Tuesday 18,2014.
Ashraf khan.
Every year around this time, I have made it a tradition to illustrate a winter scene. With the holidays around the corner, this weekend seemed like a good time to try out some different ideas and techniques related to snow scenes. Sitting down this morning, I didn't really have a clear plan on how I wanted to tackle this illustration. The goal was to create a winter site plan with snow, something I have never done before. I am also making some final touches on "project portfolio updgrade" and I am in need of a few more renderings for the Cranbrook project. I thought why not kill two birds with one stone on this one.
A couple of decisions I had to make early on were how much snow was going to be on the ground and what time of day. I was looking for something with a lot of texture. Therefore, a light dusting where the grass showed through the snow seamed like a good idea.
1. As always, I started with a basic rendering of the Sketchup model.
Above, the Sketchup model followed by a Kerkythea base rendering below.
2. I needed some context for reference so I brought in an aerial image and placed it underneath my design in Photoshop. Though most of this aerial image will get covered up, it helps provide a sense of scale when Photoshopping in trees and textures. I also destaturated the building by about 50% to tone down the strong orange and green colors.
3. I began rummaging the internet for snow textures and trees. A good snowy base was crucial, so I started by filling covering much of the grounds with a basic white texture. I also added snow covered roadways to break up the base snow texture and help illustrate the location of the roads. There will continue to be many textures layered on top of this image so I didn't spend too much time getting everything perfect.
4. Next came the snow cover roofs. This step simply involved selecting each section of the roofs with the polygonal tool and painting them white with the brush tool. I then followed that by overlaying some more snow textures found online to give the white paint more depth.
5. I spent a lot of time looking for winter trees in plan view. Luckily, inserting the tree images into the illustration is simple because they are essentially silhouettes. Images of winter trees have no leaves and white backgrounds because of the snow. All I needed to do was set the layer blend mode to "Multiply" to get rid of the background but still keep the tree and shadow.
6. I liked the idea of letting the grass and landscape peak through the snow and I was able to find a texture online that gave me this look. I copied it several times to generate a larger texture. I started on the roof garden and carried this texture throughout the site.
7. It's usually around this time that I begin tweaking the colors. In this case, I wanted the image to read largely cool with lots of blues. However, I added a yellow color overlay to offset the cool tones and give some contrast. I also wanted the interior of the building to pop so I amped up the warm tones in these areas as well.
8. I plan to add falling snow which significantly reduces the clarity and detail of the base image. I jumped into my TOPAZ LABS Photoshop plugin to increase the detail and texture to help offset this dilution. I endued up using the "Clarity" preset within TOPAZ ADJUST to get the below result.
9. Finally, a winter scene would not be complete without some falling snow. Because of the view, vertically falling snow that I have used in PAST ILLUSTRATIONS would not work here. Instead, I used the radial blur filter which created an interesting effect. The texture is great and really sets the mood for the scene. A detailed tutorial on how to create falling snow can be found HERE.
12 COMMENTSCRANBROOK PROJECT: INTRO SPREAD ILLUSTRATION
SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 2013 | ALEX HOGREFE
The summer is coming to a close and I am making a final push to wrap up “Project Portfolio Upgrade”. I have spent the last two weeks developing a new 3D model for one of my old projects from undergraduate school. Some of you may recognize the design as it has appeared in many pastPOSTS and TUTORIALS. The project was originally developed for a competition by Cranbrook Academy to design an addition to their art museum. It has always been one of my favorite projects and I was excited to revisit it and have a second go at it.
I was in one of those moods to experiment and use more of the right side of my brain. The intro spread to this project seemed like the perfect place to do something a little different. The design has many strong lines that at first glance don’t appear to relate to one another. There is also a grid system that influenced many of the big moves. With all of this complexity, the illustration needed to expose the rules of the design i.e. how the form responded to the grid systems as well as how the forms related to one another. I wasn’t looking for a diagram though. The intro page should be strong graphically but at the same time be abstract, encouraging the viewer to investigate the rest of the project pages.
Above, the new 3D model based on an old project from undergrad.
