Reviewing Your Renders!

What's happening ladies and gentlemen, this is Minh for Architecture Inspirations. Today, I will be reviewing some of your renders and give you some tips and tricks to improve. Let's get started. So a while back I asked some of you to submit your renders so I can review them. And I know it's been a couple of months since you submitted them, and I know this video is super late, but let's jump into the first one. Here's the first submission. It's an interior render done in Sketchup and Vray. The first thing I usually look at is the composition. Right now, it's not looking too bad, but I think the camera can be a little higher so you can see more details of the scene like the chair or what's on the bed. Also right here, the headboard of the bed is cutting the image in a weird way. I would recommend that you just completely move it outside the frame. Now let's look at the other aspects of the scene such as the models and materials and lighting. The first thing I noticed about the materials is that it's not UV correctly. As you can see here, the fabric has some kind of pattern but you can't really tell because the UV is not mapped correctly. A way to fix this is by using UV plugins such as SketchUV or Fredo2Paint. The other thing about materials is the Vray fur that's used to create the rug. It doesn't look very realistic yet. There are also some issues on the edge here. The Vray fur can be a little tricky, I'll try to make a video on how to do rugs later. Another thing is that I can see some fur sticking out going through the geometry of the small table here. So that's something to keep in mind when using Vray fur. As for the models, the objects look a bit off scale to me. For example, here is a really big lounge chair right next to a guitar that seems a bit small. Perhaps the chair is too big or maybe the guitar is just a little too small, I'm not sure, maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. But it does look a bit off scale. And maybe it's because of the camera angle or something, but this bed also looks really big. So again, finding a better angle would improve the render. As for the lighting, it looks good. Looks like a normal daytime interior render with the main light source coming from the left side of the room. Yeah, that's all for the first render, let's move on to the next one. And here's the second submission. Another interior scene, but this one is modeled with Rhino and rendered in Lumion. My first impression is that it looks good. Overall the lighting is really good, the models are nice, the materials also look good so far. But let's zoom in a little closer to see more details. Looking at the fabric on the pillow, the bumps look a little too strong, too intense, especially if we compare it to the fabric material on the blanket which looks more realistic. So maybe consider using a similar material or just reduce the bumps of this material because in reality, the fabrics are often pretty smooth unless you're talking about towels or something. Looking closer at the wood, I can see that there's a seam right here. This is because it's not a seamless material, so whenever the texture is repeated, it will leave a seam at the edge of the pattern like so. This is an easy fix, just replace the material with a seamless material which can easily be found on lots of websites. Now let's look at the lighting. The main light source is coming from the right, the shadows also look nice. When zooming in though, I can see something kinda interesting. The thing about having reflective objects in your renders is that it sometimes can show the flaws. Here you can see in the reflection of this object that there's some really bright white area. That could be like a rectangle light of some sort on the right side of the room, outside the camera frame. But in reality, this should reflect a window or a door. But yeah, that's something to keep in mind when you have reflective objects in your renders. Let's look at the second render of this scene. Yup, you can see it here too. This view also shows more of the wood material which is really really nice. But yeah, overall, good objects, good lighting. The main thing is just the materials, just fix those details and you're good to go. Let's move on to the next one. And here's the next one. An interior scene modeled in Revit and rendered with Enscape. At first glance, my eyes are drawn towards this wall here because it is a lot brighter than the rest of the scene. So maybe you should consider redirecting the light to illuminate the parts that you want to focus on. In this case, I think it would be this sofa area right here. Also right now, there's no contact shadows here at the legs of the sofa so it looks like the sofa is kinda floating. So if you shine the light downward toward this area, then it will create more shadows under these objects and can probably help this area look more realistic. For the materials, the brick wall looks a little flat but I understand that this is one of Enscape's limitations. It doesn't support displacement maps, so materials like brick often look a little flat. The other materials look okay, although this wall material here can also be improved. The wall is closer to the camera, but the texture is just a little blurry, so consider using a higher quality material. Also, this edge here is really sharp, so you might want to consider rounding the corner. I've done tutorials on this topic, so remember to check it out if you haven't yet. But yeah, rounding the corner really helps soften the sharp edges that are created in 3D software. I usually use the Round Corner or Fairter Corner plugins. Other than that, the objects in your model looks like high quality, especially the sofa because it has like fabric wrinkles, which is really awesome. But I think you can try different fabric materials though, some with a more prominent fabric texture, or maybe try a leather texture. But yeah, good job, let's go to the next one. And this next render is done in