Using Color/Material Channels for White Walls

We sent out a rendering tip today about White Walls.

Boothy pointed out that you can also make quick adjustments to walls using the Material/Color channels feature.

Here is a rendering of a house which we used for our first Webinar:



By clicking on the material in the back wall, you can select Change Color



This brings up a Wizard which lets you make changes to the color of a material after rendering.
Here I changed it to HSL (rather than RGB) mode, which lets you set the luminance of the color directly. And used the slider bar to move it more towards white.



I was able to adjust the wall with the slider until I got a lighter effect.

Note Material Channels does not re-render the model, so if you change the color too much, any anti-aliasing at the edge of the color will not be changed properly, and also any reflections of a color will not be changed. But it can be a good idea for Walls.

See: Material Channels

Rendering Tip - White Walls

Rendering Question - White Walls

Recently on our Forum, we received this query:   

How can I make Walls or other surfaces whiter?
 
We often get requests for information on how to make walls, ceilings, or objects being rendered look "Whiter".  White Walls and White Backgrounds are often a challenge, because illuminated items in the real world are almost never pure white. Whereas "pure white" is used often in computer images.

Here are some tips. 

White that we see in computer images isn't always realistic 

Some walls in the real world aren't as "White" as we think they are. For instance, if we stood in front of a white wall with a very bright flashlight, would the beam of the flashlight be even "whiter? If it appears whiter, then the wall wasn’t really white but was only perceived as white.

Here is a typical rendering of a room with white walls, illuminated by artificial lights.





It is actually fairly realistic, but often we feel that the walls are just not white enough.

White walls appear gray because they do not receive enough light. However, even if they were "white", we would expect the lampshade to be a brighter white. So, it is primarily a question of white balance. If the walls, floor and ceiling were all "pure white", they would also look the same, leaving no gradient and we wouldn't be able to tell them apart. 

Using a Paint Program

Here I have use a Paint Program to make the walls completely white. This is not really the effect we want either - since both walls are pure white the natural darkening near the corner is washed out.

Brightness Slider

We can make the whole scene brighter with the brightness slider at the top of the rendering window.

Here I increased overall brightness by 10%. This might have made the walls "whiter", but if I ran the brightness all the way up, the rest of the scene would wash out.

Self Glow

Another way to make a single object brighter is to apply self glow to the material on the surface. Self Glow make a material appear brighter - as if additional light was being applied to it.

Here I applied a 15% self glow to both walls. This made the walls lighter, but the automatic "photometric" lighting adjuster darkened the rest of the scene to compensate for the bright walls.

Self Glow and Brightness

So finally, I adjusted the brightness slider at the top of the screen to make the whole image brighter: With a combination of self glow and the brightness slider we may be able to get close to the effect we are looking for.

Lighting Channels

Note: Lighting channels will make this easier - there is one lighting channel that adjusts the self glow with a slider bar, so you can adjust self glow and overall brightness after the rendering is complete. See: Lighting Channels

See also

• Common Rendering Questions
• Lighting Channels
• Automatic Luminance 

Sketchy Shadows from SketchUp Models

Last week at Basecamp we ran into a lot of people who were interested in NPR renderings.

I took an NPR example of a church from a SketchUcation thread (http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=48550)  and ran it through our Soft Shadows and Sketchy Shadows stuff since it makes a good example of Sketchy Shadows from our NprTools add-on.

Here is the Church, in SketchUp, with a Sketchy Edges style - the shadows sometimes seem harsh with Sketchy Edges:

We then create a "soft Shadow" image:

This is not as much "rocket science" as we like to pretend. What we do is change the date and time, save several shadow images, and then merge them all together. You can get a smoother soft-shadows image by requesting more intermediate shadow images. However, for Sketchy Shadows - the next image - it actually works better with a coarser soft-shadows image.

This next part, Sketchy Shadows part, was pretty clever, (I think at least). We replaced all the materials in the entire model with a sketchy hatch pattern, saved that images as well and then blended it with the soft shadows image to create a Sketchy shadows effect.

Note how that placing the sketchy pattern materal on the SketchUp model causes the hatch lines to be at different angles for different surface planes. You can get a similar sketchy shadow effect just using a watermark applied over the image. But I think that having the hatch patterns at different angles makes a better effect.

Here a zoom of part of the image so you can see the pattern better:

Here is the model with hatch on all surfaces which was then merged with the shadow images. (This is pretty ugly, but I included it for people who want to try something like this themselves.) We actually made two of these images - with the hatch patterns in different directions and then merged them, based on the intensity of the soft shadows image to achieve the cross-hatch vs single line hatch cross-over in the final image.

Rendering Presentations at SketchUp Basecamp

Render Plus and IRender nXt were invited to be on the panel of providers of Rendering Add-ons for SketchUp. Each Rendering Add-on was asked to present their special features. Presentation were made by:

• iRender nXt
• Bloom Unit
• Render[in] for SketchUp
• Shaderlight
• SU Podium
• Thea Render, and
  
• V-Ray for SketchUp

Each presenter was given 5 minutes to discuss the features which set their rendering offering apart from other renderers. For IRender nXt we talked about:

• Fractal Trees,
• Lighting Channels,
• the new Background Wizard , and
• Post Processing Features . 

None of the other panel members included similar features in their presentations, so they may be unique to IRender nXt, or perhaps the other vendors don't consider them as important.

The audience comments about our Lighting Channels and other features was very encouraging. We were able to demonstrate these as well as other features at our presentation table on the second day.

