The Secret to Better Renderings in Vray for SketchUp.

So what's the secret to great photorealistic renderings in V-Ray? Here's the thing, most of the struggling people face in V-Ray comes from getting too far into the rendering process too fast, wasting a ton of time with render settings and adjusting lights in an effort to fight earlier mistakes, which could have been avoided altogether by getting a few fundamental steps right from the start. So how do you do that? We've come up with a simple three-step approach to rendering that we teach at the beginning of our popular V-Ray for SketchUp course, which helps students go from not being sure where to begin to being able to produce awesome renderings in just a few days. And it can set you up for success on your next rendering project, whether it's your first attempt at photorealistic rendering or you've been at it for a while but are still looking to improve your process and results. We call it the photographer method and it starts with shifting your mindset. Okay, imagine you're a photographer and you've been hired to take a beautiful photograph of a room. Now you'll begin with the first of three parts to the photographer method. Part one, compose your shot. Think of all the gear you need as a professional photographer in the real world to take a great photograph. Camera, lenses, lighting, just to name a few. So what does that mean for you creating your rendering? Well, all the gear you need comes with V-Ray for SketchUp. So the first thing you need to do is use the virtual camera in V-Ray to set up your shot. If you have the auto exposure feature turned on, this will work kind of like a point-and-shoot camera on your phone, giving you V-Ray's best guess at balancing your exposure levels. You can also turn auto exposure off and find that you have more manual control over all the details, such as exposure, depth of field, ISO, aperture, even shutter speed, just as if you were taking a photo with a professional level DSLR. In the real world, you'd move around the room with your camera to find the perfect angle for your photo. In SketchUp, you'll do the same thing by using the navigation and position camera tools. Of course, there's no definitive right or best composition when it comes to setting up your camera. You'll have to play around to find something that looks good to you. But as a general rule of thumb, in SketchUp, you can follow the same best practices as you would for photography in the real world. Here are some pointers that can help you achieve a balanced and natural looking composition. First, you'll want to set an appropriate focal length for what you're trying to capture. In architectural photography, photographers tend to use wide-angle lenses to capture more of the room. You can play around with values until you find something you like, but a good starting point is to try something between 24 and 35 millimeters. On the other hand, if you're doing a detail or a close-up shot, it's more common in the real world to use a longer focal length, like 100 millimeters. Once you've set your focal length, you'll also want to adjust the height of the camera. Often, I see renderings where the position of the camera is too high, giving the composition an unnatural feeling. Using SketchUp's look around tool to set an average human level eye height, say five foot five, can help make your rendering feel more like a photograph. And lastly, you can use a photography technique called the rule of thirds. To do this, imagine your image is divided into a grid of thirds vertically and horizontally. Placing key objects at the intersection of these lines can help give an overall balance to your compositions. You can even add a grid as you navigate in SketchUp by using the watermark feature in the styles tab, by uploading a PNG with a transparent background. I've put a link to the one I'm using with instructions on how to use it in the cards. You'll find it as part of the video notes I put together for you, which you can use to review everything we're covering today. Okay, once you've set up your camera angle, don't forget that you can hide and show tags to finalize exactly what you're showing in your shot. And also to hide elements that aren't in the shot, but might slow down your model or your rendering. This is kind of like how you wouldn't worry about fixing or arranging anything that isn't on camera in your real world photo setup. And lastly, just like you'd lock off your tripod when you finish setting up your real world shot, always remember to save your scene in SketchUp to lock everything in. Okay, now you've got your camera set up. You're ready to move on to the next part of the photographer method. Part two, light your scene. Back in your real world room, as a professional photographer, the most common way to create a balanced, beautiful shot would be to use the two-point lighting technique. While you may not be familiar with the term two-point lighting, you've no doubt seen it used countless times as a basic method of lighting photos of every sort. Architectural, portraiture, still life, you name it. So what is it? Two-point lighting is essentially just what it sounds like. You're using two lights to light the focal point of your image. In most common scenarios, after you've determined your camera placement, the first light is set up as the primary light source for the scene, called the key light, on one side of your camera. Then you add a second light, or what's called a fill light, on the opposite side of your camera. And then balance the intensity of the lights to get your desired look. Note that the key and fill lights don't have to be real lights, such as the ones coming from light fixtures or other light sources that might be in your scene. But rather, they're set up to enhance the lighting of the overall space. In V-Ray for SketchUp, you can use the same technique. To make it easier, I've broken that down into five easy steps. First, set up your key light. The key light should provide the primary lighting and shadows you want to see. You can use the sun or a V-Ray dome light if you want sunshine to be the primary source of light in your rendering. Or you can use an artificial light as your key light. If you want to go that route, usually a directional light like a spotlight or a rectangle light is the best choice. As a general rule of thumb, it's best to position your key light higher than the camera, then angled away from the camera and pointing towards your focal point to achieve more natural looking results. Second, balance your camera exposure to the key light. Now remember, if you were a photographer taking this photo in the real world, you'd need to check and adjust your camera's exposure settings to make sure they're dialed in correctly for your scene. It's no different when you're rendering your SketchUp model. So at this point in the process, you're ready to adjust your camera's exposure relative to the key light you've just set up to get a properly lit shot. Just remember that you need to have auto exposure turned off. And then to increase the exposure or make the image brighter, move the slider to the right or to make the image darker, slide it to the left. Hold on, before we go on, I want to reiterate this step because it is so crucial. Make sure to adjust your camera's exposure relative to your key light now and not later after you've added any more lights. One of the most common mistakes I see students make is skipping setting their exposure at this point in the rendering process, which inevitably leads them down a much more