Evermotion Exclusive: making of a house in Tamatsu

The plan was to make a couple of renderings based on a photograph I found on the internet. It was kind of a challenge, because I was planning on creating renderings from the same camera position but with different light setups and learn some new things by the way.

My main tool for creating the scene was 3dsmax and Vray as the render engine. I’m very familiar with it and I get good results very fast.

Modeling

First, I've blocked out the scene using just simple boxes. I found a picture showing the surrounding area that helped me with placing the buildings in the right place.


After blocking out I begun to set up the camera. The pictures had no exif information so It took a couple of minutes to get the camera match the photograph.

Next step was adding details to the buildings. Based on what I saw on the pictures I've painstakingly modeled the details. I did not used any plugins just good old poly modeling and 3ds tools.

Some pictures of Japan I've found on the internet helped me with getting the right amount of detail in my scene.

I planned to start with the spring time render therefore I needed some nice looking trees.

For modeling trees I've used Onyx Tree Storm. It is a very useful tool and the results are very photo-realistic.


The cool thing about onyx is that you can choose what part of the tree you want to parameterize so it is possible to make a 3mln trees even on a small laptop but not necessary render it :)


Leaf material is a simple 2 sided material and a cool looking texture.


I've added some leafs on the ground to add some more detail to the scene.

Next step was the winter scene, I've deleted the leafs from trees and started to add snow to simulate a snowfall.

For snow on the trees I've selected them from above with ignore back facing turned on and then duplicating the selection. Next adding shell to the duplicated mesh and meshsmooth for smooth result.

Same thing with rooftops and balconies ect.

Most important thing in the winter scene was realistic snow on the ground.

I've created a simple smoke procedural texture which I've used as displacement and a gradient ramp in diffuse slot to simulate a gradient between dirty and more clean snow.


Also painted the snow on the road using free tire brushes found on the internet and some default brushes from Photoshop.

Snow material:

Scene setup

The scenes have a simple light setups. Sun with VrayDomelight and hdri as the texture to emit diffuse light.

In the night scene I've used standard omni lights for the interiors and the artificial lighting above the street.

For the final renders I use following render passes : VrayExtraTex with vraydirt for Ambient Occlusion, VrayRawLighting for more contrast, VrayRawGI for lighting up the scene, VrayRawReflection for additional reflection, VrayRawShadow for lighting up some areas.



I use Photoshop as my retouch/post production tool. After importing passes I adjust them to get the expected result.

Thanks for reading! Hope you've found this useful.

Also I would like to greet all my friends at work in DesignRaum in Winterthur Switzerland where I live and work.

Visit Lukas Sztukowski website - Lucas3d.net