There was also an opportunity to use this illustration as a study for areas of the design that have not be developed yet like the roof garden and interior details. Breaking away from the 3D model and developing this illustration has spawned a few new ideas that I know I would not have arrived to had I not gone through this exercise. The complexity of an illustration like this really draws me into the project and gets me thinking about things that I just don't think about when modeling and sketching.
This illustration, like all of the other intro spreads, will set the tone for the rest of the portfolio pages of this project. Be sure to check back over the next few weeks. I plan to churn out a few more spreads and hopefully get out some new tutorials that are long over due.
PORTFOLIO UPGRADE: INTERIOR ILLUSTRATION BREAKDOWN
SATURDAY, MAY 25, 2013 | ALEX HOGREFE
THIS PAST POST received a lot of feedback from you asking for a more detailed breakdown of the illustrations. The interior illustration in particular got a lot of attention so I am going to start with that one. Since several different parts of the workflow have already been talked about in the past, I will be adding links to the corresponding sections to avoid too much duplicate information on this site.
1. For this interior shot, I started the process by identifying where and how I wanted to light the space. I designed some linear pendant fixtures to provide most of the ambient light. Then I looked to some specific areas to use the light to highlight the form such as around the stair enclosure and washing the large side walls.
View selected in the Sketchup Model
Blue highlights show proposed locations of artificial light
2. Once the locations were determined, I began applying a unique material to these locations so that I can tell this material to emit light later on in Kerkythea. I use a color that I know is not being used anywhere else in the model, in this case red. I also renamed the material such as Light 1, 2, 3, etc. so that it would be easier to identify when imported into Kerkythea.
3. The model is then imported into Kerkythea where I can begin telling the material to emit light. This is done by finding the material on the left, right clicking, and choosing "Edit Material". In the material editor dialogue box, I first change the diffuse color to white. I next tell it to emit light by going to the "Self Luminance" section and giving it a "Radiance" color of white. The "Power, Efficiency, and Unit" settings will change based on how big your light and space are, but you can start with what I am showing and tweak the "Power" setting for more or less light. With the lights in place, I did a quick rendering which will be used as a base image in Photoshop. A more in depth explanation on this process can be found HERE.
Above, a rendering from Kerkythea with artificial lights
4. Now that I have a base rendering, I am ready to go into Photoshop. I decided to overlay white line work onto the rendering to give the illustration a little more texture. Open the exported line work from Sketchup in Photoshop and move the layer above the base rendering layer. Go to "Image>Adjustments>Invert" to invert the line work colors. Then set the Blend Mode of the layer (found in the layers palette) to "Screen".
Exported line work from Sketchup
Line work inverted to create white lines.
Rendering with white line work layer set to "Screen".
5. Knowing that I won't be overlaying anymore exported SU images, I want to adjust the perspective so that the verticals are perfectly straight up and down. Select all of the layers, then go to "Edit> Transform> Perspective". There was a post on this subject a while back going into more depth which can be found HERE.
6. This next step is something new that I have been experimenting with. I want to add some warmth and detail to the illustration in which case I would typically adjust the levels and add a color overlay. However, I have been playing around with a Photoshop plug-in by TOPAZ LABS. It is primarily a photo editing software but it has been working great for my architectural illustrations. It offers a little more flexibility in terms of pulling out more detail and color in the images. I used the plug-in here to up the detail of the wood and concrete materials.
7. At this point, I am ready to get into the details of the illustration. The first couple of areas that I want to address are adding a background to the outside and fixing some lighting issues in the ceiling.
8. People are always important for scale so I threw a few of them into the illustration. Reflections and shadows are key to getting your people to look like they belong in the illustration. Check out THIS VIDEO TUTORIAL for more on this subject.
9. I wanted to play up the scale of the space and also the fact that so much light would be washing in from the outside. I can solve both these problems by using glare and fog. Using the brush tool and white paint with a really low opacity, I added a slight haze where I imagined a lot of daylight would be coming into the space. I also used this same method to create depth by painting in "fog" as the space projects further back into the distance. It's a subtle move but helps to emphasize the areas of the interior that I want emphasized and gets the illustration closer to the atmosphere that I am looking for.THIS POST explains in more detail how to add fog.