Blender, which I haven't used, so I can't give much advice specifically to Blender, but I think my experience can be helpful and applies to other software as well. So first, looking at the composition, it seems a little odd to me. Right now the main focus seems to be this chair here, but it's also fighting with this decorated wall on the right, which is splitting up the focus of the viewer. I'm not sure what's here either, maybe it's a piece of furniture like a chair or something, but it's not very clear. So perhaps you should consider changing the perspective, maybe zoom in to get more details of the sofa, or just zoom out to capture more of the room. Next, looking at the materials, the material of the chair looks really blurry right here, but it looks fine here. So I think it might be the UV mapping or the scale of the texture. You can see that this part of the chair right here looks okay, but the materials of this part is not. So again, learning how to apply the textures correctly will definitely fix that. The material of the blanket here is also a little odd to me, it might be because of the texture is too much or maybe it's the bump, I'm not sure. The floor and the wall textures also look blurry, I'll show you some good examples of painted stucco walls and some really good wood flooring. And I'm not sure if you know about PBR materials, but definitely look into that, this will really help you with creating realistic materials and take your renders to the next level. For the lighting, it's coming from the right side, and it seems okay, but it's not telling me much about the scene. Maybe because it's too soft? So probably consider making the lighting a bit more interesting or at a better angle so that you highlight the form of the objects and especially the textures of the materials. Cool, let's go to the next one. And here's the next one. One thing to keep in mind when submitting your renders in the future, please leave out your logos and especially your phone number and emails, otherwise I will not review it. In this case, I'll just crop it out for now. Anyway, this one is an interior scene rendered in Vray. At first glance, I like the composition, it looks good, and it is clear what is the main focus of the scene. The objects look like high quality and the materials also look pretty good. Here's an example of a wall that looks quite realistic. You can see that it has some texture to it, but it's not too much, so it's not distracting. The corner of the wall also looks like it's been rounded, I think. You can see that the edge is not that sharp, which is good. I don't know, overall the scene looks good. I do think the scene is a bit too dark for me, so I will try to use the camera raw filter to adjust it a bit. I will increase the exposure and contrast a bit, and maybe adjust the highlights and shadows as well. Then probably increase the texture to sharpen the details of the image. And here's the before and after. There we go, not too many tips for this one, probably because it's a simple scene but it was done really well. But yeah, I just prefer my renders a little brighter, but that's just me. I don't know, let me know what you guys think. And let's move on to the next one. And here's the next one, model in Sketchup and render in Lumion. Looking at the composition, I personally don't like the angle too wide because it might cause some distortion in your image, like this area here. I know some people like wide camera angles, but I personally try to have a similar angle as to what we see in real life. Looking at the material, the flooring is a little too reflective. If you plan to have a material that's reflective, especially for something this big, consider using surface imperfections in your model to make it more realistic. Because in real life, even the cleanest material has some scratches and smudges. Most of the objects in the scene looks okay, but they're not super high quality, except this blanket here which seems to have the most polygons. But even the bed, which is the main area of this render, it still looks lower quality than the blanket itself. And the decorative objects like the plants on the left side don't look very good either. I think the leaves materials are also a bit too saturated. So consider looking for better quality materials for your scene. For the background outside the windows, I'm not sure what's going on here, but it looks like just a solid color. So probably adding something outside the windows to add some context to the scene. It could be just a garden, it could be just the skyline, whatever. But besides that, the lighting looks good. But yeah, let's go to the next one. And here's the next one. This one is modeled in Sketchup and rendered with Vray and post-production in Photoshop. My first impression is the render looks really good. I like the simple composition. And I can see what is the main focus when I look at the image. In this case, it's this sofa here. So let's zoom in a bit. If you look closely, the material looks like it's broken up into different triangles. This is an example of good model, good materials, but bad UV mapping. The other areas look okay, but it's just these areas that looks like the UV was mapped incorrectly. Same issue can be seen on this pillow here. Here you can see a clear pattern of the fabric, but in the curved areas of the object, you can see that the texture is just breaking into different parts. So again, Sketch UV, Fredo DuPaint, and Vray UV tools are great for UV mapping. I might make a video explaining all of this in the future. But yeah, other than that, I think the model looks great. I love the background. It shows the context but it's not too distracting, which is cool. I love the small details in the model too, like the steam on the coffee cup, which was probably done in Photoshop or it could've been done using an emissive material too. But yeah, great job. Let's go to the next one. And here's the next one. This is another interior scene model in Sketchup and