Photographic Rendering with VRay for SketchUp

Table of Contents

Photographic Rendering with V-Ray for SketchUp

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgement

About the Reviewers

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Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

Why Subscribe?

Free Access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading color versions of the images for this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Diving Straight into Photographic Rendering

What this chapter is all about

Good composition is the foundation of photographic rendering

Improving our opening scene

Working with six new views

Matching viewport and render aspect ratios

Lighting that sets the mood!

Stepping through the render process

Using V-Ray's physical camera model

Global illumination controls

Materials that make us believe!

Creating the floor material

Adding surface properties

Final setting tweaks!

Render settings for final output

Summary

2. Lighting an Interior Daytime Scene

Looking at our SketchUp scene

Defining our goals

Methods for defining our vision

Writing a definition

Painting a definition

Compiling a definition

Artistic exercise

My definition for the gallery interior

The lighting workflow

Sunlight is our key light

SketchUp shadow settings – positioning the V-Ray Sun

Using a V-Ray spotlight as the key light

Skylight is our fill light

Using Rectangle lights

Testing our shot views

The evaluation time

Using the GI skylight

Trying out the Dome light

Adding a High Dynamic Range Image to the mix

Bringing the sky back into the view

Wrap up

Summary

3. Lighting an Interior Nighttime Scene Using IES Lights

Taking a look at our SketchUp file

Defining our goals

Observation is crucial

My definition for interior nighttime scene lighting

The lighting process

Contrasting artistic and realistic indoor lighting

Do we have a key light?

Understanding the IES files

Downloading and viewing IES profiles

Starting with a blank canvas

Setting an initial exposure level

Adding some much-needed ambience

Using the V-Ray Sky

The GI skylight

HDRI to the rescue

Layering up our IES lights

Adding the IES down lighters

Creating the IES up lighters

Evaluating the render with all lights enabled

Previsualizing image corrections using V-Ray FrameBuffer

Summary

4. Lighting an Exterior Daylight Scene

Setting up our SketchUp file

Reference and observation

The sunlight color

The skylight color

Shadow properties

Ambient occlusion

A camera-matched exterior

Defining our exterior daylight setup

The lighting process

Setting a starting exposure level

Sunlight is the key

The sunlight color

The shadow quality

Filling in with skylight

Using the V-Ray Sky

Image-based lighting for exteriors

Adding the HDRI

Adding direct sunlight to an HDRI setup

Creating even stronger occlusion shadows

Creating a better sky

Tweaking exposure

Experimenting with white balancing

Summary

5. Understanding the Principles of Light Behavior

The SketchUp files

Defining our goals

How light behaves

Learning about light – exercise one

Learning about light – exercise two

Understanding light decay

Light decay – exercise one

Light decay – exercise two

Light decay – exercise three

Decay types available in V-Ray for SketchUp

The None and Linear decay options

Understanding Inverse decay

The Inverse Square decay

Using color temperature

Color temperature – exercise one

Color temperature – exercise two

The cause of color bleeding

Color bleed – exercise one

Bringing color bleed under control

Summary

6. Creating Believable Materials

Getting started with our materials

Defining our goals

Defining the materials

Using a SketchUp material to create our diffuse floor coloring

Using SketchUp materials with V-Ray

Creating the diffuse component for our floor

Making a color-mapping choice

Using the V-Ray Standard material

Knowing your right-click menu commands

Adding reflections to our floor material

Painting the walls

Playing it safe with the ceiling

Door materials – the frosted glass

Giving the doors an aluminum look

Adding chrome to the barriers

Painting the skirting board

Creating the wall paintings using bitmaps

Art sculpts – import vismat

Your challenge

Summary

7. Important Materials Theory

Defining our goals

Light and material interaction – why objects in the real world have color

Light is where it all starts

How absorption, reflectance, and transmittance work

The importance of R, G, and B in the digital realm

Why are we using the HSV color model?

The importance of realistic color values

Light and material interaction – what is reflectivity?

How glossiness controls work

Light and material interaction – the transmittance effects

Understanding refraction

Making use of IOR values

A bit more on Fresnel equations

Understanding translucency

How subsurface scattering is different

The importance of energy-conserving materials

What we have accomplished?