10. More color overlays. There are still many different color tones going on throughout the illustration. One way to unify this is by adding color overlays. I do this on almost every illustration and this one is no exception. All of the illustrations for this project are going to have a slightly warmer palette so I am going to add an orange color overlay. Check out THIS POST for more on color overlays.
11. The image is looking good at this point and this last step probably isn't always necessary. However, I used the TOPAZ PLUGIN "ADJUST" one more time to tweak the colors and add detail to the illustration.
Finally, some of you may have noticed that I am trying to raise money for the latest version of Photoshop. Everything on this site has been produced using CS2 and I think it is about time I upgrade to the latest version. If you find this site helpful and would like to see future tutorials with the latest Adobe software, please consider making a contribution. More information can be found on my ABOUT ME PAGE as well as on the side bar. Thank you in advance for all of your support and thank you to those who have already donated. See you next week.
X-RAY ILLUSTRATION: PART 2
SUNDAY, MARCH 17, 2013 | ALEX HOGREFE
A few weeks back I posted an x-ray illustration of one of my old projects as sort of a last minute idea. This was the first time I had ever done an "x-ray" illustration and I immediately became excited about the possibilities. I'm really drawn to this style because of the way it reveals scale, tectonics, and the relationship of inside to outside. The thing is, this style is really easy to replicate assuming the 3D model is built correctly. I have a habit of thoroughly grouping parts of my 3D models so that I am able to move large chunks out of the way for easier modeling and editing. Because of the way the model is grouped, I am also able to selectively "peel" away parts of the building facade when it comes to rendering the final design. Below is a break down of the illustration as well as a few tips for combining the images.
Above, the Sketchup model with the roof being removed.
The first step involves rendering the model multiple times. I did three separate renderings with the first one showing the complete model, the second with the roof off, and the third with some walls removed. I rendered the model without materials because there was already so much geometry being overlayed on top of each other. I was afraid adding materials would start to over complicate things and muddy the reading of the illustration.
Rendering 1: Model as is (Kerkythea).
Rendering 2: Roof removed (Kerkythea).
Rendering 3: Walls and some floors removed (Kerkythea).
Ultimately, I didn't use the 3rd rendering because some of the lower floors were not fully modeled and much of the information was repetitive with the second rendering.
With all three renderings completed, I began layering them in Photoshop. I started with rendering 1 and used that as the base image. I then took rendering 2 with no roof and moved it above rendering 1 in the layers pallet and set the blend mode to "Multiply". I added a layer mask to rendering 2 and began selectively erasing areas that I didn't want showing through.
It's important to maintain the clarity of the exterior form. Throughout post processing, I'm constantly pulling back and looking at the whole image to make sure the exterior form still reads well and isn't getting lost within the interior layers. One way to manage this relationship is by focusing on the corners and edges of the exterior. With the layer mask still active, I selected the areas I wanted to define, and began erasing parts of the interior (rendering 2 layer).
By giving the exterior corners and edges of the design more definition, the dual reading of exterior and interior is much easier to understand.
The last few steps involve me spending time adding textures and background elements to liven up the surrounding site. I tend to default to minimal materials when the complexity of an image such as this is so extreme. More materials in my opinion would make it more difficult to understand the forms. Instead, I focus more on texture to differentiate between built form, hardscape and landscape.
Finally, I tweaked the color/ levels and gave the image an HDR effect.
FROSTED GLASS (VIDEO)
SUNDAY, JANUARY 20, 2013 | ALEX HOGREFE
I have been using this technique to create frosted glass for as long as I can remember. The workflow is incredibly simple. Most rendering programs can generate frosted glass, but the setup can often be tricky. In the case of Kerkythea, these settings dramatically increase the rendering time. As with everything that I do, I prefer to use Photoshop because I have more control over the final outcome and I can quickly make adjustments to get the look I am going for vs. rerendering the entire scene.
The workflow can be broken down into 3 basic steps.
Above, the base image that I will be working off of.
