The Making of "Living Room in LWF"

Hi guys, today I am going to guide you on how to make the Living Room in LWF rendering in 3dsMax Design 2011, Vray 1.5 SP5, and Photoshop CS5 from set-up to post processing. Without further a-do let's keep the ball rolling!

This would not be as detailed as other tutorials out there, but this somehow will guide you through the entire process. And you will achieve this: (Click to enlarge)


Okay let's start! First your gamma setting should look like this:


Let's go to top view so that you could see my lighting set-up


I just made a single vray light plane outside the room and copied (instanced) and scaled them to each windows. See below the settings of the vray light plane:

I always set my Intensity mode to "Temperature" and set it to 6000 to achieve a light bluish color. Intensity multiplier will depend now on how bright you want to achieve on your scene, for now I set it to 40 ( a very bright intensity)

We will now zoom out a little bit to see the location of my Sun and Dome lighting:


I used Directional light for my sun (for me it's easy to manipulate), give it an orange-peach color and Vray Dome with HDRI for my ambient lighting. Please see settings below:



I will also include the material settings of the wood flooring and the curtain (if someone would ask...)


For the curtain material, I used Vray 2-sided material. Create first the front material, drag (copy) to 2nd slot to create Back material of the same setup but, give it a subtle refraction. Now, give it some translucency of RGB:20,20,20

As for the camera settings see image below for set-up:

I dropped my F-number to 1.6 to drastically have a very bright ambiance.

And finally the Vray settings, see image below:

It's very typical as you would see, except for the Color Mapping in which a set-up for Linear workflow.

Wireframe:

Final (Post-Processed):


As for the post-processing, see images below my procedure on how to achieve this kind of bursting blue and green colors saturating in my images:

First open your raw (beauty) render and AO Pass, duplicate the AO Pass to your beauty pass then set it to Multiply and set Opacity according to your taste.

Without AO:

With AO:


Merge visible

Make adjustment layer "Levels" and follow these settings:


Make adjustment layer "Selective Color" then follow these settings:


Make another adjustment layer "Selective Color" then follow these settings:


Now here's my favorite part, the color balancing, here I freely adjust the colors and of course according to my taste, you should try to do your own settings too. But for now, if you want to achieve a bluish/greenish tint on your renders you should/must follow what I have created.

Set your Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights Levels with these numbers:
Shadow Levels: -12, -5, -11
Midtone Levels: -15, -10, -25
Highlight Levels: -10, -2, -7


When you're done, your image will look similar or closely on what I have got:


Then, make the last selective color adjustment layer:


Click the "Background" layer, duplicate it (Ctrl+J), and move it on top of all the layers then set it to Sof Light with opacity of 20%


Then click again the "Background" layer, duplicate it (Ctrl+J), and move it on top of all the layers then set it to Color Burn with opacity of 20%


Then merge visible


And finally, put some vignette and CA (this is optional)


That is all my friends. Hope you find this mini tutorial very useful to your projects. See you again guys!!!

Raw render:

Final processed render:

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!!!