Schematic rendering - residential

[studio3p]

Here is a rendering (my first using Accurender) of a small residence I am designing for a client in northern Indiana. The main body of the house is a stained wood vertical siding with copper flashing in the shadow line between vertical boards. The copper "lantern" seen to the left houses all of the home's circulation including the entry, stairs, and the central library/hallway. The block mass to the left is the side entry two car garage with a roof-top terrace accessed via the copper lantern. Keep in mind that I'm color blind and I haven't had anyone look over my shoulder to assist with the materials so cut me some slack if the colors hurt your eyes. To date I haven't decided what to do with the fascia, so for now I've simply left it.

[Kroke]

Nice first job. I would recommend you play w/ your default glass material to get something a bit more realistic. Keep it going and post another if you don't mind.

[Scott Davis]

One tip from Greg's class at AU: if you want your renderings to tend towards the 'photo-real' end of the spectrum, never, never, ever use the default accurender sky and clouds!

Couple of other things we learned from the class at AU:

Horizon: Use something, whether its trees, repositioning the camera, or something else to elimiate the seemingly endless horizon which bisects your image on the left.

Foreground: Try rendering some grass (using the accurender grass material you can find here on Zoog) in the foreground so that you don't have the large, blank gray area leading up to your building. Also, be careful about getting the accurender trees too close to the camera in the foreground, or you will end up with phantom floating leaves with no twigs or branches.

Contrast: Play with the contrast settings either in Revit, or outside of the program in Photoshop or some other graphics editor, to give your shadows more 'pop".

[beegee]

One tip from Greg's class at AU: if you want your renderings to tend towards the 'photo-real' end of the spectrum, never, never, ever use the default accurender sky and clouds!

Good all-round tips Scott.

Whats the recommended sky background then ? One of the accurender skies ? Own photo ?

I just got hold of "World Builder", which is capable of creating awesome realistic landscapes and backgrounds. Only problem is... the degree of difficulty in learning it appears to far exceed a combination of ADT, Radiance and Max6.0

[studio3p]

Thanks for the suggestions. One of these days I'm sure slapping together a rendering will be a walk in the park. As it is, I'm still finding my way around. One thing in particular right now:

Foreground: Try rendering some grass (using the accurender grass material you can find here on Zoog) in the foreground so that you don't have the large, blank gray area leading up to your building.

I have the grass material assigned to my ground plane, and when I rendered other 3D views it shows up, but not in this one. Any ideas why?

[PeterJ]

beegee, Kroke recently posted a link to Terragen whose name is a bit of a giveaway to its function. I looked at their site and I suspect it is easier to use than world builder. You can download and trial for free, personal use is also free, commercial requires a license.

[MartyC]

Hey Dudes,

Lots of questions about backgrounds.

There is a good selection at http://accustudio.com/exchange/backdrops.htm
Just download em, save to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\Revit\Rendering\AccuRenderRedist\SUPPORT\background (for XP users) and select a suitable one when setting up rendering by selecting background and browsing in subsequent dialogue. Also you can add your fave jpeg's in there, or of course your jpeg's of the actual site/wife/cat. Remember to set background colour on first setup dialogue to black so you dont get any weird accurender sky colours coming thru in reflections (my preference).
Everyones's renders should look a lot better.

Hope this wee gem helps a few.

Cheers M