1. Blur:
I first copied the part of the rendering that I wanted to be frosted glass and applied the Gaussian blur filter. The glass was rendered clear, therefore everything that is seen through the glass such as columns, walls, and lights should be blurred. It's even make sure to blur the mullions outside of the glass.
2. Lighten
To get that "Steven Holl" frosted glass look, there are some concepts to consider. The overall brightness of the surfaces should be much lighter than standard clear glass. In the video, this is where I adjust the levels and use the dodge tool to brighten the copied layer.
Also, as objects get close to the frosted glass, their shadows become darker, and less blurred. That is why I darkened the diagonal columns and shadow under the mullions in the video.
3. Sharp Mullions
The final step is to add sharp mullions over the blurred glass layer. There are a couple of ways that I could have done this, but in this video I used sketchup linework for the mullions. Another path that I could have taken would have been to select the mullions from the original rendering using the "polygonal" tool, copy them to there own layer, and then move them above the frosted glass layer.
URBAN NIGHT ILLUSTRATION
SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, 2013 | ALEX HOGREFE
I've been wanting to do this illustration ever since I first built the Sketchup model a month ago. A couple of areas that I focused on was the semi-transparent glass in the tower and activating the streets down below. I set up the model last night and let it render in Kerkythea over night. I began post processing in PS this morning and finished about 8 hours later. In terms of time spent on post processing, this image is up there as one of the longest that I have done. I also chose a view that is somewhat unconventional in the sense that both the top and the bottom of the tower are cut off. I wanted the shot tighter on the tower facade focusing on the semi-transparent glass. The image is broken down further below.
Because of the size of the model and the amount of lights, not to mention the weak processing power of my computer, the Kerkythea rendering took all night to finish and then some.
Sketchup Linework
Kerkythea Initial Rendering
Once in Photoshop, I first looked at creating a semi-transparent glass for the tower. I wasn't real sure how it would turn out, but after some experimenting, I was able to get the look close to what I was imagining. The workflow is incredibly easy. I will see if I can put together a detailed explanation in the near future.
Once the glass was looking half way decent, I moved to finding the correct textures for the background buildings. I used Google street view to find most of the building facades. Because the buildings are so small in the background, I didn't need high resolution images. Therefore, the street view screen shots were more than sufficient.
I next moved to the street. I have created only a few urban illustrations in my day, but I have found that the key to a successful urban rendering is having an active street life. In other words, adding brightly lit streets with lots of activity and movement. I ran out of time towards the end of the day, but I would have liked to add loads of people to complete the "active street life" vision.
The final step involved me spending hours painting light in all of the windows. With the computer that I have, there is no way that I could have rendered light using Kerkythea. Not only do I not have the computing power, but it would have taken me forever to prepare the Kerkythea model and place all of the lights within the buildings. Instead, I just painted in the lights one by one. Luckily, it's mindless work which means I was able to watch the playoffs and paint at the same time.
WINTER SPECIAL: PART 2
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2012 | ALEX HOGREFE
Those of you who have followed my site for a while may remember that I created a WINTER SCENE POST last year right around this this time describing how to turn any rendering into a snow scene. It was one of the few snow scenes that I had ever created. Since then, I have yet to produce another winter scene so I thought I would start a tradition. I have been working on a new sketchup model (seen in last weeks post) which still needs to be developed further but decided it was far enough along to be used in this winter scene illustration.
I initially didn't have any idea what look/atmosphere I was going for. That may explain why I started out with just a typical daytime kerkythea rendering.
However, once I entered into Photoshop post processing, the illustration moved to a darker, overcast scene. Since the illustration was essentially going to be a night scene now, I started a new Kerkythea rendering with my tower design lit up from the inside. I didn't even try to light up the surrounding buildings because I knew that it would significantly add to the rendering time.
If you look at the above two renderings, you will notice that I rendered the daytime scene with full reflection in the glass (just for the tower), while I rendered the night time scene with almost no reflection. This allowed me to combine the two and give me full control of how much reflection to add to the tower. I did this by cutting out the lit tower, and copying it to the daytime rendering. I then adjusted the opacity of the lit tower layer until I found the right balance of reflection and transparency in the glass.
