A House Design.......

[Neill Wood]

A house design I have been playing around with.
I am a project manager of a small building firm in Wellington NZ and have been playing around with a few designs.
They are not very exciting designs but it's what the market wants at the moment.
Any suggestions and ideas as far as the rendering is concerned would be fantastic.
There are a couple of funny bits in the soffit fascia areas but it is probably due to the modeling.........
This was done on 08 Exterior and ran for 7 hours.
No post pro done yet.

Cheers Neill

[Fletch]

Very good!
Needs some warmth, and some post-pro vegetation or better 3D vegetation.
Then, maybe a final touch: [Post Production - Secret 1]

[Neill Wood]

Thanks Fletch.
Its always good to get an unbiased opinion.

This one is done with +1 gamma setting in the rendering.
I have changed a few plants around and broken up the the driveway.

Is there any Gimp tutorials for your post pro stuff as I get a bit lost trying to find the right settings.

Cheers

[Fletch]

Ok, the trees on the right are a little better.

If what you are going for is a quick and easy rendering of an idea, I think it's perfect.

If what you are going for is a high-end photo-realistic rendering, then you've still got some work to do.

1. The roof material does not look like anything I recognize. I would model it if it is a standing seam metal roof.
2. The driveway material needs a lot of help - it's repeating badly. You need a good medium to high resolution asphalt or concrete texture. Try the Resources section.
3. The tree in front is better when it is a loooong way away from the camera or off-screen behind the camera to cast a shadow like a tree is there. It does not look good where it is.
4. The siding material on the house would benefit from a specular and bump map. Is it supposed to be composite, or metal, or?
5. Sharp corners on columns, gutters, and most geometry do not add to realism, they must be beveled or smoothed. That's a lot of extra modeling time, so I didn't mention it before.
6. Blinds inside of windows at various heights, or some kind of curtain will add greatly to the scene. Just extruding a squiggly line up from the floor behind the windows, smoothing the geometry, and leaving it white works wonders.
7. When the sun is at such a low angle, one expects it to be a much warmer color, and the sky to match the time of day a bit better.
8. The vegetation is not attractive (the grass is ok), you will need to get a lot more varieties and use all 3D for best results (if you are not comfortable in photoshop).

There are hundreds of tutorials for Gimp on the web, if you search. I do not use Gimp, so can not help with it.

[Neill Wood]

Thanks Fletch.

I think your point about what I am trying to achieve is very good.............as I don't really know.
I suppose a nice rendering of a design concept. I will ponder that some more.

The roof material is corrugated iron but has lost some of its shape or form in the last shot. I used the shiny corrugated SU material and changed the colour
The siding/cladding is plywood painted with painted pine vertical battens. We call it "ply and batten"......

The driveway is supposed to be exposed aggregate. The concrete is sprayed with a product to stop it setting overnight and the next day the cement is water blasted away to a depth of 3-4mm leaving the stones exposed.
I have used the exposed aggregate from SU and the rough stone template from TL. It still is rendering very smoothly.

Plants are a real hard one as there are no 3D models for our local plants. I have used Xfrog ones and some OZplants for the brighter looking ones.
We use a lot scraggly grasses and what we call flaxes in our local gardens.
A guy from northern Europe here on holiday once said to me that he didn't know that there was that many shades of green in the world when commenting on our local fauna.
I will play with some Photoshop/Gimp stuff.

Still trying to figure out the sun settings as in our part of the world the angles are a bit different.

Thanks for your input.

[Stu]

Hi Neil,

I would endorse all of Fletch's comments except in regard to the plants.

A lot of your planting was created by another Kiwi, Andrew Dale from http://www.envirographic.com/index.htm
In my opinion Andrew's PR cut-outs are the best!!...bar none!....and I have really looked around.
One tip when using a cut out in repeat planting is to creat a set of three or four....tweak each one by re-sizing, reversing, lengthing, shortening..and then repeating that set.
A site with a HUGE range of plant cut outs in Skp [and other formats] is CadPlants...http://www.cadplants.com/ mostly quite good.
Just a note on you image....You need to use a high rez plant/tree image in foreground planting...as in the foliage on the left.
I gave up on 3D plants years ago..apart from never looking realistic they will bring your model to its knees before you have done 10% of your layout.
2D PR cutouts arent perfect, but in my opinion, are the only way to go.
Remember to set the the sun face-on to the plants in order to get a full shadow.

[Neill Wood]

Hi Stu,

Thanks for those links mate.
I got those original plants from one of your posts so thanks for that.
Have you brought the OZ/NZ plant download? if so does it have lots of NZ plants?
Just keen to know before I buy it.

Loads of work to do on this..........so it is a work in progress

Cheers Neill

[Fletch]

ok, but adding variety to the size/orientation of the 2D cutouts is a must.
and PLEASE don't use that tree as a foreground tree.

[Neill Wood]

My bad........the roof material had changed in my model so you are right Fletch. Unrecognizable roof material

Lesson #1: Check model before rendering and posting!

[Fletch]

That bottom image looks pretty good! (oops - you've removed the post ) Some of the veg. looks washed out (gamma issue?)
The roof and the pavement both need bump. I would apply an appropriate template first, then use a bump map.