Wallace]

That looks great Zoomer, thanks for posting.

[Benson Shaw]

Nice, Zoomer. I like the distorted reflections and glare in the shiny floor. Seems it was recently cleaned and waxed with a big rotary floor polisher.

-B

[zoomer]

Nice, Zoomer. I like the distorted reflections and glare in the shiny floor. Seems it was recently cleaned and waxed with a big rotary floor polisher.

-B

Thanks,

the floor is so far the only material where I left my path of an idealistic visualization

towards a small step in direction of photo realism. So there are far more possibilities

in RW. Beside the basic concrete texture, everything else has no image textures so far,

just my grids to control the design. Important for me my base is a physical correct

setting of GI and material absorption.

From my experience such an example is already a bit more "photorealistic" than what

the thread starters clients may expect. I heard it looks "like a photo" for images very

far from that.

And I'm sure he can please his clients with the possibilities given in RW !

I agree RW is limited in total realism.

As even new things have a lot of imperfections, you have to include all these bevels,

scratches, scares and dirt in your renderings, to get rid of the artificial CG look.

That is where you need things like variation shaders, round edges shaders, very

good image textures instead of procedural textures and the ability to UVW and layer

shaders/textures at different scales.

A large part of this can and will be done in photoshop post production.

[Andy Broomell]

Zoomer, could you tell us more about how you set up the shaders of your floor texture to achieve the distorted reflections? Thanks!

[zoomer]

Short : Reflection with 4% Roughness + Noise in Bump with 2% Strength.

Diffuse :

Dark Blue Color (Very Dark)

Brightness 80 % (means 20 % general Absorption, set always between 70-80%)

Specular Reflection :

Glass (To get Fresnel, which did not really work)

Edge Color 50% gray (Dimmed Fresnel from standard white color)

Center Color 96% gray (As all Dielectrics have only between 2-5% specular Reflection)

Transparency :

None

Bump :

Noise

Noise Type Sparse Convolution

Strength 2 %

Nice thing about PBR is that your materials will work in any file or situation.

So could be Sunset/News Time also :

[Andy Broomell]

Ahh, the bump is the thing I wasn't thinking of. Thank you!!

Also, it took my brain a minute to realize PBR meant Physically-Based Rendering and not Pabst Blue Ribbon (beer), which I could use right now

[PVA - Admin]

Thank you for detailing that Zoomer! Bumps configured like that are an excellent way of adding that kind of blurring without actually having to resort to the "Blur" shading in reflectivity or transparency which is very expensive rendering-time wise. But this waxed floor look is a particularly good implementation of it.

[zoomer]

To make that floor not look like a pond you would have to add all those scratches by

scratch maps (bump) and control all those variations in reflections by maps or noises.

https://www.bg-clean.de/images/bg-clean/Bildleisten/linoleum-pfarramt/13a-linoleum.jpg

http://www.ks-boden.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/linoleum_boden_fabriketage_IMG_5770.jpg

[zoomer]

Would not call that photo realistic but as an example that RW has the potential

to create attractive images to explain a design to a client.

View from (WIP) outside :

[barkest]

Hey Zoomer

not Photorealistic but very good indeed

Edited May 25, 2016 by barkest

[Dave Donley]

Very nice Zoomer, note that in 2016 you can set a panoramic image background just for reflections, to show like trees in the window reflections. Also this background can be created using a Photosphere from your phone. Here is one I took in Savannah for example.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9btj4txhin2gatx/Savannah%20Photosphere.jpg?dl=0

Edited May 26, 2016 by Dave Donley

[Tom Klaber]

I have not gotten that to work. I need to try again. It should help a lot. You can get closer to photo-real images for interiors than you can for exteriors. - The reflections should help close that gap.

I think the biggest deficit is the available libraries. The engine itself is good - but most available textures are not. Even the new arroway texture libraries are not that great - the tiling is pretty bad on a lot. Also, the entourage library is close to terrible. Beds, couches, fabrics, - are all a couple generations old - and give away the renderings right away.

[zoomer]

Thanks Dave, didin't know that.

It is a good idea to separate Sky Visibility and Reflection from GI Illumitation.

Little unsure what will happen with different exposure settings for my cameras.

Like in this case where the Physical Sky is washed out.

Tom,

I think that will get much better with coming Ressource Manager and Jim's

high res Material Previews.