Summary

8. Composition and Cameras

Defining our goals

Deciding the shot type

The long or wide shot

The medium shot

The close up shot

The high shot

The low shot

Aspect ratios

Choosing our ratio

Beware of the difference between the viewport and render

The requisite maximum resolution

How focal length affects composition

Setting up scene views for final shot rendering

First up – the wide shot

Exercise – review

Scene two – close up

Exercise – review

Exercise – finishing off the scene

Summary

9. Quality Control

Defining our goals

Fine-tuning scene lighting

Tuning up the sunlight

Reviewing our sunlight render

Adjusting the skylight

Reviewing our skylight render

Cleaning up our GI solution

Reviewing our GI render

Working with the Image sampler controls

Reviewing the image sampling render

Improving our materials

Reviewing what we have in the RGB map

Reviewing what we have in the Sample Rate map

Outputting the final renders

Adding extra VFB channels

Setting the output format

Determining the order of quality control steps

Summary

10. Adding Photographic Touches in Post-production

Defining our goals

Setting up After Effects

Importing our footage

Dealing with the lighting hotspots

Boosting the floor reflections

Adding a subtle DOF to shift focus

Adding subtle relighting

Boosting the glass reflections a little

Final color corrections

Adding a subtle vignette effect

Summary

Index

Photographic Rendering with V-Ray for SketchUp

Photographic Rendering with V-Ray for SketchUp

Copyright © 2014 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: March 2014

Production Reference: 1100314

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-84969-322-6

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Cover Image by Brian Bradley (<brian@vrayelite.co.uk>)

Credits

Author

Brian Bradley

Reviewers

Matthew Bohne

Joel Bradley

Ross Cantrell

Mathieu Godet

Tom Hankins

Acquisition Editors

Martin Bell

Rebecca Pedley

Content Development Editor

Arvind Koul

Technical Editors

Pragnesh Bilimoria

Pooja Nair

Nikhil Potdukhe

Project Coordinator

Wendell Palmer

Copy Editors

Roshni Banerjee

Sarang Chari

Adithi Shetty

Proofreaders

Simran Bhogal

Maria Gould

Ameesha Green

Paul Hindle

Indexer

Mehreen Deshmukh

Graphics

Yuvraj Mannari

Abhinash Sahu

Production Coordinator

Manu Joseph

Cover Work

Manu Joseph

About the Author

Brian Bradley is a self-taught 3D artist and Training Author who started experimenting with creative software and 3D applications back in 1993. By the mid 90s, he was running his own small multimedia business working on projects as diverse as corporate logos, graphic design for clothing and vehicles, as well as developing full product and architectural visualization projects.

In 2007, he turned the attention of his family-run studio toward full-time production of CG Training, focusing initially on 3ds Max along with the mental ray and V-Ray render engines. In 2012, he joined the ranks of Training Authors producing course for the lynda.com online training library, producing (among others) V-Ray-based courses for 3ds Max, Maya, and of course, SketchUp.

Recently, Brian and his team have completed a revamp of the vrayelite.com website that they run and they plan to work at slowly but surely expanding both the level and quality of training and content that it houses.

Acknowledgement

While there are a lot of people that I could sincerely acknowledge as having played a part in my being able to ultimately write this book, many of them of course coming from the world wide CG community, I am going to keep things simple and say a huge and heartfelt thank you to anyone and everyone that has had a positive influence on my life.

At the top of that list would of course come my wife Karen and son Joel who have borne the brunt of many frustrating days and nights spent trying to get computer hardware and software to work in perfect harmony in the pursuit of art and creativity. Not only have they themselves been an inspiration as regards perseverance, but also in terms of creativity, providing a never ending flow of observations, suggestions, and where ever beneficial, even criticisms. To you, I say, Drinks all round.

There is also one honorable mention that I would like to make with regards to our own inspiration in becoming trainers and educators in the CG world. Many years ago we stumbled across, what was at the time a brand new site, giving away high quality computer graphics training to anyone who would write and ask for it. The site was 3dbuzz.com and in the years that followed, the inspiration from that team, especially Jason Busby and Zak Parrish, is something for which I will always be grateful and remember fondly.

Thank you all for reading; this is Brian Bradley saying take care, and bye for now.

About the Reviewers

Matthew Bohne is currently a fourth year architecture student at the Rhode Island School of Design. His interests include interdisciplinary methods of working, including conceptual architectural drawing, as a vehicle to subvert and expand upon architectural discourse and ideas of imagination, ritual, and narration. He recently was a finalist in the international Ken Roberts Memorial Delineation Competition.

Joel Bradley is a self-taught 3D generalist and training instructor, who has been using 3D, image editing, and graphic design applications since the age of nine.

Spending 10 years working as a partner in his family-run multimedia and training business has given him the opportunity to develop skills and insight into the way people and production processes work, as well as affording the opportunity to work in a diverse number of industry areas including the production of content for the web, print, video, and interactive applications to name just a few.

In recent years, he has been enjoying the focus and challenge of helping others get to grips with the software tools and design principles that he loves as a full-time Training Author producing 3ds Max and Blender titles for both lynda.com and infiniteskills.com.

