topic Re: Exterior renders in Visualization

Exterior renders

Anonymous — Thu, 11 May 2023 09:54:17 GMT

I am not able to develop nice exterior renders. I am happy with the interior renders I can make. Can you share your settings or tips to have a nice exterior render. Advantages or disadvantages of physical cameras...

Re: Exterior renders

Barry Kelly — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 08:57:17 GMT

You might find it best if you list a few points about what you don't like about the external renders.
And maybe post some images if you can.

Barry.

Re: Exterior renders

Erwin Edel — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 10:10:42 GMT

Before rendering, get a good composition for your shot. 54 degree view cone comes close to human eye (no uncomfortable fish eye lens looks!), basic rule of thirds composition (by approximation) ussually works well, I find. Two point perspective button is my friend too. Save your camera in a path for future use.

I use special renovation filter (called Presentation) that I use to hide all my birds, trees, people etc from the technical model. I make more of these for each camera as needed.

If the modelled surroundings becomes too complex, I sometimes have a seperate PLN for this and hotlink the building model in to the 'terrain' PLN.

After this, proceed as below.

Start with Outdoor Daylight Fast (Physical).

Untick Detailed Settings (if that is ticked).

Pick a nice physical sky under Environment (I like Friendly Afternoon). Make sure Use ARCHICAD Sun Position is ticked, or your settings for sun altitude and azimuth won't be used.

Tick Detailed Settings.

Go to Environment > Physical Sky > Clouds. Turn off Cast Shadows (looks rubbish, IMO).

Go to Global Illumination, pick Preset Exterior Preview. If you find the render to have too many 'dark spots', up the setting to Preset Exterior Physical Sky (expect an increase in render time of about 4x).

Go to Options > General Options. Set Ray Threshold to 0 to have reflective surfaces look their best (IMO), or at a very low value to have some reflections show. Set Ray Depth to around 12 or higher depending on how many planes of glass are visible in the shot. 12 works for me in most projects. Do the same for Reflection Depth. Tick Generate Alpha Mask if you intend to swap out the background of the Physical Sky for a picture in a photo editor (make sure you save your image as PNG with 'High Accuracy Color with Alpha Channel' to have the transparancy mask available).

Consider printing size. I render out my images at 195x135 mm, 300 DPI. These still print fine when sized up to A4 full sheet on a decent printer.

Make sure Apply Render Safe Frame is ticked.

Hit render button.

With these settings a typical project render takes less than 3 minutes on my old workstation.

I then add some sketch render channels and do a bit of photoshop watercolour effects + desaturating of colours etc and get results as below.

These are our typical renders that need to be reproduced often for the client when design changes are made. It takes max. 5 minutes to do, and by using layer effects in photoshop, it becomes copy + paste of a few images and merge layers down to show changes for a new render.

Might not be your preferred style of presentation, but we are happy with the results.

Re: Exterior renders

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 12:50:35 GMT

This is my example. Basically I am looking forward for best defined contours for the different elements and bright surfaces. Specially in exterior renders I always notice if a blurry filter is affecting all the picture.

Re: Exterior renders

Erwin Edel — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 13:20:34 GMT

I hear you on the contours, especially profiled elements in one surface with the light hitting them in such away you don't get much there in terms of shadowed areas.

This is why we overlay a sketch and just go for the sketched watercolour like approach.

We make a layer group in photoshop where we have our sketch renders (we often use different style pencil for contours, vectorial lines and the interior) in layers with the top ones having 'multiply' to show them all. We then have our colour render sit on top of this with a colour burn. This makes all but the most white areas give the lines a slight tint of colour. Then multiply this group with about 50% fill to make it more subdued.

I'm sure if you dial up the global illumination far enough, properly facet all of your 3D model etc etc you'll eventually get nice defined edges where you would expect in the world of photo realism, however we live in the world of billable hours and sacrifice that holy grail of perfect render for having it done quickly.

I also find that some clients are almost afraid to engage in discussion over the design if we hit them up with super realistic renders that look like the final product, the sketchy look helps with that too.

P.S.
A trick that works if you have a 'busy' terrain in 3D and it happens to be flat (yay for working in one of the flattest parts of the world!), you can just cut your model at the terrain height with 'Cut Elements in 3D', hide your terrain layers and render a sketch of just your building, flock of birds, trees, ladies with shopping bags etc. You won't have to worry about having a thick sketch line on the horizon either. That does mean taking some artistic liberty with things like kerbs having 0 height (everything being in one plane).

Re: Exterior renders

Erwin Edel — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 13:32:48 GMT

Also remember you are trying to 'sell' your design. Taking some artistic liberties in favour of realism is fine in my book. I generally dial the sun in to a 45 degree of which ever corner of the building I am looking at, with an altitude of around 55 degree for some friendly shadow casting, even if that side of the building would never see the sun.