Once I had that down, I began painting in light to the surrounding building windows and doors. I then did a second pass highlighting the surfaces on the stone that were being lit by the windows. I also made sure to keep some of the reflection in the windows to add another level of depth to the glass. Also in this image, I began adding snow to the ground. This was much easier than it looks. I did some google image searches for "snowy roads" and then cut and paste.
I knew that I wanted to add some snow covered cars to the illustration. It was surprisingly hard to find cars at the correct angle with snow on them for this illustration. I also spent some time painting in snow on some of the ledges of the buildings and adding local Boston lamp posts and traffic lights.
Finally, I added falling snow to complete the winter scene. You may also notice that I corrected the verticals so that the buildings no longer lean into the center of the image. As mentioned above, I created a tutorial on creating snow in last years post which can be found HERE. These winter scenes are easier to create than you might think. I strongly suggest experimenting with these techniques and seeing what you can come up with.
Happy Holidays
SKETCHES: PART 2
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2012 | ALEX HOGREFE
I spent the weekend modeling up an old studio project that I designed my sophmore year in undergrad. It's something I have been wanting to do for a while since the original project was done by hand i.e. no computer. I was able to scan and scale my old hand drawn floor plans and sections and begin building the 3-D model based on that information. This model should come in useful for some posts that I have planned later on down the road.
I have also been wanting to revisit the "SKETCH" ILLUSTRATIONS that I created a while back. They received a lot of positive feedback and many people asking for a tutorial. My intention this weekend was to build the model and create a tutorial but time wasn't on my side. I was able to put together one illustration, but the tutorial will have to wait until my next post. Be sure to check back. For now, I have uploaded some of the images used to compose the final sketch look.
I used the x-ray image to give a slight hint of what sits behind the large curved walls. It's sublte in the final illustration, but helpful in understanding the geometry.
I didn't really use the above Sketchup export in the final illustration, but thought it would be useful to post a screenshot of the model.
As always, a Kerkythea clay model rendering was used to provide shading information for the illustration. A V-Ray or 3d studio renderings would work just as well.
Textures are what make this image. I scoured the internet looking for many different types of sketch textures as well as created some textures from my own drawings. In the end, it's all about how you combine the textures and add imperfections to get the realism. Like I said above, I hope to go into more depth on this illustration next post.PLAN OBLIQUE ILLUSTRATION: PART 2
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 2012 | ALEX HOGREFE
Last week I described the work flow of generating a plan oblique illustration from a Sketchup model. This week, I wanted to follow that up with how I added color and texture to the SU exports to achieve the image above. The steps to create the above image are not a science, and certain moves can and should be changed, removed, tweaked, and experimented with. I have been in this phase lately where I have been pushing illustrations with bright, extremely saturated colors which may not be ideal for every presentation.
Be sure to check out last weeks post for a little background on this image and to get more explanation on how to generate these views.
1) To begin, export the 4 images below from Sketchup.
2. Open the Sketchup "shaded with textures" exported image in Photoshop. Go to "Image>Adjustments>Hue/ Saturation". In the dialogue box, check "Colorize". Increase the saturation and adjust the hue to get the tone that you want.
3. Next, open the Sketchup "x-ray" exported image and align it above the previous layer. Set the blend mode of the x-ray image to "Multiply".
4. Open the Sketchup "shadows" exported image and align it above the previous to images. Set the layer blend mode of the shadows layer to "Multiply".
5. Open the Sketchup "Profile" exported image in Photoshop and align it above the previous 3 layers. Go to "Image>Invert".
6. Set the layer blend mode of the profile image to "Lighten".
7. This next step may not be necessary for everyone, but I created a quick clay rendering in Kerkythea to add a little depth to the image. A tutorial on how to create a clay rendering can be found HERE.
8. Bring the clay rendering into Photoshop and set it as the top layer. Set the layer blend mode to "Multiply". At this stage, the illustration looks like the image below. Still not looking that great.
9. Next, I threw in some color stripes to break up the monotonous background. Create a new layer, then choose the "Rectangular Marquee Tool" and draw a rectangular selection. With the "Paint Bucket Tool", fill in the selection.
