[brodie_geers]

My latest project, modeled in SketchUp with post-processing done in Photoshop. Please feel free to comment and critique...




-Brodie

[JCAddy]

The perspective is definitely strange...floating at a 50' height or something?

I like the look of the image although it doesn't really feel like a maxwell render to me. Nice job.

[brodie_geers]

JCAddy,

Yeah, the camera position is intentional. My renderings serve several purposes. They're meant to look good and show off the building but equally important is that they have to be informative as well. The designers use the renderings to get a better idea of what the building will look like (colors, scale, proportion, etc.). So part of the deal is that nothing even potentially significant can really be blocked by a tree or car. None of the renderings I ever do are really "final." They change as the design of the building changes. So that sort of limits a lot of creative license.

The other side of that is the scale of the buildings I work on which prohibit doing a simple eye-level rendering from across the road like you can with a house. In order to fit a building this size in one shot you have to be extremely far away. Your whole foreground would be the tops of cars and trees. In fact I was recently asked to do just that to show the backside of a hospital because the city wanted to see how it would look from the street. All you saw were trees and a couple slivers of buildings.

You're right on about the "feel" of it too. I sort of start as close to photo-real as I can get with a reasonable amount of time and effort but I've begun to give my renderings a bit more of a stylized look instead of trying to strive for true photorealism. There's another reason for that too though. I'm often given various conditions to meet that go against photo-realism. For example, the other day I was asked to make two faces which were both red stucco look the same color, however, they were about 300 feet apart and one was in direct sun, the other in shade.

Thanks for the comment,

-Brodie

[rusteberg]

love the camera angle. sure architecture is based around the human experience, who says the communication of it's form has to be true to reality? it's all about the way the image communicates.... in my opinion.... this says "come to me sicklings, I AM HOSPITAL!"

[segnoprogetto]

Nice jobs !

[brodie_geers]

love the camera angle. sure architecture is based around the human experience, who says the communication of it's form has to be true to reality? it's all about the way the image communicates.... in my opinion.... this says "come to me sicklings, I AM HOSPITAL!"

Ha!

[kami]

I love the image as well. It's not one of those maxwell renderings with a great mood etc. but it suits its purpose! meaning, that it really is very informative and shows the project in a neutral way

[brodie_geers]

thanks for the comment.

I'd be interested if any of you have suggestions of how I could improve the rendering while still accomplishing the purpose. In particular...
1. shows the whole, or nearly all of the building
2. shows reasonably accurate colors (it's in sunny California)
3. gives the clients, designers, and city a good idea of what to expect

Any suggestions? I like what Kami said about the 'mood.' I'd really like to provide a better mood for my work but I've had difficulty with it given my constraints.

thanks,

-Brodie

[Josephus Holt]

a few observations...

the building roof line is almost mid-image...nice sky, but might be more interesting to cut some of the sky down.

first thing I saw was the highlights on the cars...they are quite distracting. I would tone the curbs down too...they are quite whitish.

I think that I would find a way to punch the hosp name a bit...Kaiser would like that too

asphalt looks really good. you also did a good job matching the sun angle on the building to the sky (clouds).

I'm fine with the viewing angle as well.

[justinj1023]

What post process work did you do? Just curious.

Justin

[NathanDan]

Brodie Hi,

I agree with Josephus on the cars, I think the materials need to look nicer to be more attractive to the eye. One thing regarding the camera. Seeing as the shot is not low to the ground and looking up at the building, I think the verticals should all be kept straight. Snap the target of the camera to the same level of the camera (height) then just use shift lense to get the original view frame that you had, this will keep the image neat, I hope this is of use to you, cHeers

[brodie_geers]

Justin,

I do a decent amount of Photoshop work - some to fix things but mostly to 'dirty' up the image.

The obvious stuff: The sky I drop in PP and do some adjustments to lighten it up and desaturate it. Also the people and their shadows of course.

The only things I don't typically touch are the trees and glass. In this one I violated that rule with the glass in the lower area (where you can see into the lobby). It either came out too clear or didn't tint the interior how I wanted so I gave it that blue tint in PP.

I dirty up the pavement a lot, adding the tire marks and things. I'll also you the clone tool at a low opacity and go over the white pavement lines as well, sometimes completely fading them in spots.

I do a lot to the grass as well. I've got a couple blank layers that I do a noise filter to and then a motion blur so it looks a bit like a snow storm. Then I'll turn that onto a multiply or soft shadow layer to give the grass some texture. I use layer masking so that it only affects the grass. Similarly when I'm altering the pavement I'll apply a mask so that I can be very sloppy knowing that I'll only affect that particular area. I end up with layer masks on 90% of my layers which, combined with my file size often being 5000 pixels wide, makes for some very large file sizes, around 0.5 gig isn't uncommon. I don't like to apply the layer masks because I often go back and touch things up and they're handy to have and even change sometimes.

I also do some adjustments to the facade as well, stucco in this case. I'll do some spot touch ups with a brush set to soft shadow or burn around the base and select spots of the building. On this project I also did something in addition that I've never tried before. I used some grunge maps (crinkled paper and similar things) and set the blending mode to soft shadow and used a layer mask so that it only affected the stucco. That gave the stucco a nice random overall bumpiness.

-Brodie