Pink Brick ? LRV Possibly?

[Anonymous]

Hello all,

I'm back with another newbie question about rendering. I've only done a few renderings before, so I'm really not very skilled in the ways of lightworks (hopefully in a week or so after I buy Dwights book I will be ) But I need a rendering finished (rather quickly... who isn't on a deadline.. ) and I don't think I'm doing the lighting very well, I just did a prelim render to see what my new brick material looks like, and the lighting makes the brick appear pink. If needed I can post SS of the material settings, and light seettings, etc. If anyone has the time I'd really appreciate some insight..

cheers,
dan

[Anonymous]

Yes send SS of the material settings + SS of the Perspective Settings Dialog + SS of the sun dialog!

[Anonymous]

I think I solved the problem... apparently bricks shouldn't have "mirror reflectivity"

cheers,
dan

[Djordje]

Daniel wrote:
I think I solved the problem... apparently bricks shouldn't have "mirror reflectivity"

For some unfathomable reason, most of the materials do when you first switch to Lightworks engine. First click on Match to internal engine, and then start tweaking.

Make sure to export to your template if you don't want to re-tweak for every subsequent use.

[Anonymous]

Djorde: Thanks for the insight, I have noticed that it seems just about everything does have mirror reflectivity, and the match with internal button has definately come in handy, now that I'm going to be spending some time doing rederings I think I will spend some time setting up templates with decent materials this week...

BTW this is how it turned out: took me about 6 hours in total, and for my first attempt ever... it didn't turn out too badly. nowhere near the quality I would like to achieve (and IMHO the house is ugly to boot) but it was good enough to keep my bosses quiet for another day

cheers,
dan

EDIT: oh and yes I know the sidewalk looks... well.. horrible

[Dwight]

Quit fishing for consolation. You are in the top performers group in these here parts.

Tell me about your sun setup.....

[Anonymous]

you've got to be bloody joking Dwight.. I'll tell you about the sun settings tommorow, I'm out of the office today, and I don't have the .pln with me.

cheers,
dan

[Karl Ottenstein]

Djordje wrote:
For some unfathomable reason, most of the materials do when you first switch to Lightworks engine. First click on Match to internal engine, and then start tweaking.

For US users who have started using the Special Edition library, Ransom Ratcliff has already tweaked the materials in the new SE startup template. In fact, Match to Internal will flip some textures and have other side effects.

SE and US or not: remember that you can always restore any attribute (such as material def) via Attribute Manager. Wise to make a backup AAT file before playing just to make restoration easier.

Karl

[Karl Ottenstein]

Daniel wrote:
BTW this is how it turned out

Huge improvement from the first shot. Good work, Daniel!

A lighting suggestion. If you want a softer shadow line, use more lights in your SunObject and perhaps greater divergence. But, the big one is the dark soffit. A trick posted by one of our ac-talk colleagues is to place another dim sun object, with one sun and not linked to the sun settings, but instead placed at the center of the earth and aiming up. This will brighten overhanging surfaces such as the soffits, which would in real life be brighter due to radiosity of light bouncing off the adjacent wall.

Now that you've got your materials working, the other suggestion is to ponder the composition. Is the front lawn the focus? It's almost 1/3 of the image. But, maybe the fact that the home HAS a front lawn and is isolated from the street by it is a key selling point. I don't know.

Feng Shui talks about the front door being the 'mouth' to the house. Too many Western houses now focus on the garage door rather than the human front door. Particularly with the front door in shadow and the garage in sun light, the story here seems shifted away from the human entry to the vehicle entry. Possibly what you want. Just thought I'd comment on how it comes across.

An additional fill light - Dwight will talk about that - can add some ambient boost to the entry.

Black glass over garage (I hear Dwight saying "sinister") and darkish glass in bay window are a little gloomy and not inviting. Work on brighter reflections and illuminated interior.

One design thing that drives me crazy all the time is brick or stone veneer meant to look like a column that only covers one surface of a corner. If your boss allows the expense, wrapping the brick onto the adjacent wall then at least gives the illusion that the brick is a column and is supportive, rather than a decoration that only works in elevation. (Does the brick on the wall next to the bay wrap towards the front door?) Too many US subdivisions are FILLED with high end homes that have brick or stone on one wall facing the street, with no wrapping and the edges clearly visible from the side, saying "fake, fake, fake". Sure, wrapping is fake ... but at least it looks real. 😉 I saw one home that had brick on three sides ... everything visible from the street ... and the rear was cheap bevel siding and 4x4 treated posts on a wood deck. Their guests don't know they live in a fake home, but the owner's do. Yuck. Sorry. Did I say bad veneers drive me crazy?

Anyway, fantastic progress Daniel.

Karl "looking forward to Dwight's LightWorks book!"

[Anonymous]

Thanks a load for the feedback Karl,
It's great information for me to put towards my effort to become more articulate with LightWorks (until my company coughs up the money for Dwight's book )

I appreciate the comments about the house as well, I share the same feelings with you actually, but the boss wants to keep the cost of the homes in this developement down, so some astetics got lost this way. the house is actually fairly inexpensive, coming in at around $120,000 with approx a .67 acre lot. The company I work for is quite small, consisting of the two owners, myself, and a construction foreman. I was hired about 3 months ago under the pretense that I knew zero ArchiCAD, and that I'm leaving to move to Glasgow in about a year to study architecture. I'm only 18 years old (for another week.. teehee) But the company is starting to let me make more and more design decisions for new home models, which is nice, and I will definately use your insight in the future to help me along with some designs. So once I again, I really appreciate the comments.

cheers,
Dan