Hill House

[JCA131]

A few images from a residential project I worked on for fun, trying to learn how to put together a decent exterior scene. I still think the foreground and midground trees could use some work. Any comments/ suggestions are appreciated.

All were Easy08, about an hour and a half or two hours, color correction/brightness in PS.

[Fletch]

These are really great! The architecture part looks great.
Vegetation is the only weak spot - just needs better trees and some taller grass popping up in places in the foreground.

[marvins_dad]

I like it!

[JCA131]

Thanks for the comments guys. I agree that the vegetation is weak. I created the background using one of Oli's curved treelines, then a row of mid-ground clip map 2D trees to hide the edge between the site mesh and the curved background. I used a spherical image for the sky.

Here is a slightly different view. I wanted to try to fix the grass in the foreground but using the layer mask method would cover all of the foreground shadows (unless I understand that method wrong). I accidentally came across another method in Photoshop and i thought it helped with the grass a little bit.

Any pointers on creating more believable vegetation for the scene?

[Fletch]

while it looks REALLY good right now, I would imagine that this hill would be a more "natural" landscape of wildgrass and weeds, not a mown lawn.
A foreground element is important for depth.

[stallini]

my eye going to the point where the column's meet the ground, it looks to perfect. Maybe some growies at the base going up the columns?

[flipya]

Really nice renders! I like the ivy growing on the wall and texturing of the concrete's pretty neat

Most people already know this tutorial but if you don't, it might help with achieving what Fletch mentioned.

I wanted to try to fix the grass in the foreground but using the layer mask method would cover all of the foreground shadows

That is a downside of that method. One solution I sometimes use is go to Sketchup and get the exact same view as you rendered. Then choose a Style with a white background (like Engineering Style)and set your faces to hidden line. Now turn on your shadows and in Shadow Settings set the Dark slider all the way to the left. Then you export the SU image with the same dimensions and load this into photoshop. Copy it by using Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C, then going over to your project document and pressing Ctrl+V. Now add a hue/saturation adjustment layer above your grass image and make it clip to just that layer (by alt-clicking on the line between the two in your layers window). Now you can use the magic wand tool on the layer with the SU-output to select the shadows you want to show on the 'real' grass, and with the selection still active go over to the adjustmentlayer's mask and fill the selection with black. Now change the lightness and saturation here to a lower value. You might need to invert the mask by pressing CTRL+I. For more realism it's essential to add some gaussian blur to the mask, the value depending on how soft the sun was set for your actual render. If you want to take it even further (like me usually) you can also use the 'grass brush on mask' method you already learned and apply this technique to the edges of your shadow.
I used this technique here and here with a somewhat acceptable result.
Hope this makes at least some sense, if it doesn't feel free to let me know and I'll make a tutorial with some pictures.

Check out this link for some grass, this one might work well for you if you flip it horizontally.

Cheers,

Philip

EDIT:

If you want to take it even further (like me usually) you can also use the 'grass brush on mask' method you already learned and apply this technique to the edges of your shadow.

Make sure you use a white brush on the far side of the shadow (the side furthest away from the camera) and a black one on the side close to the camera.

Also note that trees that have the leaves constructed out of images (like the awesome ones by Tom) instead of actual geometry the foliage will cast a much denser and rougher shadow in the SU window than in your actual render and therefore using SU shadow-output might not look all that great. In that case I'd take an isolated tree image, with no background, transform/warp it into the place and shape you want the shadow to be, and then use that as a selection for the masking of your Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

Come to think of it, if more people have this problem I really should sit down and write an extensive tutorial about it...

[JCA131]

Wow Philip, thanks a lot for the instructions. Your method definitely looks great for your project, I'll have to give it a try when I have some time to go back to this. And i think everyone would benefit from a tutorial on it if you have the time. Thanks again