Ross Cantrell graduated from SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) in 2012 with his BFA in Animation. He is a 3D digital artist with a focus on lighting, compositing, modeling, and rigging. Since his graduation from SCAD, he has worked as a 3D artist and compositor within the television industry on shows and commercials for Cartoon Network, TNT, TBS, and Sprout. He has also worked within the film industry producing 3D stereoscopic animation for National Geographic. Ross currently works for TRICK 3D producing photorealistic images and animations for Delta depicting commercial airline interiors for marketing and advertising use.

Mathieu Godet is a French 3D artist specialized in modeling, texturing, and shading. He graduated from the ESIAJ in Namur, Belgium, in 2012 and has been working in the industry for about two years.

Tom Hankins developed an interest in drawing, animation, and creation at a very young age. Film and animations have always been a big part of his life. At the age of 18, he had his first 3D lessons at the Utrecht School of Arts, shortly after which he changed courses and enrolled into the 3D Computer Animation and Visual Effects program.

In his third year, he was an intern at Rosto A.D. in Amsterdam, working on the film The Monster of Nix, character designing, and developing one of the leading characters of the film, voiced by Terry Gilliam.

In his fourth and final year at the academy, Tom and three of his fellow students created the successful animated short Mac 'n' Cheese as his graduation film. He graduated with honors as a bachelor of Art and Technology.

He is now running a small Holland-based CG company called Colorbleed along with Roy Nieterau and Gijs van Kooten.

Their production and creative experience ranges from animated shorts to commercials and visual effects for films. Tom works as their Creative Director.

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Preface

The art of capturing or interpreting reality is one that has been around in one form or another for hundreds of years. First it resided with painters, many of whom took the study of light play and interaction with the world around them to new heights. Next came photographers, who quickly realized that this incredible new medium was not only capable of capturing a snapshot of the world, but also of interpreting and presenting it in a manner that made it a genuine art form.

Today, a computer graphics artist can use the tools at his or her disposal to create or recreate anything that real life or imagination can conjure up. And while artistic interpretation and style has been used in visualizing such creations, the pursuit of genuine photographic-looking images has long been a goal towards which many have striven.

With the ever increasing hardware power and the availability of feature-rich render engines, such as V-Ray for SketchUp, that pursuit is no longer quite as arduous as it once was. With an appetite for learning and a willingness to apply ourselves in a workman-like manner, anyone with a mind can now learn how to produce photographic-looking renders of virtual objects in what (just a few short years ago) would have seemed like an impossible time frame.

If the ability to produce such images is an artistic pursuit that sounds appealing to you, then you have a lot of cool stuff to look forward to in this book.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Diving Straight into Photographic Rendering, gets us nicely up and running with V-Ray in SketchUp as it fast tracks us through with the use of many key areas in the render engine, all of which need to be utilized by an artist if they want to produce photographic renders using V-Ray.

Chapter 2, Lighting an Interior Daytime Scene, gives us a thorough grounding in lighting a daytime interior scene in SketchUp. A variety of potential lighting approaches introduce us to a wide range of V-Ray light types available for use in a similar scenario. As we explore these approaches, we will also see the pros and cons that go along with using them.

Chapter 3, Lighting an Interior Nighttime Scene Using IES Lights, naturally presents a different set of lighting challenges to us and thus, introduces us to some more specialized tools such as the IES light type, which has been provided to help us recreate the energy output and complex light throw patterns that often come from man-made light fixtures.

Chapter 4, Lighting an Exterior Daylight Scene, revisits the V-Ray Sun & Sky tools that we touched on in Chapter 1, Diving Straight into Photographic Rendering. Here though we take a much more detailed look at how these procedural lighting tools can be used to effectively recreate very natural-looking daytime lighting conditions.

Chapter 5, Understanding the Principles of Light Behavior, introduces us to some key lighting concepts and theory that in and of themselves are not essential to our being able to use the V-Ray render engine, but will certainly help us understand how we can use light in a more realistic manner and thus, produce increasingly photographic-looking renders.

Chapter 6, Creating Believable Materials, moves us into the area of realistic material creation. In order to produce photographic-looking renders, the materials we apply to the geometry in our scenes will need to both look and react to light in the same manner as their real-world counterparts. In this chapter, we explore the creation of a number of common architectural material types as well as consider a number of possible workflow options for ourselves.

Chapter 7, Important Materials Theory, reminds us that as with lighting, understanding how and why materials behave the way they do can, go a long way towards helping us make informed texturing choices that will contribute greatly to the quality of the finished piece. In this chapter, we explore the how and why regarding a number of important material concepts such as reflectance and transmittance, all of which ultimately needs to combine in order to create realistic looking surfaces for our objects.

