3rd year arch student needs rendering advice

also, what would be a good method of making the concrete look a little dirtier as mentioned above? I'm assuming photoshop rather than changing the material in vray. I'm thinking just a 'speckled' brush sporatically placed with a low transparency but I haven't experimented yet and was wondering if there were any obvious suggested alternatives.

I'm not quite sure what AO is... sounds like something to do with shadows and colors changing slightly as the image gets closer to the camera origin? I'm lost :D

> Try faking GI a little around the people. Stupid letters... Make that "try faking AO". Just the smallest fuzziest invisiblest area of dimming on the ground.

Thanks Peter, these are the kinds of things I want to learn. You're right in that the design is more important than the presentation in regards to my studio projects, but the presentation is my favorite part. :) Trying to balance them is quite tricky so lately I've just been spending what little free time I do have on digital modeling and trying to go a step further than is realistically necessary. Anywho, the bang bang bang writing style is pretty nifty and I appreciate you not beating around the bush. Some of this is stuff I'm still not 100% that I know how to do (though I'll figure it out one-by-one as I do it, I'm sure) and the rest I just never really noticed, but now that you've pointed it out, I can't help but notice. Ha. I will most-likely start a new view with a better camera angle and keep in mind everything else you've mentioned from there. I really do appreciate your feedback; far more in depth than my professor has given me the past month honestly.

Oh, a trap you've clearly avoided here: Couple years ago I looked around the 3rd floor studio. Project after project after project pinned up wtih six Awesome Sketchup Renders (TM) all of them from up in the air, all of them about the same altitude, all of them about the same distance out. Hey, if the building looks cool from up here, it will look cool from up here SIX TIMES. Nothing the matter with an aerial perspective but that's not how most people meet most buildings. Critics will want to know what the arrival experience is like, how does it feel to stand here, what can you see from the stairs, how do the spaces stack up in the lobby...