Stick your camera at eye height (1650 mm), face it up until you see the top of the building and some air, hit the 2 point perspective button and see if that looks like a good presentation of the building.

For your image, I'd move the camera back a bit, try to show more than one side of the building in the shot, draw a bit of pavement to lead up to entrance and guide the viewers eye there.

You can try using some light sources to illuminate the interior a bit. There is a great 'general light', that is basically just a sphere of light that has an 'endless reach' button. It can fill an entire space quite evenly with light, especially for daytime renders. Make sure you turn on the lights in cinerender settings to see it.

You could make an entire lighting plan, but this will increase renders times a LOT and for an exterior render, that seems a bit over the top.

Consider the refraction of glass in your camera position too. Glass view at an angle will reflect more and show less of what is inside. If you want to show a particular interior part of the building, you should be looking at it relatively head on.

Take a look around the web / magazines for photographs and artist impression you like and try to analyse a bit what it is that makes them work. Also take note of the lens flared abominations that don't work and why they look odd (inserted stock photo people with shadows at the wrong side, things like that).

Re: Exterior renders

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 13:45:33 GMT

Thank you I will try that.

Re: Exterior renders

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 13:48:18 GMT

Erwin wrote:
..., properly facet all of your 3D model etc etc ...

What do you mean with properly facet? Does it means to cut the corners of the elements to get reflexions from them?

Re: Exterior renders

Erwin Edel — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 13:56:01 GMT

If you look at furniture and walls around you nothing has a knife edge sharpness on the corners, everything has a little facet.

Your walls, slabs etc in ArchiCAD all have sharp corners. If you'd want photo realistic defined edges, you'd have to start faceting stuff.

I don't recommend going down that route, though! Leave that to the photo rendering studio pro's and smart software solutions or whatever they use (mostly cheap labour, probably!).

Re: Exterior renders

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 08:34:46 GMT

I ve got something that I am happy, but not still perfect.
I post a pic with some notes. Could help me with the issues of the rendering.

Regards

Re: Exterior renders

Erwin Edel — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 09:00:44 GMT

If you mean the 'wobble' in the reflection / glass? That's a bump channel in the glass surfaces, you can just turn that off in the surface settings.

If you mean that the panel colours are uneven, that would be a texture or procedural shader setting. Either the texture has different shades or there is a procedural 'checker board' type extra layer / channel somewhere given different shades.

Not sure how to achieve softer shadows.

Re: Exterior renders

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 08:11:36 GMT

Erwin wrote:
Before rendering, get a good composition for your shot. 54 degree view cone comes close to human eye (no uncomfortable fish eye lens looks!), basic rule of thirds composition (by approximation) ussually works well, I find. Two point perspective button is my friend too. Save your camera in a path for future use.

I use special renovation filter (called Presentation) that I use to hide all my birds, trees, people etc from the technical model. I make more of these for each camera as needed.

If the modelled surroundings becomes too complex, I sometimes have a seperate PLN for this and hotlink the building model in to the 'terrain' PLN.

After this, proceed as below.

Start with Outdoor Daylight Fast (Physical).

Untick Detailed Settings (if that is ticked).

Pick a nice physical sky under Environment (I like Friendly Afternoon). Make sure Use ARCHICAD Sun Position is ticked, or your settings for sun altitude and azimuth won't be used.

Tick Detailed Settings.

Go to Environment > Physical Sky > Clouds. Turn off Cast Shadows (looks rubbish, IMO).

Go to Global Illumination, pick Preset Exterior Preview. If you find the render to have too many 'dark spots', up the setting to Preset Exterior Physical Sky (expect an increase in render time of about 4x).

Go to Options > General Options. Set Ray Threshold to 0 to have reflective surfaces look their best (IMO), or at a very low value to have some reflections show. Set Ray Depth to around 12 or higher depending on how many planes of glass are visible in the shot. 12 works for me in most projects. Do the same for Reflection Depth. Tick Generate Alpha Mask if you intend to swap out the background of the Physical Sky for a picture in a photo editor (make sure you save your image as PNG with 'High Accuracy Color with Alpha Channel' to have the transparancy mask available).

Consider printing size. I render out my images at 195x135 mm, 300 DPI. These still print fine when sized up to A4 full sheet on a decent printer.

Make sure Apply Render Safe Frame is ticked.

Hit render button.

With these settings a typical project render takes less than 3 minutes on my old workstation.

I then add some sketch render channels and do a bit of photoshop watercolour effects + desaturating of colours etc and get results as below.

