Needing to achieve a Higher level of photorealism.

[OneofHis777]

Hello everyone.

My company wants me to achieve a higher level of photorealism. Currently I use archicad to draw and render my house models and then I bring them into piranesi to add the trees shrubs and backgrounds. I don't think the problem is with piranesi I think I need some kind of ray tracer. You can see some examples of my work at http://www.heritagelog.com and some examples of where my company wants me to be at http://www.precisioncraft.com/loghomeplans/Westernlogtimber.html
If anyone has any suggestion I would appreciate it. I guess I am kind of wondering can I get to this level with the software I have or do I need something else.

[JLeese]

My opinion is that your bosses are rather silly. Your work is very nice and is about as close to photorealism as it can be without losing it artistic quality. My problem with photorealism is exemplified by the competition's imagery; why not just take a damn photograph? Their images, while not that different than your's, lack warmth and charm as images, even though the buildings themselves may be fine. (Enlarge them to truly see how dead they are.)

At the other end of the discussion are the images of David Walker images really do feel like works of art and I would think would be more inclined to "sell" the public than any run-of-the-mill photorealist image that your competition exhibits. How about trying a more radical approach that will get them off the photo-realism kick.

Otherwise, you are fine. Maybe your work just needs new employers! You can tell them I said so.

James Leese AIA

[siliconbauhaus]

I agree with James mostly.

With imagery you're doing either one thing or the other, ie photoreal or npr.

Piranesi's strength is creating npr imagery. The sort of thing that companies used to pay artists to create, an impression of a concept. While you can give the impression of lighting and materials, it's not meant to portray a realistic sample.

On the other hand, you use archicad and there aren't a lot of choices to render apart form lightworks or maxwell. Maxwell is lovely if you have the hardware to devote to it running for hours. As for lightworks I have no idea as I dont use archicad.

What I've observed is that either npr or photreal can have the same effect with a potential client /customer but the thing is it's all about the final image.

Your image has to evoke a reaction, preferably a positive one. It doesn't matter if it's photoreal or npr, it needs to convince the person looking at it that they want it, badly.

The problem is these days, that almost anyone can knock out decent looking renders without even having a clue what it is they're actually rendering. The beauty of the image comes from someone who knows what it is they're portraying and therefore the image shines.

I've looked at the other website again and I can see all sorts of things that make it look cg and this is my point. People can look at a watercolour image and fall in love with it and they buy into the idea or they look at a pseudo photoreal image and it immediately puts them off.

Enough waffling for tonight

[Karl Ottenstein]

I agree - don't see any significant issues with the images I looked at.


Piranesi's strength is creating npr imagery.

I agree that that is Piranesi's unique strength, but it is not the sole strength. Given a properly photorendered image, Piranesi can be used to add properly scaled entourage more quickly than in any other program, as well as make other edits and adjustments faster then Photoshop. Not that I don't think some post-processing in Photoshop is still useful. In addition, the depth channel from Piranesi can be used with Photoshop's depth blur to achieve better, more complex depth cues than Piranesi's depth blur alone, for example. I posted a tip about this a few years ago.


On the other hand, you use archicad and there aren't a lot of choices to render apart from lightworks or maxwell.

Quite untrue. Any rendering package can utilize ArchiCAD models. The most commonly used is Artlantis, because of its ease of use. (And, as a plus, Artlantis can export Epix files for Piranesi.) But, C4D, Max, Vray, or whatever are all options.


Your image has to evoke a reaction, preferably a positive one. It doesn't matter if it's photoreal or npr, it needs to convince the person looking at it that they want it, badly.

Well said!

Cheers,
Karl

[RonB]

I think your work is fine as it is. But if you want more reality the look into Maxwell. Version 2 is coming soon and they have significantly boosted the render speed. Which is great because Ver. 1.76 is slow there is no way around that. But as far as photo-realism goes it cannot be beat.

http://www.maxwellrender.com/

RonB