First rendering - tips and tricks?

[Jardar]

Hey everyone!
I'm a beginner with rendering and 3d in general, but I thought I'd use my summer vacation to become as good as possible with Indigo. I've decided to try and get the most out of Sketchup, and I've decided to try and make a couple of interior renderings every week.

So I really hope to learn from you guys, and hear what tips you have for me

This is what I try to recreate:


This is my model atm:


Then I edited the lights direction to match the reference photo, and made a diffuse-diffuse transmitter blend material for the curtains to allow light through, as well as aiming for a more onyx vase and changing the carpet:



1. Is there any way to make the pillows and carpet like the reference? I've tried with displacement maps, but I just get tiny mountains, if you know what I mean.
2. How can I get my scene as light as the reference photo? I use exit portals on three of the walls, to simulate a bigger room, but it seems the curtains absorb a lot of the light?
3. Are there any 101-stuff I should do to make the scene more photorealistic?
4. My sofa material is constant albedo+bump and spec texture. Is there any way to give the material dimensions in Sketchup when I don't have any albedo texture to manipulate?

I hope any of you guys have time to help me with my questions

[Pibuz]

Hi Jardar!
Welcome to the forum, and good idea to get a little experience on your spare time

You chose a rather difficult subject, btw. Sometime s a very easy scene can be much more complex if you try to reproduce it. BTW, let's attack it!

1. Pillows and carpet. It's really hard you can get good "hair and fur" (as it's called in general) with displacement. Displ is sort of a strong bump, operated over geometry, and not on surface. It's suitable for rocky materials, nice wood plankings, some kind of masonry...
In scenes such this one, with few subjects and simple environment, details do a huge part of the job, so you have to add a lot of them. Then, if you want to get a good result with you hair and fur you basically have to ADD GEOMETRY. There are some plugins which can help you, but basically try to play a little with the "fur" plugin which you can find in sketchucation forums. That will help you for sure. The plugin "repeats" a base component with some variations. make sure the components are indigo "instances" (select all the components you want to instance, right-click, enable instancing), so the memory drain won't be enormous during the rendering phase.

2. Indeed, if you take a look to the reference image, you see that the lighting i svery strong, the image is almost overexposed. Your image is way too dark. take a look at the reference curtains: they look completely white. You have to increase the exposure time, or the ISO of your virtual camera. Another curious thing is some sort of possible bug I was referring to some time ago: the curtains let the sun come in. The material is a diffuse transmitter for sure, but I don't know if Indigo allows the DIRECT light to come through it.. I hope some people can answer this. This may be a SkIndigo bug, btw. Let's wait and see.. Speaking of the lighting, I see that you objects' reflections are dark, instead in the reference photo they're a little lighter: this means you need a sort of a studio scene, which means some white panels behind your camera which will bounce some light back, contributing to lighten up your scene, light it up a little more uniformly and giving your reflections a little more realism instead of pure black.

3. You are cheating now Make some changes and we will discute them

4. Your question number four has two answers: one is the pro answer, the other one is to make it easier. I'll give you the second for the moment. To have perfectly corresponding additional maps like bump and exponent, the default tip is to have an albedo map which is the same dimensions as the additional maps. This way, you place the albedo (diffuse) map in sketchup, and the additional maps will cover the same area. The problem comes out when you don't want a texture in the diffuse channel, but only a plain colour. The easy TRIAL AND ERROR way is to create a plain colour image which has to be the same colour you want you want as the diffuse colour, and have the same dimensions of the additional maps.
There is a much more professional method, but I'll tell you when you grow a little older

One last thing: the floor in the ref image seems to be covered with big tiles, not wood

[Jardar]

Thanks for the welcome!
I made some "quick" updates before I take vacation, so I'll just upload a new version before I take off for some days.

Among other things I've changed the bamboo and lily to a diff-difftrans material, and the pillows and carpet has been changed to a silk material. I've also remade the flower pot and applied a partially highly reflective concrete material to get it more accurate... I've noticed the metal frames and legs have big, black edges. I guess I'll have to change materials there as well. I will also make the table more reflective.

1. I tried the fur plugin, and I like the results! I'lll have to play a bit more round with it though, and gives the fur different shades. But my computer can hardly take anymore atm, I guess I'll have to go out and buy another 2GBs worth of ram But I don't exactly understand how you mean the instancing would work. Do i select the different components the fur plugin makes, and then select instancing on them? Or did you mean proxy instancing (I proxy instanced 5/6ths of the carpet)?

2. I hadn't even thought of the idea of adjusting the camera! I'm quite happy with the lightning now, although the lack of direct light is a real downer. I haven't found out any good way of getting direct light through the curtains yet, all I can do is hope that some other of you guys might pop in someday and shed some light on the case

3. I'm going to make the floor into bigger tiles, I just haven't had time yet, hehe. At the moment I am using http://www.indigorenderer.com/materials/materials/286, but they are quite small. I might look into the method you mentioned when I come back from vacation. Maybe I'll just have to make my own material instead.

4. Does it exist some kind of velvet material or velvet shader? The sofa could really use a better material so it looks more real, but I haven't found any yet. I haven't tried to make my own either, though

That's all for now. Thanks for the help, Pibuz! I'll be back to pester you for some more help in some 11 days

[Headroom]

I am not sure exactly what direct lighting is supposed to be missing but I think the bright patch of light in front of the sofa is not light that is coming through the curtains but comes from a clerestory window above the curtains. I am not sure though that's what you are talking about.