These are our typical renders that need to be reproduced often for the client when design changes are made. It takes max. 5 minutes to do, and by using layer effects in photoshop, it becomes copy + paste of a few images and merge layers down to show changes for a new render.

Might not be your preferred style of presentation, but we are happy with the results.

Hi,
Finally I am getting good exterior renders. It is much about good detailed model and postproduction to arrange contrast brightness and tones. But Still I have 2 questions, you said that you filter the human models, birds, tree,..., and also separate the terrain from the building through usage of hotline. But how does this affect to the render, do you render different scenes for the human models and the terrain and they put together in photoshop?
I found that using Ray T 0, Ray Reflection 12 and R depth 12 it takes too long.

Re: Exterior renders

Erwin Edel — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 08:21:36 GMT

Renovation filters allow you to use 'Show on current Renovation Filter only' button (it looks like a stack of 3 floorplans and sits on top right of renovation palette).

So say I have a camera (camera 1), I would populate the view with my birds, people etc and then add them to a custom renovation filter (presentation camera 1) using that button. Add and repeat as needed for other cameras. I only do this with elements that work for certain shots, things I want to see in all shots are just hidden by the 3D Viz layer I use. Since the 2d cardboard cutout silhouettes are allways facing the camera, I find that I want to have different setups, for different shots and rather than have layers for all those shots, I just hide them using the custom renovation filter.

Hope that makes it clear.

The complex surroundings, would be for exampe a school project we did, where we had the whole playground and surrounding buildings modelled. We just had this entire presentation stuff as a seperate .pln and hotlinked the building model in to that, to keep our building model .pln clean of all the presenation clutter (and extra file size).

Re: Exterior renders

Roopa A — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 05:51:58 GMT

Erwin wrote:
Also remember you are trying to 'sell' your design. Taking some artistic liberties in favour of realism is fine in my book. I generally dial the sun in to a 45 degree of which ever corner of the building I am looking at, with an altitude of around 55 degree for some friendly shadow casting, even if that side of the building would never see the sun.

Stick your camera at eye height (1650 mm), face it up until you see the top of the building and some air, hit the 2 point perspective button and see if that looks like a good presentation of the building.

For your image, I'd move the camera back a bit, try to show more than one side of the building in the shot, draw a bit of pavement to lead up to entrance and guide the viewers eye there.

You can try using some light sources to illuminate the interior a bit. There is a great 'general light', that is basically just a sphere of light that has an 'endless reach' button. It can fill an entire space quite evenly with light, especially for daytime renders. Make sure you turn on the lights in cinerender settings to see it.

You could make an entire lighting plan, but this will increase renders times a LOT and for an exterior render, that seems a bit over the top.

Consider the refraction of glass in your camera position too. Glass view at an angle will reflect more and show less of what is inside. If you want to show a particular interior part of the building, you should be looking at it relatively head on.

Take a look around the web / magazines for photographs and artist impression you like and try to analyse a bit what it is that makes them work. Also take note of the lens flared abominations that don't work and why they look odd (inserted stock photo people with shadows at the wrong side, things like that).

Hi
I adjusted these setting, but still the image is not correct,
where the shadow is falling na, there it is coming bright. and light effect is also not proper.
I have attached the rendered image

Re: Exterior renders

Erwin Edel — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 11:39:35 GMT

My guess would be that all those spot lights etc are affecting the things you mentioned.

Try adjusting the settings for those.

Given the sugested daylight scene, you can probably dial their settings far back.

A lot of light sources also significantly increase your render times. You could turn them off completely so you only see the 3D models for the fixtures and maybe replace them with a glowing surface. This won't cast light, but will give a fake suggestion of light there.

Re: Exterior renders

Roopa A — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 11:24:50 GMT

In preview I am getting the Photorendering sky background, But in final rendering the background sky is not coming.

And I have added the general light for interior, that is also not coming in final rendering..

Am not able to get the final exterior rendering properly.

Once I save it to the folder it is showing the sky

Have attached the image

Re: Exterior renders

Roopa A — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 09:45:32 GMT

I have rendered with the same settings, But the view is not coming properly.

I don't know from where this shadow is casting.

Help me please

Re: Exterior renders

Erwin Edel — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 10:59:09 GMT

Something behind the camera or above the model in the air somewhere, would be my guess.

Re: Exterior renders

Roopa A — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 11:08:21 GMT

no I have placed the marquee and taken to the 3D, but still it is coming,

I have attached the recent image in the top, layout opt 2.

In that also it is coming black

Re: Exterior renders

Erwin Edel — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 11:36:37 GMT

If you haven't placed a camera yet to be able to return to your preferred position in 3D, do so first. After that, right click the mouse and pick 'Fit in Window'. This will show you your entire 3D model and you should be able to see what is casting shadow in the foreground.