Making of Loft in Athens

Article written by Vasilis Koutlis.

Hi all. My name is Vasilis Koutlis from xDream3D which is a visualization studio located in Greece. First of all, I would like to thank RenderSpirit for giving me the opportunity to present my last piece of work and write this short article for you. One of my clients, architect Joanna Skoufali, introduced me to this small project and asked me to do my best for her portfolio. First, she sent me the 3d model and some referential images to work on them, as shown below. The software I used is 3ds Max 2012, Mudbox, Vray and Photoshop.

After one week of ”hard” work I handed her 3 rendered images in different resolution of 300DPI, as shown below.

Modeling

As usual, the 3d model wasn’t perfect so I had to draw it from scratch. I designed almost everything except for some furniture and decorative objects which are designed by Evermotion and Design Connected Company.

First of all, I began with bed modeling. The ”Ghost” bed is from Gervasoni, an Italian furniture manufacturer, designed by Paola Navone. In order to have the right proportions, I got the 2d plans from their website. I also used Mudbox for better results at the quilts and seams. Finally, I created its materials inside a Vray studio lighting which I have created myself. For the tent model I used the spline modeling method because it was easy to follow the horizontal beams and then, using some modifiers as extrude, shell and turbosmooth. Finally, I would like to point out something that usually happens but which I don’t see in several renderings. What is it? The simple chamfer at each object’s edge. This small detail makes your work more realistic.

Lighting & Cameras

What I find very interesting is testing several lighting conditions on each and every project.

Camera_01: I used a daylight system combined with an Hdri map in a dome light and Vray sun. Here I was inspired by Peter Guthrie. I also added plane type VrayLights out of the windows to achieve better shades and I activated Skylight portal. Finally, some IES lights because the client asked for them. It’s better not to use spotlights in clear daylight. In the real world there is almost no flare when a spot is on during the strong daylight. As for the camera, I preferred neutral white balance because I liked the diffuse colours which came from Hdri Light. The camera’s position is a really important thing. When I started spending my free time with my DSLR Canon camera and also observing several architectural photographers, I realised that my shots had improved.

Camera_02: I used a daylight system again but this time without Hdri and dome light. Because of the curtains, this room didn’t have much light so I turned on some spotlights with simple plane type Vray lights(3). I also used two sphere type Vray lights (4) for the lamps on the concrete wall. Finally, a Vray sun behind my camera because I wanted to hit the concrete wall and the bed’s headboard.

Camera_03: I used a night light system adding {a base dome type} Vray light (1) with Hdri. Then, I started testing the indoor lighting (3) and finally the rest of the exterior lighting (2-4-5). As I didn’t have much time to work inside Max, I chose to improve my rendered image in Photoshop with a lot of post production.

Materials

In my opinion, materials are the most important part of 3d visualization. If an image doesn’t have proper lighting you can improve it in Ps but when you create low quality materials there is nothing you can do. Three useful tips are high resolution textures, correct uvw mapping and realistic material settings ( IOR, Glossiness, etc.). I rarely use prepared Vray materials without changing their parameters and I usually create them from scratch. Try to find awesome tutorials on the internet likeVisCorbels’ last one, ”Creating Vray Materials Vol.1”. Another thing that can improve your renderings is the Ambient Occlusion parameter. You can add AO effect with three different ways.
1. After your final rendering, use Vray AO plugin and add it in Ps.
2. Turn on AO parameter inside Vray Render Setup.
3. On some materials, add a Vray dirt map inside diffuse map to get a similar result. In this project I have used the third method as shown below.

Now I would like to show you some of the materials I made to improve the final result.

1. Tent Fabric: Even though I tried a Falloff map for diffuse colour, I finally preferred a simple saturated white diffuse color (RGB : 201, 198, 192). The only map I used was a 50% mixed Bump map. For IOR I did a lot of test renderings to approach the referential image.

2. Tent Metal: For the metal beams I created a dark grey scratched metal. An orange- Grey saturated tone as Diffuse Color (RGB: 51, 46, 45) and a simple dark grey as Reflect Color (RGB: 0, 0, 29) which I mixed it 50% with a falloff map which has a very sharp curve. Finally, a mixed bump map with 20% noise and 80% scratches. A final tip is the different uvw box map I used for each beam.

3. Wall Interior: Vray can give you a really good wall material with just a default Vray Mtl and a diffuse colour. I have used it in the past but lately I like making more realistic materials so this material, as shown below, is more complex.

4. Wall Exterior: At camera 03 I designed the exterior balcony with turbosmooth modifier and I made a more complex material than Wall Interior using a Vray Blend Material to add some dirt on the edges of the wall. I also increased the bump amount as it’s an exterior Wall.

5. Concrete Floor: I used the same material for both base and coat. The only difference is that coat material has a slight darker colour hue. The most interesting part of this material is the mixed reflect map. With this tip I succeeded in creating a more powerful reflection on the highlighted parts of tiles and therefore a more realistic result.

Rendering

What I want to make clear about render settings is that you don’t have to increase the parameters a lot. If you have created your materials carefully and you keep testing them one by one adding the correct subdivision values in order not to have strong shades, the result will also be satisfactory and of course the rendering time will be reduced.

I spent about 2-3 hours for each of the three rendered images using a small network of 16 cores, 12GB of ram and an Fx4800 Quadro Nvidia card. As shown below, I use LWF (Linear Work Flow) and Gamma 2.2. This is the best way to succeed in creating nice and smooth shades as it offers you a high range of midtones. I would like to share with you my rendering setting for camera 03. I didn’t put a lot of effort into this shot as I didn’t have enough time. So I worked more in Photoshop.

Post Production

I always use PS for post-production. I’ve seen a lot of techniques on the internet and I’ve created my own way of combining them. Look at the two images below to understand the huge difference and the importance of process and improvement of a rendered image. This process usually takes me between 1-2 hours and sometimes maybe more.

Let’s see now this process step by step.

1. I made a mask on the Rgb layer using the RenderID for an easier selection.

2. I imported the background and I made a mask changing the Sky. Then, I added another sky and I tried some color corrections on both of them to simulate the colours with the mood of my image.

3. I started working with raw layers. I used soft light blending mode for GI, Reflection, Refraction, Shadow and Total Lighting layers. Color and Linear Dodge Add for Raw Lighting and Linear Dodge Add for Specular. I used opacity values between 10-50%. Wherever I didn’t want them I made masks to reduce the effect, always using the three render layers which helped me select areas with colour range tools(MtlID, ObjID and RenderID). When you work with all these render layers you can improve your lighting and the contrast of levels, as shown below.

4. After I had finished with raw layers, I observed that I had two colours for light. One bluish on the building and one that was more like purple on the background.So I had to choose which of the two would be better for the atmosphere that I wanted to achieve. I chose purple and I began the colour correction by adding some adjustment layers like Colour Balance and Levels, as shown below (1st image) and I went on to add Selective Color ( 2nd image).

5. Then, I realised I needed some flares. I used Knoll Light Factory plugin with screen blending mode and a general opacity of 65% because I liked a smoother result.

6. Finally, I made some further colour corrections using Lens Correct and Chromatic Aberration. Then I made my image sharper and gave it a warmer feeling by adding curves and a vignette effect.

To conclude, I would like to thank you for watching and tell you that I’m at your disposal for any further details you may want to know.

Final renderings:

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