Much of this is all just IMO and my bang bang bang writing style comes of harsh and critical. Don't take it bad, but I couldn't be bothered to type this much politely. Don't get too caught up in presentation. It's about the design. It's good that the two primary directions are receiving different amounts of light so there's bright and dim. It is bad that camera is at the same angle off each face. Being oblique to the sides is good, it helps emphasize volume like an elevation doesn't. Being equally oblique to both sides helps flatten the form and de-emphasizes both sides. Pick a side and move around a bit to feature that. Make the building come forward. Yeah, kill the Segway. Something about the motion blur seems off, is calling attention to itself. Maybe it's that it's a bright day so there wouldn't be much. Maybe it's that it doesn't differentiate between perfectly forwad moving head and probably swinging arm... The center guy with the paper looks like he's jumping up and to the left. Yellow hair looks like she's falling over. Sitting at bench guy nees a shadow to tie his feet to the ground. Try faking GI a little around the people. Watch the quality of light on people. Headphone girl is orange and dreamy man is washed out pink. Indeed they probably are of different complexions, but the one is "at" sunset and the other at noon. http://www.hwb.com/gruhn/3d/op/final/cam03-flat.jpg here I like to think I did an OK job of pushing the colors (helped that everybody is wearing brown) to fit in the scene. http://www.hwb.com/gruhn/3d/op/final/cam11-flat.jpg has pretty bad people, but the distant guy is in shadow so he's a little more blue. Your people shadows are from a sun an hour later than your building. Stick a 6' box in the scene and re-render for reference (can set settings low for speed). Dirty up the street a bit. Contrast between edge and traffic locations. The people up in the green box appear to be standingin front of glass. It's about where their feet are in relation to how far back the glass is from the front of the green. In short, move them down a little and erase their ankles. Blue shirt balcony guy too. Remember what you learned in perspective class about eye heights and the horizon. The camera here is close enough to human that it will be assumed to be human. Even though it is at least 12' above the street. Which makes staring guy 8' tall. How much shorter than headphone girl is beret lady? Or what is happening with the terrain there? Put camera at 5'10", put a bunch of six foot boxes around the scene and re-render. I don't like things that just touch. I like a gap or I like a decisive amount of cut off. I don't like to continue lines where they don't continue. Reinforcing them at an offset is OK. Staring guy has his ear right next to the column. Put enough of his head over the column so his eye lines up with the edge or put some air between his head and the column. Staring guy covers up the bottom of the column and continues its line off the bottom of the page. That col is an important part of the design. Let it stand and stop on its own. Staring guy weakens it and its location and by tieing the building to the edge helps flatten it. That COULD be cool on purpose. Here it is not good. Headphone girl does the same thing, especially since she is on center with that edge. Shorts couple guy also kisses an edge. And bike guy... It's almost like you LIKE this thing I don't like. Bike guy (needs a shadow) is drawing too much attention to himself. Pull him in a little more so there's less in/out tension there, it's OK to cut off m'be his butt, but right now he makes that edge and the empty void between him and staring guy too dominant. I'd say just off him and move staring guy over a bit. If staring guy blocks the blank gray space, his staring sets up a better diagonal into the scene. Even that bit of cloud continues that beam off the building and into the sky. Beret Lady's head is so perfectly centered in that panel, just kissing each side. Roof couple may be the wrong size. There's too much happening on the sidewalk that pulls eyes off the right side of the page. The building and the sidewalk alone are hinting at that. Then segway and walking off the right guy all push the eye further off the right. Make them stop. Inside ont he stairs lady seems to match the amount of visible stairs yet seems a little too visible... oh, I see, she is clearly sunlit even though she can clearly not be sunlit. Dim her down a little and decrease saturation. There's little enough vertical perspective that PShop can probably get rid of it w/o making things weird (if your 3d app doesn't have perspective correction). Get rid of it and see if it still looks OK. If a human isn't really this tall then we'll be able to see a little of the clg over the entry stairs. That would be good. Having that section edge on makes it lose form. The concrete is reading a little green to me. If it really is, that will probably show worse on a printout. ... Enh, PShop says it's mostly yellow and blue as it should be. One of your reviewers will waste five minutes going on about the small number of African Americans in the picture and don't you think that's inappropriate? Walking young couple is lit from the wrong side. There's something a little too evenly spaced about the people. Beret lady is walking across the street at a funny angle. Maybe she's using the same crosswalk as staring guy. Maybe fewer foreground people. The building is pretty much all mid-distance and there is nothing in the near ground except for a snippet of sidewalk on the right. This makes all the people in the near ground seem without place. It's nice to have something to tie the camera location spatially to the world; headphone girl could do that on her own. She's even giving that weird bit of sidewalk a reason to exist. Tweak her colors so she looks like she belongs in this world; find somebody to take her place who is moving into the scene; beret lady might do that well enough if you skew her so her left side moves up. This will help her walk across the street over towards your building w/o the wrongness that rotating would give. Careful, she probably can't take too much of that. Try giving her the motion blur just less of it, I think. Behind "AMERIC" the concrete texture is rotated funny. Up at the top balcony the concrete is compressed vertically so it shows as stripes. That said, is nice work and most of my comments are all tweaky stuff. Maybe some ambient occlusion for that "that's what real looks like this year" look. I think the importantest issue is the confusion of height and terrain that the people locations indicate. Remember, somebody at your level has their eyes on the same horizon as you no matter where they are; shorter/lower people have eyes below that horizon; taller/higher (dude, your entourage is totally high ;-) people have eyes above. Probably easiest way to deal with this is as mentioned, put your camera at eye height for where it is (unless that's freakisly unrealistic for some reason) and render with a bunch of people high reference in the scene. You can overlay this in PShop to use as reference scaling people. Convert people to smart objects while scaling and positioning to allow flexibility and retain quality.

Hey, thanks for the help all! I made a few quick changes as suggested. -added trees -shuffled a couple people -removed concrete reflections -added yellow lines on road -texture to neighboring buildings I'm feeling pretty satisfied with this one, if there is anything I did a poor job of changing or something that really needs looked at though, I'm game. I will probably start messing with another rendering from a different perspective and take the camera advice now. I'll update again once I have something new.

I think what you have done so far is great. Very interesting design. Personally I feel where the camera is placed helps with realism quite a bit - so placing the camera for example at eye level above the street will seem more 'realistic'. Not wanting to create any more work for yourself I would probably pull back a little as well and point the camera up to have more sky but not losing the base of the building.

Heya Farkus...a few tips. Not sure why your concrete has reflections? The only time it is going to reflect is when it is wet - yet, there is no rain in evidence. Instead, what you should do is create some slight staining, dirt, imperfections from the concrete forms, etc to give life/realism to it. Second, your image is too monochromatic and stoic - devoid of color and drama. Trees, landscaping, planters, flowers - to start. Bus stops, benches, traffic signs, street paint, vehicles, etc will all enable a sense of realism. Very few places on earth are this bland. The people you have in the scene aren't horrible, but could use refinement on where they are placed. The guy on the left is apparently standing in the middle of the street just looking around with no aim or purpose in life. Would probably ditch the segway guy too. Great start - just needs another level of interest and you'll be set.