Just a little photoshop

[Martin P]

You have seen building before, just finised the rendering for the site sign board (3.00 am!!), quite happy with it... the original image is 9500 pixels wide so it is a bit smaller here, its a grass roof incase you are wondering why its green.....

[beegee]

Lookin good Martin !!

The reflecting pool is particularly nice. What extras did you add to achieve that ?

How long to render the whole thing ?

[Martin P]

Lookin good Martin !!

The reflecting pool is particularly nice. What extras did you add to achieve that ?

How long to render the whole thing ?

Not sure how long it took, I left it overnight but it REALLY looked on the edge of hanging when I was exporting the image out - I think it just managed... the water was one of the accurender ones just made more reflective and I picked the blurry reflections option in Revit. I am still not sure about the painted trees in the foreground though, they are coming out I think, and I wish I had lots of cars!! but I am looking forward to seeing it printed very large, I am told it is going to be 4m x3m approx!!!

I think the foreground in this one is better?

(edited - grass roof made darker)

[Steve_Stafford]

Martin,

I think the reflecting pool looks GREAT. The building looks good too, the roof material is not as successful...it just doesn't read as grass to me, jpg squashing could be the culprit?

The trees in the foreground work for me but the horizon paint work isn't as convincing to me....I think a different material for the roof and ground would help separate the bldg and site better and not seem to be "one" despite the appearance of distance.

Despite my nitpicky complaints, it is a really nice looking composition. The reflecting pool looks GREAT...did I say that yet?

[Martin P]

Martin,

I think the reflecting pool looks GREAT. The building looks good too, the roof material is not as successful...it just doesn't read as grass to me, jpg squashing could be the culprit? The trees in the foreground work for me but the horizon paint work isn't as convincing to me....

Despite my nitpicky complaints, it is a really nice looking composition. The reflecting pool looks GREAT...did I say that yet?

I agree the grass roof is a dissapointment :cry: , I am considering a fair bit of photoshop work to make it look better... just not sure how, I think it needs to look less "flat" somehow, it seems to smooth at the moment and the colour is maybe too green? suggestions appreciated!!

[Roger Evans]

That's very interesting Martin

A lot of work there.

I think the paths would look better in a different material ie not grey

Maybe the shadows could be longer

What did the straight Accurender look like from the same viewpoint ?
Can you post a small one?

Cheers

Roger

[PeterJ]

Nice woirk Martin. Are the foreground trees and the car'shopped in? They look of a different quality to the remainder of the image.

why printed at 4 x 3 is it going on a site hoarding? You'll be takinf on Hayes Davidson soon.

[Kroke]

What kind of building is this for? Sustainable Architecture? Why in the world would the roof be grass? That'd be a cool job mowing it though, hehe.

I agree, I like the water reflections...very nice. :D

[bclarch]

So, where does the sod roof get documented, on the roof plan or on the topo plan? :D Nice work.

[sbrown]

I have a grass library and component that makes the grass in the image. basically what you do is use the grass material included in the attachement, then you make a groundcover family(also attached) place the family and render, its kind of render intensive, but looks great.

further instructions:
Here's all you need to produce this grass. Unzip the folder, and put the mlib and
plib in your renderer's libraries folder, along with the bmp. You may need to open the
plant editor and re-direct the various settings, I'm not sure if you'll need to or not.
If you do, for each leaf in the plant definition (there are four) go to edit>geometry and
check that the location of the opacity map is directed correctly, then go to the
"settings" tab in there and make sure the material definition is pointing to the correct
materials.

To use this in a rendering, make a plane and assign the "grass leaf - heath3" material to
it, then insert the grass as a plant, making the area of the groundcover the same size as
the plane you just made.
_________________________

[Martin P]

, its kind of render intensive, but looks great.


_________________________



Excellent!!! 8) thank you Scott, I will render just the roof on that view with your new material, then do a cut and past in photoshop - should help with the rendering. I will post the result, which by the looks of the bit you posted is going to be much better than then current view. Thanks again!! sorry I havent replied sooner, but I havent been here :cry: to busy with that job posted in this thread.... back soon though :)

Martin.

[Henry D]

While we are on the subject of grass- is it possible to change the basic color of a grass .jpg texture? I had a rendering where the grass was too dark, but I couldn't seem to make it lighter no matter how I tried to edit the material.

[sbrown]

Wow, usually my grass is tooo light. but just open the bmp, in photoshop and adjust the brightness and contrast until you get what you want, you can also layer fills of diff. colors on top. PHotoshop or paint shop pro are a must for rendering. paint shop pro is cheap and easy to use and has many of the same features.

[hdjohnson]

Scott,

In your post above, you mentioned: "To use this in a rendering, make a plane and assign the "grass leaf - heath3" material to it, then insert the grass as a plant, making the area of the groundcover the same size as
the plane you just made."

I've assigened the "grass leaf - heath3" to my toposurface. Now, how do I do the final step of insert the grass as a plant?

I'm sorry, but I'm new to this and I don't understand what to do. Any additional help anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated.