Chapter 8, Composition and Cameras, covers some extremely important and yet often overlooked aspects of photographic rendering in the form of composition and framing. Closely linked to these subjects are the choices that need to be made in our camera settings, such as aspect ratio, focal length, and output resolution, all of which can and will significantly affect the photographic quality of our final renders.

Chapter 9, Quality Control, introduces us to the lighting, global illumination, image sampling, and material controls that can help us produce clean, high quality photographic-looking output. The goal in this chapter is to show how (as much as possible) we are able to balance high quality output with the overall render time taken to produce it. High quality and high resolution rendering will always be a time consuming process, but we can avoid adding unnecessary time burdens to the process.

Chapter 10, Adding Photographic Touches in Post-production, takes us away from the 3D world of SketchUp and V-Ray and into the 2D world of post production. Here we use Adobe After Effects but of course, any good image editing or compositing application should suffice. The aim is to add a few extra photographic touches to the image rendered out of V-Ray, in order to add a final bit of polish to the good work that we have already done there.

What you need for this book

You'll need SketchUp Version 8 or higher and V-Ray for SketchUp Version 2.0 or higher (although many steps can be completed using Version 1.49 as well). An image editing application such as Adobe Photoshop and a compositing/post-production finishing application such as Adobe After Effects is also required.

Who this book is for

If you are a SketchUp user who would love to turn your favorite modeling application into a virtual photography studio, this book has been designed and written with you in mind. However, we are confident that even existing V-Ray users will find plenty to enjoy and benefit from this book.

Basic experience with SketchUp is expected, meaning you should be able to navigate around a 3D scene in the application, as well as know where the standard SketchUp tools can be located in the UI.

Note

While having some familiarity with photography would certainly be helpful, it is by no means required as we will walk you step-by-step through using all of the V-Ray tools necessary for the creation of genuinely photographic renders.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: To take a look at the first of the scene files that we will be working with throughout the duration of this book, you may want to load the Daylight_Interior_01.skp file from the Exercise Files folder that have been provided as a downloadable resource.

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: Open up the Indirect Illumination rollout.

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <feedback@packtpub.com>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message.

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Downloading the example code

You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you. The files can also be downloaded from www.vrayelite.co.uk/Books/VrfSu/Photographic_Rendering/Exercise_Files.zip.

Downloading color versions of the images for this book

For your convenience we have also provided a PDF that contains higher resolution color versions of the images used in this book. These can be extremely useful as you work through various stages of the project when working with materials or examining small detail changes as we tweak individual parameters. You can download the PDF from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/3226OT_ColoredImages.pdf.

Errata

Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded on our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title. Any existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.

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Questions

You can contact us at <questions@packtpub.com> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.

Chapter 1. Diving Straight into Photographic Rendering

What should the first chapter of a book looking at photographic rendering in V-Ray 2.0 for SketchUp be all about? That was the question I had to ponder as I started developing the material that would be included in this book.

Should we spend time looking at the current state of the art regarding photographic and photoreal rendering in the CG industry? Should we delve into a technical explanation of exactly what it is that people are referring to when they make use of the terms photographic and photoreal rendering?

What this chapter is all about

Well, after quite a bit of deliberation, much of which was shaped and brought into focus by the hands-on approach to learning that Packt Publishing themselves advocate, I decided to follow the advice of a well-worn axiom: dive right in at the deep end. In other words, develop an introductory exercise chapter that might typically be found at the end of a publication such as this one, often in the form of a putting it all together type exercise.

My reasons for opting to take this somewhat turned-around approach were three fold:

Firstly, as already noted, this approach suits the philosophy promoted by the publishers themselves, which is that learning ought to be as much of a hands-on experience as possible; one that engages and involves the student rather than one that is passive and possibly even tedious.

Secondly, it gives users, who are brand new to photographic rendering of any kind, the opportunity to see just how easy it can be once they have figured out how to work with the tools of the trade—in this case, SketchUp and V-Ray Version 2.0. My hope is that this chapter can help strip away the mysticism, the trepidation, and maybe even some of the frustration that can result from not understanding how something works.

And finally, for users who may already be familiar with the general principles of photographic rendering but who are new to V-Ray in SketchUp, this book will give them an opportunity to very quickly get an overview of the process, tools, and options that can be used in a V-Ray-specific pipeline.

Tip

If you are an experienced artist looking for an overview of how V-Ray works in SketchUp, be sure to work through the steps in this chapter rather than just skimming through them! The hands-on experience will stand you in good stead as