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I wonder if anybody knows these guys (website is not active since a long time now) and the rendering they're doing, I am pretty much interested in their technique and I would love to learn a bit more (I guess a lot of photoshop is involved):

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Very nice, but I doubt every client would want their building to look so dark and gloomy like these.


I would think that you could render something out with even scanline and then take it into photoshop and mess with the exposure / bright contrast to get something like this. Overlay a dark / AO pass with some sort of distortion on it maybe?

Just a thought.

believe me, some clients love it...

love those guys from auralab and would also like to know how they create their very distinct style. People usually keep their post processing work very close to their chest, ......

http://www.auralab.com/galerie01.html

Duplicate Layer > Overlay > Blur?

kinda like... but something more... including gloomy sky, reflections, people and trees... and lights... overall effect is crazy...
btw, they were featured as in markk magazine. 1st time I saw a visual office interview in an architecture magazine...

I love the overly high contrast darker images, ive never really liked stuff that is too light and airy

Some very cool stuff there. I do not think it's really a technique you are seeing though, more of an aesthetic. Although there are some repeated techniques it's a lot of different stuff happening in different shots. Someone (or some people) over there is just a damn good illustrator with an interesting visual style: IMO it's not something you'll be able to reproduce very well with a series of ready-made post steps.

b

I agree with Brett.
They have some very interesting and good images where composition, colors and style are more important than the choice of filters.

This is not the result of 4 steps in photoshop:

Really though.....that image does look like a few steps in photoshop after a nice beauty render was put out.

**edit** don't get me wrong, I think these images are great, but I do think this can be done with a few steps in photoshop. That last image looks like it's got a contour pass rendered and overlayed, and some level adjustments....that's all.

well, I definitely agree with you brett. Infact I am more interested in the possible workflow than in the final output. I actually see no point in reproduce somebody else style out of the box. But after getting high with realism for a while (because of maxwell), I am constantly researching, and as long as visual graphic is not my main field, nonetheless I'd love to push my limited knowledge a bit forward, no matter if it's photgraphy, render, painting or grapphiti...

... oh and the point about aestethic and technique is so subtle. I've should have say that before. don't take me wrong, I was just wondering the background of such a nice vision. just my curiosity...

Really though.....that image does look like a few steps in photoshop after a nice beauty render was put out.

**edit** don't get me wrong, I think these images are great, but I do think this can be done with a few steps in photoshop. That last image looks like it's got a contour pass rendered and overlayed, and some level adjustments....that's all.

Maybe, but very often it is many super-subtle little adjustments that get you a great final product, and most often the work is in the category of "if you didn't know, you wouldn't know". May or may not be the case here - it's hard to say without seeing the raw renders.

Regardless, if you select one image out of the set you'll always be able to say it's "just" something or other. My point was more based on looking over the set of images at the style and quality that emerged from that. The overall body of images do not suggest an approach based on "render, apply steps 1-3 in photoshop, hit save". That was all I really wanted to say.