If you want for the sofa to look a little more realistic, aside from a better material, e.g rounded corners or a more organic shape (creases in pillows) then there are two Sketchup plugins I can recommend:

1. RoundCorner from Fredo6 (look in the Forum section Plugin Index on Sketchucation.com)
2. SubdivideandSmooth on Smustard.com

BTW excellent progress!

[Jardar]

I suppose I could redo the sofa with RoundCorner (downloaded first after I had made the sofa ). I'll use the vacation to ponder whether to buy the SubdivideandSmooth-plugin or not! It looks really nice, though...

I hadn't thought about a clerestory section at all! Now it just have curtains all over the wall (after all, I don't know how the room is except from reference photo.. Thanks for the suggestion! I'll try it out when I get home!

You don't know anything about velvet materials, though?

Thanks for the compliment, Headroom (btw, is the avatar of yours supposed to be Duke? I've always wondered).

[Headroom]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(TV_series)

[Pibuz]

Hi Jardar!
Definitely a good enhancement. Don't worry to bother us: we all have been noobies

About the lighting, I agree with headroom: probably there is a section of windows out of the camera view (supposably, on top) which is not covered with curtains: that will let the direct light pass through.

About the materials, I fear there is no velvet shader available at the moment (*bump bump bump* ), we have to adjust the existing material as possible. First of all, MAPPING. Repetitive textures can make the render look a lot worse than it is, so try to avoid them (atm, on the sofa and on the floor). The material on the left vase is good, I like the subtel reflection, though I think you may increase it a little. The mat applied to the right vase is not so good, instead. You have to work on it a little more. Also, another kind of vase would be a choice something more...artistic maybe?

You can find better-looking book models too, and I think I have some good apples and/or oranges to share, if you want.

Last thing: instancing. It helps Indigo saving some RAM during the render phase, no changes will be noticeable in SketchUp. Once you have modeled the base fur strand, just select and right click it, then choose "enable instancing" and you're done. All its copies will be considered as instances. There is a way to select all the copies of groups and components after you have scattere them too, but you'll need an additional SU free plugin by Thomthom called "Selection toys" (highly recommended).

Now go improve this render! Loose the plants for the moment, at the end of the process I'll share an advanced techique to make them look fantastic.

[Jardar]

I found your post about instancing (http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... 081#p87081), and finally I understand how to use it properly And it seems like it helped a lot RAM-wise!

I tweaked the curtain material a bit, and now I finally think I have it the way I wanted - a bit transparent, though still diffuse enough to actually see the curtains! I made a blend of diffuse-difftrans, and then blended that with nullmaterial, using a bumpmap as blend texture. It takes ages and ages to get rid of the noise though, it seems..

I know I have to improve the sofa more, but Subsmooth was not easy to try and learn! (I'll give it another shot, though) I will reduce the beveling on the table and metal "legs" and put "tubes" on the lamp screen, as well as tweak the colour tones of the floor and sofa/pillow.

But I'm really eager to learn your plant trick, Pibuz..

EDIT:

[Jardar]

Just a minor update. I experienced something weird with the curtains. The curtain in the middle is all clear, which the one on the right, which is exactly the same, just copied, is full of noise? Any remote idea what could be the cause?

I've rendered with BiDir+MLT now, and the image seems a lot better, although I get maximum 21 samples/sec... I'll replace the other curtains with the one in the middle, and try to run the rendering again.

And of course, I'm interested in Pibuz' famous plant trick

[CTZn]

Very nice progresses here !

I made a blend of diffuse-difftrans, and then blended that with nullmaterial, using a bumpmap as blend texture. It takes ages and ages to get rid of the noise though, it seems..

Seems a good material setup, but you should activate step blend for the bump texture used for blending. That will make the map B&W by the 0.5 value and help a lot with noise.

although I get maximum 21 samples/sec

21k I hope

[Jardar]

28k/s actually

[alffrad]

Hello Jardar, and everyone, I like the final render, It looks very good...

Im having trouble doing a curtain material, can you please explain (if you have some time) like a step by step how you did it or maybe share the material ?

Thanks a lot!

[alffrad]

Hello, I was trying all day to make a curtain texture with no success, I was trying to do it blending two materials, as I read in some posts but it seems that the material editor in Skindigo 3.0.15 changed, so there is no more diffuse transmitter material (or I didn´t find a way to do It) so after a very frustrating day I decided to download a material and start from there. I downloaded colored glass (http://www.indigorenderer.com/materials/materials/967) and changed,
I just add another texture to surface color, I had another problem here because the size of the texture was too small so I click on position map and I changed ( I don't know how i did it but It worked ) and thats it. I put a red fabric texture so I can notice the curtain and the light reaction.

As I said, I tried to blend materials but the result was a black shiny surface, I can´t find the way to blend, and no diffuse transmitter either.

Im happy with the result, but frustrated at the same time because I don't even know how I did it.

[Jardar]

Hello alffrad!

I can try to explain, but I'm not quite sure I know how I did it myself

The material itself is a blend between two materials.

curtain_main (blends two other materials with this this linen texture; b=-1, c=1)
-→B: nullmaterial
-→A: curtain_blend blends two other materials by a constant value 0,300
---→A: curtain_transmitter diffuse transmitter, constant albedo 0,9686; 0,9686; 0,9373
---→B: curtain_diffuse diffuse material, constant albedo 0,9686; 0,9686; 0,9373

The material is then applied to a single plane

Hope this helps?