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Post Your RW9 Renderings!


Ken

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It would be nice to see user examples of Renderworks renderings -- especially version 9 stuff. NNA's gallery images are too polished (with little indication of what software and what versions they used).

Please post yours here. It's easy if you have some web space. Just follow the UBB Code instructions.

Can RW match a simple Art?lantis rendering like this?

frontleft.jpg .

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I'm always interested in other work as well.

I have two renderings in the Renderworks gallery. The two on top for Omni Architects. All the Hard stuff is all done in VW/RW 8.5.2 and the soft stuff is photoshop. The sky is also added in photoshop. You can also look at our website www.omniarchitects.com for more examples. Most of the renderings are under the "firm" and the "on the boards"

And to answer your question. Yes RW can match Artlantis, but not on it's own, Photshop is essential, and very useful for adjusting color and contrast anyway. I haven't gotten RW 9 yet but with the alpha channel image map transparency I think it will come very close to what you've done here.

Nice work

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MikeB, yours look very clean and detailed. Excellent images. The trees look like they took some processing time? The Omniarchitects web site is also cool.

"Soft stuff" done in Photoshop? You mean the human figures in the foreground as well as adding the sky? I use Photoshop, too, but only to resize and resave as JPEG. Sometimes to sharpen or blur. Any additional editing gets too involved for me.

As for my rendering above, it's practically stock AR3 -- not even AR3.5 or AR4! The sky is simply a picture I downloaded -- any PICT, TIFF, JPG, GIF, etc. (i think) -- anything with some blue and some clouds in the upper half. AR has a "stretched image background" feature that's a snap. It's practically idiot-proof. The trees are simple wall slabs in VW facing the viewer. AR has tree shaders that you simply drag into the scene, then adjust its size, color, proportion, bump, etc. at any time. Human figure shaders are the same. All that green stuff is similar. What's left is just an embellished massing model, which is part of my construction drawings file! Notice the simplistic windows and skylights.

Also notice that the roof has ugly swirls and an "optical seam" at a diagonal. Those are some of the limitations of AR3. Art?lantis images are also more "austere" looking than perhaps VW with Lightscape -- or Renderworks? I don't know.

Hopefully others can post their RW renderings. smile.gif

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Yeah, Soft Stuff is people, trees, and their shadows. The sky is added in photoshop. I found if you render with a black background in VW/RW (simply turn your screen color to black in your prefs) it's easier to select the background with the magic wand in Photoshop, and the glass renders better too (go figure?).

The trees are a piece of cake. I have a couple of CD's with images of people and trees. They already have a white background, so in photoshop I select by color range, the invert the selection, then contract it by one pixel (this clips the edges and gets a cleaner profile). Then simply cut and paste into the image of the building.

I do alot of other touching up to make the images more natural. Over all i spend from 15 to 30 hours on the renderings. Half that time is in VW and half in Photoshop.

I think your swirls come from the image resolution. I usually export from VW with about an 81/2" x 11" image at over 300 ppi. This will typically get rid of the swirls ( they usually show up in my brick maps). I see the diagional line but what do you mean by "optical seam", and where does it come from?

Thanks for the compliment on the web site, another guy in the office did it. It's all done with Go Live.

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Nice renderings!

I'm quite surprised that Photoshop was involved for everybody (so far). How much work is required after RW? I'm admittedly not a Photoshop expert. I'm still using v4.0LE and never do more than a few minutes of contrast adjustment or sharpening. Is this what you guys mean by using Photoshop -- or are you actually editing with brushes, colors and layers?

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Gblyth

Those kick ass. How do you get your screens to look self illuminated? I've been doing some trade show work on the side, and I haven't been able to get the screens right. Also in one of them you had some translucent drapes, How did you do that? Did you add the lense flars on the lights in Photoshop? Really nice!

Archken- Like I said I use photoshop to add people, trees, skies, ground clutter in the background, and adjust color/contrast (sometime RW stuff looks rather dull). Lately I've been adding some gradients to surfaces in photoshop to make them appear to darken as they receed into the distance. It takes some time but It really helps the rendering look more natural. On exterior renderings I will usually replace the grass with something more realistic(I've made some custom grass textures but they never look as good as ones I paste in in Photoshop). Anyway about 1/2 my time is in Photoshop.

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Thanks.

I do have done most of my past rendering work in Photoshop and have just started to add color 3d models to my work. So, I know lot of Photoshop tricks. Here is a link that is a total Photoshop rendering (I used VW To make a very basic 3-model for the perspective.) http://members.bellatlantic.net/~gblyth/fox_sports.htm I add all the lens flares, figures, curtains, and computer screens in with Photoshop. I spend a lot of time working with the RW lights control. (I started as a theater designer and learned early the importance of good lighting.) I will also use Photoshop to go in a burn and dodge walls or flooring to give a more natural shadowing effect.

I like RW because I have been using VW for so long and it is somewhat simple to use. But I feel that I am pushing as far as it will take me. I want to upgrade to VW & RW 9. Can anyone tell me if they are great improvements? Also, can anyone help me with this. If I want to output a Lightworks Raymaker image from VW to .jpg, I need to do a screen render first and then I have to re-render to an output file (typically at 2500 x 1600 pixels @ 150 pixels per inch). Is there any way to avoid rendering two times? Is this fixed in RW9?

This summer I am planning to attempt to learn 3Dstudio Max. Has anyone worked with this program?

Thanks

GBlyth

[This message has been edited by GBlyth (edited 04-20-2001).]

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Yes, that rendering is also nice.

But how about the main point of the issue -- the strength of RW? Especially version 9. And especially RW vs. other rendering apps?

