"RPC", HDRI, shadows, reflexion & transparency

"RPC", HDRI, shadows, reflexion & transparency

Well, here are the first images I am willing to post in a forum.
First, thank you very much to all that have helped me one way or the other to get here. I'm not a "pro" but I am very happy with the progress I made on using the renderer part of Cheetah3D and hopefully this will be very useful for business. Cheetah3D is really an amazing product !!!

The following images were modeled in Sketchup and fully rendered in Cheetah3D. Many components are coming from the SU community or from the Formfonts web site. I created the Poolhouse for an older customer project and modified it for my Cheetah3D "training".

Any comments are welcome

François
 

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Looks really nice Francois! I´m also a SU user and I hope I will get as nice results as U. The trees looks good... how did u do them?

Tom
 
I agree with Tom. Very nice. Maybe a bit brighter, especially the sky. If it's a HDRI maybe increase the intensity just a bit. I like the light in the first one especially-more of the golden glow I would expect from that light atr that time of day. The last one has a very nice light quality too.

I am also interested in the trees. At what point were these place in the images. Are these RPC trees? If so, what software are you using to place them and get the shadows?
 
lavardera said:
I was wondering about the trees as well. My guess was that they were Alan's trees from FormFonts?

I don't think so Greg, they look like Pirenesi trees to me.

I've had a few issues with getting Alan's trees into Cheetah, will keep you posted.
 
Thank you very much for the comments.

I agree on the light on the first one. I like it too but since I am still learning/tweaking, I somehow lost the exact settings and was not able at that time to reproduce them for the last image. And I thought that what I found after was nice too.
Yes, the sky is a HRDI from http://www.ict.usc.edu/graphics/skyprobes (link at the bottom of the page) and I agree also that it needs to be a bit brighter.

Regarding the trees, it's exactly the same technique as let's say the 2D people or the 2D trees found on the SU forum or www.formfonts.com or some other sites. I wanted some "real" trees and only found these here http://plugins.angstraum.at/treeshop/. I took the image+alpha to generate a .png without a background. I also used the image to generate a .dxf contour with Silhouette. This will allow the proper shadow shape in Cheetah3D. Then I merged the contour and the .png in Sketchup. When done, this can be used in Sketchup as a standard component in a scene and does export nicely to Cheetah3D with a .3ds format as part of the scene. But I also export (.3ds) the tree only and generate a .jas file so I can later use it in any Cheetah3D scene. And I am planning to do the same thing for things like flowers, bushes, etc ...

So, to answer Jake's question, the tree can be imported into the scene in SKetchup or in Cheetah3D. The SU to Cheetah3D export file will just be smaller if the tree is imported directly into Cheetah3D. On the other hand, having the tree in the SU scene has also several advantages.
I used "RPC" in the subject line because I thought the result was quite similar to what I had seen on this site http://www.archvision.com/ContentCategories.cfm?Category=2&LocationID=25. This would be great if Cheetah3D could support this format. And hopefully this is already in Martin's To-Do list ... :cool:

I can't post a file with this tree (>100kb) so at least you have what I have but if you are interested, let me know and I will send it directly. Of course, you can use this tree in your own scenes. Maybe we can start a library of .jas components for the benefit of everybody ?
 
Wow! Pretty good work. I'll have to try that shadow technique if I can wrap my head around the contour dxf thing.

Thanks also for finding the skyprobes. I have them and I could not remember where I got them. I was going to post a link, but I gave up trying to dig them up again.

Nice work on the trees-a very creative solution.
 
Very interesting and well done. Richard has been using this technique to quickly map geometry to the outline of a bitmap image. These are great components you have made there. Perhaps you should build a collection with the technique for FormFonts?
 
Richard is a fellow who is active on the Sketchup message boards and the PushPullBar message boards. He discussed this technique originally in the context of making people from photographs.
 
Francois : What are your settings for the HDRI? I also downloaded the probes, but they seem to bright. Maybe you can help me? Thanks!!
 
peer said:
Francois : What are your settings for the HDRI? I also downloaded the probes, but they seem to bright. Maybe you can help me? Thanks!!

yes, you really have to turn them down.
Here is what I have been using. But there is room for improvements
 

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lavardera said:
Richard is a fellow who is active on the Sketchup message boards and the PushPullBar message boards. He discussed this technique originally in the context of making people from photographs.

Greg,
Thks for the info. I don't recall I have seen a specific subject from him on this technique but I will look for it. But they are so many sites now that are talking on cutout techniques ...
After all there is nothing new to this. It's the same technique that has been used for years on theater's stages
 
Francois : Thanks for the settings. With a little tweaking I came up with this. I hope you don't mind me posting an image of mine in your topic :D
It's a project we're working on now. It's a Sketchup model --> 3ds --> Cheetah 3d. Works great!
 

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Peer,

Looks pretty good, but I would lighten up the HDRI and add some transpency to your windows. What are you settings for the glass material and HDRI?

Jake
 
peer,
Of course, I don't mind.
You obviously found out what to do... your building is great !. I like the clouds in the windows. If I may, maybe some ground textures will make it even more real
 
Jake : a supermat :color rgb 74,91,107, plastic shine strength 100, reflection 0.2, the rest is default. I could do transparency but I have to model some interior walls etc. There's nothing behind it now, so you would see the sky.

Francois : The HDRI intensity is 0.002 with clamp 2, Radiosity (no ambient oc) intensity 1.5 and 1000 samples.
Offcourse there should be more details in the ground plane etc. I will work on that then! :D

I don't know why, but if I turn on fresnel, my reflections dissapear completely. Anybody know why?

Thanks for the response!
 
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