[hdjohnson]

I was wondering if anyone could help me with getting this grass to display correctly. Scott's done a great job with this, and I would like to use it a rendering that I need to get done this week.

What I've done is assign the "grass leaf - heath3" to my toposurface. What I don't understand is how do I insert the grass as a plant? Also, how do I make the area of the groundcover the same size as the toposurface?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Steve_Stafford]

Scott isn't ignoring you, he's just moving his family to the west coast...so he's probably between ISP's among other things. I've not experimented with his info, hopefully Martin can step up?

[hdjohnson]

Steve,

I know Scott has always helped people on this board, and I wasn't thinking he was ignoring me. I figured he was taking time off for this holiday weekend.

I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression. I just have to get this rendering done. Sorry if I offended anyone.

[Steve_Stafford]

No worries, you didn't offend anyone...just wrote to let you know why Scott can't help out. It's toward the end of day for Martin so we'll see if he can shed some light on it for you.

[Martin P]

No worries, you didn't offend anyone...just wrote to let you know why Scott can't help out. It's toward the end of day for Martin so we'll see if he can shed some light on it for you.

Sorry guys, but I didnt get a chance to try it :oops: The client was happy with the Rendering and I had already spent my allocated amount of time on it, so I never tried. Am just too busy and had to move on to the next job....... Next time I render something I will definitely be using it though, I have never used groundcover myself either, must be somebody here who knows though!

I hope you willpost the rendering with or without the grass for us to see though

[fernando]

i tried the grass plant in a render
it works fine
i will post a exemple soon

[fernando]

here it is
the rectangle is the grass plant
the surface material has the grass bitmap in it

[John K.]

Hey Martin,

Kudos from me as well. OT - I just started Lord Of The Rings -- not sure how many times this will make -- in prep for the third & final movie. Yep, I'm a 36-year-old Dungeons & Dragons geek. Anyway, I've done a bit of reading over the years on Earth Shelters, sod roofs, and basic hippie-spun green architecture. Have you done alot of this sort of thing?

John K.

[Martin P]

Hey Martin,

Kudos from me as well. OT - I just started Lord Of The Rings -- not sure how many times this will make -- in prep for the third & final movie. Yep, I'm a 36-year-old Dungeons & Dragons geek. Anyway, I've done a bit of reading over the years on Earth Shelters, sod roofs, and basic hippie-spun green architecture. Have you done alot of this sort of thing?

John K.

Wellllllll..... I've drawn a lot of this sort of thing, cant take the credit for the designs - that would be the boss! But yes we are really going for the hippie thing at the moment :lol: We are working on another scheme, housing, with really high u values - lots of glazing for solar gain and a district heating scheme for the whole place 8) - it runs on bails of scrub etc cut from the forests locally (would normally just be mulched or burnt off) should be pretty interesting. And the boss has been to Scandanavia, Wales and believe it or not a local hippie commune (the findhorn foundation, they probably have a web site?) to find out about green building.....

No Hobbit holes designed as yet though, but there is a building up here in a garden centre that does have a "Hill" grass roof, is partly built into a bank and has round windows!!....

Cant wait till december myself to see the final one! - even though I know what happens next having also read the lot myself, though I only got about a 100 pages into the Silmarallion, I just couldnt read any more of that one :banghead:

[ajayholland]

Yes, The Silmarillion is a hard read the first time through, but ultimately gives much more insight into the first and second ages and into the skill and talent of the author.

-AJH

[PeterJ]

Martin

I'm just in from a whiskey tasting (Irish you'll note from the spelling) hosted by the engineers behind Bed Zed, London's most renowned and succesful green estate. The entertainment were the estate's own band!

You should send Colin down this way, I'm sure Lachlan McDonald, my host tonight would be pleased to meet him.

[Martin P]

Martin

I'm just in from a whiskey tasting (Irish you'll note from the spelling) hosted by the engineers behind Bed Zed, London's most renowned and succesful green estate. The entertainment were the estate's own band!

You should send Colin down this way, I'm sure Lachlan McDonald, my host tonight would be pleased to meet him.

Bedford Zero Eneregy Development isnt it? one of guys here showed me that in his AJ - look really interesting - especially the roofs!! I am sure Colin would be very interested in seeing it, and we are all always intrested in him going away for a few days :lol: Did you pick up anything on Insulation as a matter of interest Pete? We have to try and make a 33% improvement on the minimum U values in the building regs for these new houses and arent sure yet what we are going to use - othere than just making it all 33% thicker which seems a poor option! would like to keep it all reasonably slim if we can.

For anyone that can help....
Minimum we are tying to achieve are -
walls 0.20
ceilings 0.1
floors (timber suspended) 0.17

[PeterJ]

The projects engineer on Bed Zed is a good mate, I'll ask him what the specs were.

Meantime, they have a website. (http://www.bedzed.org.uk/)

[hdjohnson]

fernando,

How did you create the rectangle to map the grass material to it? If you could give me a step-by-step I would really appeciate it. Could you also post a simple Revit file with it?

Thanks in advance