Lighting Channels with IRender nXt

 Overall Basecamp was a great event. Much of the thanks has to go to Aiden Chopra, John Bacus, and Tommy, (who was always running around making things work properly), for putting on this event, and giving us all a chance to learn more about SketchUp and meet each other face to face. 

 

Basecamp 2012 - BIM, Attributes and Reports

At SketchUp Basecamp this year presented ideas on attributes and reporting from SketchUp models - both using SpaceDesign, and together with our partner BimUP with whom we are creating special modelling and reporting capabilities for the Construction Marketplace.

There was much talk among the participants about BIM and about adding additional information to SketchUp models to make the smart and ready for calculations, reporting, etc.

 

SpaceDesign is designed to make it easier to place components, view and edit attributes stored with the components and create reports. This powerful plugin lets you choose attributes from other sources such as Dynamic Component Attributes or attributes from model creaters such as Igloo and easily include them in your reports.

You are able to perform both simple, (such as quantity * weight for total weight), or complex (such as cost calculated at different raster based on quantity, or rounded up to package sizes) as part of your reports.

BimUP uses similar reporting technology on items used in construnction - walls, foundations, beams, etc. - to generate the information you an get from an intelligent model.

 

SketchUp 2012 Basecamp and MakerBots

We just returned from the SketchUp 2012 Basecamp.

The Guest Speaker of this year's Basecamp was Bre Pettis of MakerBot who has developed a 3D Printer which interfaces with SketchUp to create plastic prototypes and plastic parts directly from SketchUp models.

The story of how they developed was fascinating.

 

 

With a MakerBot, you can design 3D objects in SketchIUp, export them with the STL format exporter, load the MakerBot up with either ABS plastic(what Lego blocks are made of) or PLA (biodegradable - made of corn), and create real objects -either as prototypes for as finished products.

 

Bre brought along several MakerBots which we got to try out on Tuesday, 

 

 

Basecamp 2012 - report from Trimble and SketchUp

We just returned from the SketchUp 2012 Basecamp. We ran into lots of old SketchUp friends and acquaintances, met some new ones, and had a great time learning the latest and greatest about SketchUp and their new owner, Trimble.

We had been looking forward to the reports and discussions with John Bacus of SketchUp, and Bryn Fosberg of Trimble, and we weren't disappointed. They told us what was new in SketchUp, what was in planning for the short term, and about the reasoning behind the recent Trimble purchase.

They reassured us that SketchUp would keep the qualities what we like about it, while adding new features for the future - mostly focusing on making things even better for Ruby Developers like ourselves, and also working to bring SketchUp into the world of other Trimble products.

We are encouraged to continue working with SketchUp and Trimble and continue to see a great fit for our products.

Some new items for Ruby Developers:

• New testing environment for developers called TestUp. This will make it easier to create test routines for testing new code and making sure that older code still works.

• New Developer Console to replace the Ruby Console.One new feature will be the ability to enter and test multiple lines of Ruby code at the same time.
• SketchUp will participate in some Open-Source, multiple developer projects. The first will be work on the STL Import / Export feature to interface to 3D printers such as the MakerBot which was aslo shown at Basecamp.

Including Edge Lines in Renderings

I made a new image of a spaceship from the 3D Warehouse to demonstrate rendering of Edge Lines in IRender nXt

 

There are two ways to render Edge Lines - You can extract an image from SketchUp of just the edge lines, and then paste it on top of the rendered image or you can create 3D geometry from the edge lines, and add it to the model before rendering. ( IRender nXt can do either of these automatically.)

This image uses full 3D geometry. The full 3D edge lines are reflected properly in other geometry. The overlay of SketchUp edge lines would not be visible in reflections. 

Here is the same scene rendered without edge lines. You can see how the edge lines can be important for detail.

If you wanted edge lines for just part of the model, could identify which edge lines you wanted - e.g. by color - and then include only those edge lines. (IRender nXt contains a feature to only extract edge lines which have a color or material)

See: Edge Highlighting

Trees for IRender nXt and RpTreeMaker

A while ago we added a new, free, Plugin, RpTreeMaker, for SketchUp users who want to make custom tree images which work in SketchUp, and make good shadows in SketchUp.

See this older thread on SketchUcation:

We have created some standard trees for use with SketchUp and RpTreeMaker.

You can place these in SketchUp and use them as is, or you can place them, then edit them with RpTreeMaker.to customize them.
These can be placed directly into SketchUp where they will appear as 2D "Always Face User" trees. If you render them with IRender nXt, they will re-render at higher resoltion as Fractal Trees.

View these trees in the 3D Warehouse

New Features in IRender nXt

A user sent us this query:

"I received an email about renewing IRender nXt which says: "new features include" but lists nothing. What, if any, are the new features?"

We add new features and bug fixes almost every month. The most recent new features are:

September 2012

Added a new tool to download Render Ready components from the 3D Warehouse. In the initial version we posted several lights, mirrors,and trees to see how this will work for you.

Added a Restart Rendering button to the toolbar, to quickly restart a rendering, only sending the changes for Materials and Rendering Options.

August 2012

Added a tool to the Options Light tab and toolbar, "Query and Find Lights in Model", to identify, help to locate, and edit all of the lights in a model.

July 2012:

Added a Sample Drawing dialog for new users to download models which demonstrate various rendering solutions

Added "Automatically include all Lighting Channels" check box.

Full List
 
All of these features and bug fixes are listed here:


http://www.renderplus.com/wp2/wk/IRender_nXt_-_New_Version.php