10. Set the layer blend mode of the stripe layers to "Overlay". In certain situations, different blend modes may work better than others, so test out other options before defaulting to overlay.
11. I typically prefer a little texture in my illustrations so I am going to add a sketch overlay. Bring in the texture to Photoshop (just Google "grunge texture", there are tons of them), move it to the top layer and set the layer blend mode to "Overlay".
12. If you haven't seen part 1 of this series, then this next step won't make much sense. In order to make this a true plan oblique, I need the stretch the image vertically by 141.421%. I did this by first increasing the canvas size to make room for the newly stretched image. I then selected all of the layers, chose "Edit>Transform>Scale" and typed 141.421% in the horizontal attribute. Once this is done, the plan of this image will be all 90 degree angles. If the illustration is scaled properly, every line will be measurable and accurate. Even vertical lines will be measurable.
13. Finally, I brought in some floor plans and set the layer blend modes to "Multiply" so that I was left with only the line work. I don't have completed floor plans yet so I just used exported Sketchup images.
Below, you can see the completed illustration. What I like about this type of illustration is first, its vintage style. I also like how it shows off the form in a unique way, while also providing measurable information making it very functional. I used a very orthogonal building design for these illustrations, however, I can imagine organic forms working well with this style too.
BRUSHED STAINLESS STEEL (TUTORIAL)
TUESDAY, JULY 10, 2012 | ALEX HOGREFE
Every so often, there comes a time when I need to illustrate a brushed stainless steel finish like the column in the above image. In my experience, adjusting the "shininess" settings in any rendering program to get that brushed look dramatically increases the rendering time. On top of that, it can take multiple test renderings to get the style I am hoping for. So... I created a work around. The process is simple, but powerful. The basic workflow involves rendering the material as a simple mirror reflection. Rendering as a mirror reflection adds almost no time to the total render time unlike adjusting the "shininess" settings. Once in Photoshop, I apply a motion blur and Gaussian blur to give it that soft, brushed stainless steel look.
Most rendering software can create reflective surfaces easily. For those of you who use Kerkythea, I have added some quick steps to show you how it's done.
1) In Kerkythea, select the material you want to have the brushed finish. In the left panel, a star will highlight the material selected. Right-click on that material and choose "Edit Material".
2) Once in the "Material Editor" dialogue box, right-click on the work "Reflection" and choose the "Add Color" icon.
3) In the "Select Color" dialogue box, choose a white color. Then choose "Accept".
PHOTOSHOP POST PROCESSING:
4) With the materials setup, render the geometry and open the rendering in Photoshop. Once in Photoshop, choose the "Polygonal Lasso Tool" and select the mirror reflection items to be softened. Once selected, right-click inside of the selection and choose "Layer via Copy".
5) I now want to reselect this new layer so that when I blur the layer, it will maintain crisp edges. To do this, choose the "Magic Wand Tool", and select the area around the new layer. Next, choose "Select>Inverse" to flip the selection to the metal material in the new layer.
6) At the top, choose "Filter>Blur>Motion Blur".
7) With the "Motion Blur" dialogue box open, go to the box marked "Angle". Since the column is a vertical element, I want the blur to move vertically as well. Therefore, I am setting the angle to 90 degrees. The distance will vary from illustration to illustration. It seemed like 200 pixels worked best for this image.
8) The vertical streaks are still too sharp. With the column still selected, I am going to give it a Gaussian Blur. Go to "Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur" to open the dialogue box.
9) In "Gaussian Blur" dialogue box, adjust the radius to soften the metal reflection. It's easy to overdo it in this step so make sure you don't lose the definition of the light and dark areas of the reflection.
10) As a final step, sometimes it is necessary to duplicate the brushed metal layer to get more definition around the edges since blurring may cause the edges to be somewhat transparent.
I use this technique all the time and the results almost always come out great. Although it may seem complicated at first, in reality, it is a very simple workflow. I just went into great depth in each step in hopes of answering most questions that may come up.
Above: The column before the Photoshop softening technique.
Above: The column after the Photoshop softening technique.
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