Exterior Render Manipulation/Post-Production in Photoshop

Hi guys just want to share my workflow in Photoshop Post-production. This may not be suitable to your taste, but an additional knowledge in your Photoshop skills. And I just want to give denzarki a credit for giving me a chance to explore more on his style; a little luck had made this to be a successful one. Don’t want to leave you waiting, let’s make this rolling. Here it goes;

1. As per my preference I saved my image (beauty pass) as .png format as to leave my background open for any backdrops. (See Image below)


2. Open any background (I got this image at 1000skies.com) Then place it behind your render. A prompt will be shown that the target document has a different depth than the source document etc. Just click Yes and rescale if possible



3. Click the background layer then hit Ctrl+M (Curves) to adjust the brightness, contrast of your backdrop (see Image below)


4. Once you're satisfied with brightness, go to Layers>Right Click your render>Merge down


5. Now once your done with merging down, we'll make our render edit its Gamma; Click Image>Adjustments>Exposure; a dialog box will open,

set the Gamma Correction to 1.5; dont worry if your render turned out to be very bright, we'll fix that later ok?


6. Now, next is Color Balancing (my favorite part... hehehe). Here comes the color styling part, well this depends on your taste, but as for bluish tint preference, here's what you should follow. Hit Ctrl+B (Color Balance)


On the bottom row, Under Tone balance click on Shadows radio button, adjust sliders as shown below


Now click Midtones radio button...


7. Hit Ctrl+M (Curves) adjust as necessary (for contrast I guess)


8. Let's put some vignetting on our render but not too much. Click Filter tab>Distort> Lens Correction


Here's what you should have right now...


9. Give it some Gaussian Blur... Click Ctrl+J to duplicate the layer then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur...
Just give it 1 px


Change the Opacity to 30 then Merge down again...


10. As for the flare, in my previous post, I used Knoll Light Factory Plug-in for Photoshop but this seemed to be inapplicable right now coz i dont have that plug-in here in the office. Now lets try something else..


Here's what you should have right now...


11. Now we've come a long long way... few more to go... Let's add some spice with the render by giving it Chromatic Abberation.. giving CA too much will destroy the beauty of your render. Here's my process of putting CA on my renders. Hit Ctrl+J to duplicate layer, then go to Filter>Distort>Lens Correction and adjust as per image shown below


12. At the bottom part of the layer Click Add Layer Mask then Click "B" to activate brush tool


13. Now make sure you have black color selected (look at the highlighted part on the left) then start brushing through your house model, leaving unbrushed be the one with CA effect in it...


14. As you will notice this time, beside your layer, the effect of layer masking..


15. Here's what you should have right now after merging down.


16. Hit Ctrl+M again for some adjustments then Sharpen your Image (Optional). And its done... Post!!!
Final Image


Hope this helped you in a way... Open for any criticism if you feel you are mislead. Goodluck and happy Post-processing!!!

How to make a carpet in Sketchup and Vray

An old way of creating carpet in Sketchup and Vray, which can be useful for those newbies. I have posted this long time ago @ www.cgpinoy.org and they found this so very useful. Eager to learn more? Follow these simple steps:

1.Insert a pillow from this link (click image below)





2. stretch those four edges for a carpet look



3. and then stretch down the height approximately 10mm high



4. apply your favorite carpet diffuse material (texture position as your preference scale)



carpet diffuse map


5. open the material editor, look for the linked carpet material and check bump and displacement



6. bump settings (multiplier = 0.6)

displacement settings (multiplier = 1.5)

bump/displacement map


7. open the render options change the settings as per image shown (these settings where the real carpet will occur, the value 2 for the edge length (pix) should be the thickness of your carpet strands, the value 0.8 for the amount will be the length of carpet strands)



8. i made a room for this tutorial



9. and apply floor and wall material (interior lighting were set-up already at this point)



10. Insert some components



11. finished product

Bedroom (Render Proposal)

Another render took a day to finish. Thanks to Evermotion for their wonderful models that helped me decrease my 3d modeling time. Hope you like it!!!

Mock-Up Guestroom

A render proposal sent to the principals overseas... Hope they like these...

Tagaytay Resthouse

3 days work for a resthouse... whewww....

Minimalist House (Out of the Ordinary)

Front View


Minimalist - (adjective): Of or relating to artistic minimalism

A 3-storey Residence

Did this project a month ago, seven days of work, 2 hours every night! Same workflow, Autocad2010/3ds Max 2009/ Vray 1.5 SP2/ Photoshop CS3 Enjoy!!!

Raw Image with borderline and logo


Post-processed Image with borderline and logo

An Update To An Old Project

Left Distorted View


Front Distorted View


Revived a project that was done during the early age of my rendering practices. Still having hard times coping with the most decent lighting and texturing. I hope i got it right this time.
Rendered with Vray 1.50 SP2 via 3ds Max 2009 and enhanced with Photoshop CS3