rendered with Vray and post-production in Photoshop. At first glance, it's really really good. So let's zoom in closer to study the model. Here's one thing that you can improve. The towels don't look too realistic and they look a little too rigid and not organic enough. Because in real life, towels have folds and wrinkles in an organic way. Unlike these over here, even if they're folded, they still look softer. Also, trying to find a better material, towel fabrics are often quite textured while this material here is a little too smooth. And looking at the mirror over here, I'm not quite sure what's going on or what it's reflecting. The texture in the back looks like marble but there seems to be some type of structure here as well or design elements. Clarity in a render is really important but I don't know, this could be a design feature and you have to be the client or the designer to know what it is. But yeah, here's another example of the objects looking too perfect. Similar to the towels, this chair looks too uniform and the material looks like a solid color. So maybe try finding a better fabric material that would help it look a little more realistic. And here's something that's not very noticeable to most people. But if you look closely, the texture on this part and this one are exactly the same. Same material but also the same position and orientation. This happens when they are instances of the same component so to fix this is quite easy. If they are components, then just make one of them unique and then just adjust the texture. Even with a small change like this can help your render look more realistic. And besides that, the lighting looks good. Good job, let's go to the next one. And here's the next one. Another interior scene rendered in Enscape. And this user seems to be a beginner user which is completely fine. I encourage you guys to submit no matter what level you're at. Unless you're super good, then you don't need me to review. But yeah, let's get into it. Overall, I think the composition looks nice. Although there's just too much going on in my opinion, there are just lots of different colors, textures, and even the lighting is a little too complicated. Maybe that's just the style of the design regarding to the colors and textures, but it's still a little too intense for me. But there are still some things that you can improve. For example, the lighting is a bit too harsh as you can see here. And whenever lighting is too harsh, it will create too much contrast that will be distracting. I mean, it's not too bad over here. On the right side, because it's softer and easier to look at. But the light from this floor lamp is too harsh. Also, you can see the same thing here on the ceiling which was probably created by the ceiling lamps here. For the materials, I think they can be improved as well. For example, these pillows look more like plastic than fabric. I would recommend watching this video here to learn how to create realistic materials in Enscape. But yeah, zooming a little closer into parts of the model, I can see that maybe the lighting is a bit too bright because I can see some bright dots here which could probably result in by the light being too bright and the bumpiness of the materials. So the main takeaway is definitely fix the lighting that would improve your render a lot for sure. And the materials can be improved as well. But yeah, let's go to the next one. And here's the final one. This was done in Sketchup and Vray. Honestly, this looks so good that there's nothing I can say about it. Some of her renders looked better than mine. But she did tell me to take a look at her exterior render. So let's do that. Looking at the exterior is not as impressive as the interior. There are a couple of things that you could consider improving. For example, the lighting is a bit too purple for me. I know some people love this sunset and sunrise style of lighting. I do too. I mean, in some cases, I actually use this style a lot. But in this case, it made the image a little too dark that it might take away from the main design of the house. So maybe consider brightening up the actual house itself somehow or changing the HDRI or lighting. Another thing I noticed is that these chairs and pillows are a little too uniform. They're kind of spread out evenly and these are the same chairs and pillows components so it can look repetitive. A way to fix it is just by rotating the chair a bit or changing the position of the pillow on each chair or perhaps just flipping the pillows and that would help break the repetition. Looking at the background, this could have been added in Photoshop or maybe it was an HDR image. I might be wrong, but it looks like the background was added in Photoshop later. Well there seems to be trees in the reflection of the windows which is really neat. That's a really nice detail that helps your render look better. Oh yeah look, the background was definitely added in Photoshop I think. Because if we compare the reflection of the pool and the background, we can see that they are a little bit different. The trees seem to be in different places I think. Also the sky in the pool reflection looks more blue than purple. This might also be caused by the water. But the reflection does still look different to me. So that's something you need to be careful when adding backgrounds in Photoshop, especially when there are reflective surfaces in your render. But yeah, overall I think still a really good render. I think it's just the lighting here that could be done better and maybe moving the objects a bit will make it less repetitive. But yeah, that's the last one. Again, I apologize for not being able to review these sooner, but let me know if this was helpful and let me know if you are interested in seeing more render review videos like this. But anyway, leave a like if you enjoyed the video and comment below, let me know if I missed anything or if I was being too picky. Anyway, stay inspired guys and I'll see you next time.