Of course, using Photoshop is fine if:

1) your project budget can afford the time (and associated costs)

2) you know how to use it (like some of us know VW)

3) you have the "artistic eye" to get useful results quickly (bravo to those who do)

4) your rendered design does not change much after presentation (requiring another presentation)

5) your rendering doesn't involve a lot of precise structural or spatial constructs

Indeed there are many software applications out there, like Painter, which is probably superior to Photoshop for artistic editing. Canvas is also more flexible than Photoshop. But that's getting into digital illustration rather than letting the software do the rendering for you, no?

I'd love to see more RW renderings -- even if raw.

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Archken - you wrote:

Also notice that the roof has ugly swirls and an "optical seam" at a diagonal. Those are some of the limitations of AR3. Art?lantis images are also more "austere" looking than perhaps VW with Lightscape -- or Renderworks? I don't know.

I am a formZ user and it is the same problems in the FZ RenderZone application with swirls like that.

The solution of the problem with the swirls (in FZ) is to render the image in a much higher resolution and then resample it in Photoshop. (image/resample...).

I don?t know if this work with RW and Artlantis but give it a try.

Do you have the same problems with brick textures?

[This message has been edited by Knut Oderud (edited 04-21-2001).]

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Sorry for the multiple posts but I only got error messages and did not see my new replies. I have also tried to delete the messages without any result.

There should be a possibility to clear the cookie as it is in The vBulletin Board by Jelsoft. (Tech: It is a ten times more polite board).

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You got some nice stuff there, GBlyth. Are you photographing your scale figures to order and Photoshopping them in, or is there a source that you'd be willing to share? wink.gif

One of my larger issues with digital rendering is getting decent scale figures that I can blend into the scene. Full body poses are hard for me to find, moreso if I want them facing away or in profile (walking past things or looking up at the imag screen in a biz meeting set).

Also, GBlyth, in response to your question about JPEGing. I usually don't bother doing an export for the very reason you cite-I just use the Render Preview button, and paste the resulting bitmap into Photoshop, ultimately saving out of Photoshopas a JPEG. Would this work for you, or am I missing your point?

Archken, to address your question about using Photoshop. I consider getting the raw render out of VW to be step one. Step two is taking the raw render, and turning it into a finished rendering.

For the work that I do, primarily of the show biz ilk, a rendering's heaviest lifting is not to provide a look at the finished product, but to provide an emotional sense of the moment for the client. If I can show them a picture that conveys a sense of how it feels to be there, not just a mechanically perfect perspective, they are more likely to bite.

Since RW does not support volumetric lighting, or atmospheric effects like haze/fog, and has only recently expanded its texture controls to include transparency maps and whatnot, I need to use other tools. Sometimes, especially for things that are unique in a scene (Like a single light fixture), it is easier to draw it up in Illustrator and pop in into the rendering in Photoshop than to try to model it up in VW.

Dramatic shafts of light, faking depth of field to shift the client's focus, or inserting the people enjoying themselves into a scene, are all impossible for me to do with RW alone. Mr. Photoshop and his sister are champion butt savers for me.

Like GBlyth, my background is in design for the stage, so renderings often have a different intent than for other fields, and usually the raw render just won't cut it.

If you can afford it, think about Photoshop 6. the History Pallette alone is a gift from God. If you need more substantial rendering muscle, though, you'll probably have to look at dedicated products like Cinema 4D, formZ, Lightwave, etc. Cinema is owned by the same company that owns VW, so there's some speculation that integration between the 2 may be forthcoming. And they have just introduced a much cheaper alternative (C4D Art) to their animation tool (C4D XL), aimed at print and illustration. Dedicated products deliver much more robust rendering, but VW is a much stronger CAD tool than most, if not all of them. If you need the CAD capability, you may need to stick with the VW/RW package. As a user, Knut would be better able than me to speak to formZ's strengths in the drafting area.

Hope this helps-god knows its long enough!

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Archken:

To speak to your comments-

All the renderings on this page...

http://homepage.mac.com/troy_williams/PhotoAlbum.html

All were created In RenderWorks with very little Photoshop post rendering work. (Just the Gal in the shelves)

As far as curves and "spiral shapes" - Julian Carr has created a superior (and inexpensive) plug-in for those tasks... Fully integrated into the symbol LIB for ease of edit...

-Troy

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  • 1 month later...

I add all my figures in in Photoshop. I have collected a clip art collection of them from video grabs, magazines, and other clip art collections. (There are few out there that you can buy. Take a look at http://www.imagecels.com/) One tick for keeping the figure in scale is to add a 3-d figure of marker in the rendering in your model then Photoshop the figure on top of it. You may still need to adjust a little. And don't forget to give the figure a shadow and some floor reflection.

ajs, I will try to use the preview tool. But I need my output to be at least 150 dpi. Dose the preview tool only output at 72dpi?

troypwms, some great stuff. The trim looks great and the white on white is really sharp. How did you wrap it around the columns?

Has anyone played with RW 9? Is it any better. I have been reading a lot on these board about the bugs in VW9. I was planning to upgrade this month but I think that I should wait a little.

Thanks,

GBLyth.

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GBlyth, thanks for the pointer to imagecels. They got some Nice Stuff.

In both VW 8 and 9, when you select the Render Preview tool (the one button palette), a button appears up in the main toolbar. It has the same icon as the one on the palette. Just click on it, and up pops a preference dialog, giving you resolution and depth controls.

Re: RW9 On my Mac dual 450, 9.0.4 it seems to have many improvements. One big caveat is that if you open an RW8 file in RW9, be prepared for Much Misery, as the RW8 textures play hell with RW9. Count on creating all new textures. I have not used 9 as much as 8, yet, but many things do seem to be better.

-edited for typos

[This message has been edited by ajs (edited 06-11-2001).]

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