Advice for a beginner

[JGallagher]

Hi everyone, I'm fairly new to the whole 3d world. I've been teaching myself 3ds Max, Corona, Substance Designer/Painter, and UE4 for the past year. I'm trying to do quick little rendering and was hoping to get some advice, criticism, hints, tips, etc. I'm using a simple HDRI to light the scene (one of the freebie ones around the web) and some very basic materials.

I'm not completely satisfied with the rendering but I'm not good enough at this to understand why. I know the sky is washed out, I had some trees behind the brick wall to block that out but took them out to for temporarily for rendering speed. Would you be able to tell me what I'm doing wrong? I will try to responda s quickly as I can. Thanks everyone.

James G

[tomislavn]

..and some very basic materials.

Here lies your answer :)

To get near "realism" you have to study the materials the most (especially since Corona has such nice and easy lightning setup). You could add more complexity to your materials (dirt, falloffs, etc.) - variety is the king! You should add some minor details to your environment to make it more interesting and closer to reality. Maybe also add some bevel to your surface edges so they don't look so unbelievably sharp (nothing is 100% sharp in real life). Oh and also, try Corona sun/sky - they can give really nice results.

Basically, what I wanted to say is that you cannot use some cubes, add some grass and few materials that you made in 3 minutes and expect super awesome realism. You could maybe start with studying some photographs of similar buildings and check how the environment looks and blends with the structure. That is what I do at least :)

[Frood]

I would also suggest strongly not to start with HDRI lightig. Just use (Corona) Sun+Sky to begin. Your HDRI lacks of a strong key light which makes the scene/materials harder to setup.

Good Luck!

[JGallagher]

Thanks for the replies!

Is there a way to add dirt to textures/edges? I thought I read somewhere the you can use AO to make a dirt effect, but I can't remember if that was for Corona. I was aware of adding bevels to corners but I wasn't sure how far to go with it. Would you do every visible corner in the scene?

I will definitely try without an HDRI to get my lighting and materials set up, I did find myself struggling with the way the materials were showing up in the renderings, that must've been the problem.

Basically, what I wanted to say is that you cannot use some cubes, add some grass and few materials that you made in 3 minutes and expect super awesome realism. You could maybe start with studying some photographs of similar buildings and check how the environment looks and blends with the structure. That is what I do at least :)

I hope this didn't come off this way, I don't want to appear as a lazy 3d modeler trying to figure out all the shortcuts instead of learning properly. it's a full architectural Revit model and drawing set I've done for school. I just wanted to add a rendering as a finishing touch. I've spent a couple weeks in my free time with the lighting but couldn't seem to get results I was happy with. Thanks again for the help, I will have it fixed later this week hopefully!

[-Ben-Battler-]

What is most visible to me is the lack of diversity. Everything is very regular and repetitive. As tomislavn said, playing with material properties can get you much further. Think about what the black facade is made of, then study those materials and try to replicate them. I think here are many users that are ready to help you getting there if you struggle.

Yes you can use CoronaAO Map as a mask for controlling a "clean" and a "dirty" version of each of your materials. Then use CoronaLayeredMtl to mix them using your AO mask.

Further I can imagine that in an evening mood with sunlight from right or left you might be able to get some interesting shadowplay, -> as said, use CoronaSun&Sky.

I will definitely try without an HDRI to get my lighting and materials set up, I did find myself struggling with the way the materials were showing up in the renderings, that must've been the problem.

The material editor preview slot shows exactly the result that will be shown in the render (although with a different lighting setup ofc). If that isn't enough for you then use Interactive Rendering.

[JGallagher]

Thanks Ben. I've been playing with lighting, tweaked my materials a bit, and beveled/chamfer'd most of the corners. I also added a bit of volumetric fog.

I'm not sure what else I can do with the materials though. The bricks have a normal, bump, and displacement in it, it looks great up close but not so good at these angles. The metal cladding is a simple painted metal with a normal I created in Substance Designer, again, it looks great up close but not so goof from these shots.

I do like the lighting a lot better, but I don't have the nice reflections from my HDRI's.

Next on the list is to add some dirt using AO to maybe mask some of the shoddy materials.

[romullus]

What you are using for ambient light? It looks like it's LDR image or single colour. Your shadow areas looks very wrong. No materials will look good until you fix problems with lighting.

[JGallagher]

Thanks for the response Romullus, I'm not sure what I'm using for ambient light. I haven't added anything as far as I can recall. I had an HDRI in there but removed it and added Corona sun and sky. Where would I be able to check this?

[PROH]

Hi. If you added a Corona Sky into the environment map, then this is your ambient light.

Regarding reflections and background image, then you can use separate images for both. Just because you're using Corona Sky and Sun for lighting, doesn't mean that you're stuck with this for background, reflections or refractions. Use the override slots in the render-setup to build your scene environment as you wish.

[romullus]

Did you used volume material, a.k.a. fog, or i am seeing things?

[JGallagher]

I was trying the volume material, you're not seeing things. It wasn't working as well as I had hoped.

[-Ben-Battler-]

Okay, looks already better.

What I'm missing material-wise is reflections. Every material has slight reflection, even the bricks. Slight reflection helps the scene to blend together better because it gives certain coloring on the geometry that comes from other parts of the scene.

Can you make a screenshot of both your facade materials?

I would disable the fog for now until other "problem zones" are improved, it only gives a distorted output at the moment.

[ikercito]

The scene looks promising, but as others stated before you should work on your materials a bit further. Adding variations and imperfections, and most notably reflection will help it improve a lot. Start tweaking the reflections and then you could give AO a try, there are other methods to simulate imperfections (multimap, layered materials...) It's tedious but it'll help a lot. Also... get rid of the fog for now.

Also. get rid of any environment map, create a CoronaSun and click Add Corona Sky... That should give you a basic and pretty realistic setup to start with.

Hope it helps!

[JGallagher]

Thanks guys, I will get a screen shot of the materials this evening when I get home. And I will get rid of the volumetric fog, I'm getting ahead of myself. I plan on adding some variation to the materials as well. I will keep you guys posted.

Thanks again for all the help everyone, I really appreciate you guys taking the time to help me.

[JGallagher]

Here's my facade materials as they are now.




EDIT: Removed fog and added some reflection and AO dirt to the materials. Am I on the right track?