difficult road, wasting a ton of time adding unnecessary lights and trying to force things to work. So set your exposure now and your future self will definitely thank you. Thanks for the tip! Okay, the next step. Number three, add your fill light. This secondary or fill light should be used to help fill in anything that's too dark or falls in shadow, helping you bring out important details. As a good starting point, try placing your fill light at roughly 90 degrees relative to the key light with your camera being in between the two lights. Again, directional lights like spotlights and rectangle lights work well here. Now, just like a professional photographer lighting a room in the real world, you've got your basic lighting setup in place and ready for your shot. But wait, you're not quite done yet. Next, number four, balance the key and fill. Once you've added the fill light, you'll often find you need to adjust either the color or brightness of one of your lights to balance it relative to the other. Since you've exposed your camera to the key light back in step two, you should start by making adjustments to the fill light first. Because the fill light is being used to bring up the darker areas that fall into shadow from the key light, in general, you'll want it to be set dimmer relative to the key. It's also usually best to use a softer light for the fill. Of course, there are scenarios where this might not be the case for your desired lighting. You'll just want to experiment with the various settings to find the right balance for what you're after. Now, a quick side note, if you're using V-Ray 5, you should know about an exciting new feature called Light Mix that can be a great fallback if you don't dial in everything perfectly with your lighting right now. That's because using this feature, you can actually adjust the balance of your lights after you render your image. Even with Light Mix, I still recommend getting a good balance now, not only to help you visualize your final rendering as you work through the rest of your setup, but also to make things easier when you go to work in Light Mix later. Just like a photographer in the real world, the more you can get right in the camera, the less work and easier it will be to deal with finalizing your image in post or after the fact during post-production. I'll show you a bit more about how Light Mix works later in this video. But first, there's one final step you'll need to do to complete your lighting setup. Number five, set up your light fixtures. After you've set up the key and fill lights, it's time to work on any additional lights that are visible in your rendering, like any light fixtures or bulbs. And just like a photographer in the real world, you'll often want those fixtures to be visible in your final photograph or rendering. Now, if you've followed the previous steps, then you should have your main two-point lighting setup already complete when you get to this step. But, if you skipped ahead and started putting in these lights already, stop, turn off these lights, rewind, and make sure you complete the main two-point lighting setup first. I've seen way too many students make the mistake of jumping right in to adding all their bulbs and fixtures first, only to waste a ton of time fighting to get the overall lighting of the scene to look right afterwards. So, make sure to get your two-point lighting setup complete before adding these fixtures. Your future self will definitely thank you, again. Now, which lights you do turn on or off for your rendering will be a judgment call you'll have to make based on the look you're going for. As a general rule of thumb, it looks nice to have fixtures on in daytime interior shots, but outdoor lights don't need to be on for daytime exteriors. And you'll usually want all your fixtures on for dusk or night shots. And again, if you're using V-Ray 5, the visibility of these lights is another thing you'll be able to control after the fact with Lightmix. I'll cover more on that in a minute. One important thing to keep in mind as you do add more lights to the fixtures in your scene is that the more lights you add, the more it will slow down your render times. And you'll also need to remember to balance each light against your main two-point lighting setup. Okay, so you've set up your key light, set your exposure to your key light, set up your fill light, balanced your key and fill, and set up your light fixtures. Your camera and lighting setup is complete. And as a photographer, you're ready to snap the final photo. In V-Ray, that would mean hitting the render button. But one quick thing to note, if you're in V-Ray 5 and you want to use Lightmix, you'll need to enable it as a render element before hitting render. Okay, here we go. Time to render. Depending on how fast your computer is, now might be a good time to make yourself a cup of coffee while you wait. You deserve it. Alright, you've got your final rendering and it's looking pretty great. But wait, there's still one more important part of the photographer method you won't want to skip. Number three, enhance your final image. In the real world, a photographer doesn't expect perfect photos to come straight out of the camera. To make a great image, they'll make final enhancements to it in a program like Lightroom or Photoshop. And it's no different for the renderings you get out of V-Ray. The best ones have almost all had finishing touches and adjustments made to them. Now with V-Ray 5, we actually have two powerful ways we can adjust the image after rendering it. The first is the Lightmix feature that I've been talking about. And it goes beyond the kinds of adjustments a It's kind of magical. Here's how it works. In the V-Ray frame buffer, in the layers tab, click on Lightmix. Under properties, you'll see a list of the lights in your scene along with the ability to change their power, color, and visibility. Not only can you use this tool to balance your lights after the fact, you can also create entirely different lighting. Even going from something that looks more like a daytime rendering to a nighttime version. All without having to re-render. The second way to make adjustments is using the powerful new frame buffer in V-Ray 5. Including color corrections, combining render elements, and even using blend modes. All without needing to use another application like Photoshop. I'll miss you Photoshop. Okay, V-Ray's new features are really powerful. And for some, they'll be all that's needed. But they still fall short of some of the things you can do with Photoshop to enhance your final image. We don't have time in this video to cover all of those things, but you can use Photoshop to add additional imagery or cutouts to your scene, paint lighting, materials, or effects, filter, crop, or make adjustments to the entire image. Honestly, you could create an entire course just to cover all the magic you can work on your renderings in Photoshop. Go for Alex. Oh, right, right, right. I'm being reminded we already have that course. No, no, no, no. I told them. And that's it. Now you know the keys to the photographer method. Next, be sure to check out the other videos in this playlist. From here, it's definitely possible to learn everything on your own. But if you can't afford to waste any time or pick up bad habits, I recommend checking out our video course library. It's filled with $8,700 worth of SketchUp courses exclusively for professionals, including our comprehensive V-Ray course. Head over to our website and try it for free. Until next time, happy sketching!