You will need to be quick, as it is already almost sold out, but I am doing another State of Art Academy Masterclass in July.
Info here:
http://www.stateofartacademy.com/calendario/eng-peter-guthrie-lighting-masterclass2/
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Peter Guthrie Lighting Masterclass 2
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1935 Late Sun - Triple-D
My favourite 3 images from Triple-D's latest project, Farmhouse by Maas Architects
Triple-D made great use of the new '1935 Late Sun' sky on www.pg-skies.net and went with the 'New Sun' version of the HDR which has the intensity of the sun artificially corrected so that you don't need to play around with gamma settings.
I'm preparing a new blog post going into this in more detail.
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Updated PG SKIES
New Sun: gamma 1.0
Original HDR: gamma 0.75
Originial HDR: gamma 1.0
Those of you who bought '1714 Clear Sky' should have received an automated email from www.pg-skies.net notifying you of an update to 1714. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am going through a process of updating old skies that feature a strong sun to include a new alternative version.
When shooting HDR skies, it is very difficult to capture the full dynamic range of the sun as it is so incredibly bright. To combat this, in the past (following on from Bertrand Benoit's lead) I adopted a workflow that involves lowering the gamma of the HDR to make the bright parts of the sky brighter. This method has its drawbacks though, mostly in that it makes the colours in the sky a lot harsher, and sometimes makes the sky appear too bright in relation to the sun.
A few months ago I saw a post on the corona forum by dubcat who shared a nice method for adding a rendered sun (with the correct intensity) in to one of my HDR skies. To me it feels like a slightly more scientific method than simply painting in a brighter sun with Photoshop (also can work well), and I liked the results I was getting.
The new version included with 1714 is called 1714 Clear Sky_NewSun.hdr and to use you just need to remember to return the gamma value to 1.0 otherwise you'll get some very ugly results.
We at The Boundary used 1714 NewSun for our 87 Park project for Renzo Piano and were very happy with the results.
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New Skies 1213 and 1233
'1233 Sun Clouds'
2 new skies added to www.pg-skies.net today, '1213 Cloudy Blue Sky' and '1233 Sun Clouds'. Taken 20 minutes apart, you have the choice of the sun obscured by clouds or the with the sun visible. 1233 includes a version with a corrected sun intensity.
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RED BULL AIR RACE - 1847 DUSK SUN
At a recent 3DS London Geek Night, Henry spotted his personal favourite PG Sky '1847 Dusk Sun' being used in a promotional film for Red Bull by the talented people at Rewind.co
The video can be viewed on Rewind's website.
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PG SoA Lighting Masterclass 2
With the second masterclass done and dusted its time to review the images and reflect again on how much great work can be completed in just one week by a group of talented and enthusiastic visualisation artists.
This year the project we used as a base was Strom Architect's Superhouse which was a complete 3d scene that Phil Hunter did for The Boundary last year. Students were encouraged to change the environment and lighting and even to alter the architecture if they felt that way inclined (some people really got stuck in!).
All images were produced using either vray or corona, with a lot of forest pack pro and either my PG Skies or vray/corona sun & sky.
Bence Fischer - http://www.brown-blue.com/
A simple clearing in the woods provided the backdrop for a lot of experimentation with lighting and mood. Some strong shots and a very seductive view of the spiral staircase. Bence wanted to make a version with god rays similar to my Farnsworth House renders from many years ago, but ended up with something darker, moodier and probably better.
Brian Sørensen - http://brianbaastrup.com/
I loved the idea of nestling the Superhouse in a cliff face and it was also technically very well executed. A favourite amongst many of us here at The Boundary.
Christian Schreinert - https://www.facebook.com/chris.alexander.ms
I can only assume Christian needed to get away from the day job for a while and indulge in a bit of creative escapism. Amazing amount of work and was fun for me to see the scene and ideas develop. A relatively calm lighting setup as that's what was needed.. I'll let the image speak for themselves,, enjoy:
Dung Nguyen - http://www.behance.net/badung
Dung made an amazing landscape in the first 2-3 days and then focused on finding 3 or 4 strong compositions. I hope what comes across in his renderings is that once he had this base for experimentation he really tested a lot of different HDR skies and moods through the use of heavy atmospheric effects. A pleasure for me to see the variation that can be achieved once you have set everything up simply by changing the lighting.
Daniel Szalapski - http://www.keyframe3d.com/
A very refined set of images from Daniel, who set the Superhouse on a lake and came up with a couple of lighting setups that really suited the environment. A strong b&w shot and I especially like the dusk shots which really make the Superhouse look appropriately Super.
Eleonora Galimberti - http://www.eleonoragalimberti.com/
A beautiful photograph from dezeen provided the inspiration for a Superhouse set deep in the jungle. Eleonora hadn't used Forest Pack very much but managed to create a really good looking backdrop for her Superhouse images. Deliberately low key images help to make the architecture look very sophisticated and encourage the viewer to look for more in the images. The three landscape shots are amongst my favourites from the whole week.
Hala Hanna - https://www.behance.net/HalaHanna3d
Hala went for a Mediterranean feel which I think works very well with the architecture. Some very strong compositions, both rigid and symmetrical and also more free flowing. Theres a very nice quality of light and the final shots have a very nice soft feel to them.
Maayan Golan
Mayaan started from a great reference image of the sea which set the tone for her set of images. A bit of testing of lighting to figure out how to match the reference image and then constructing a seaside environment. I encouraged her to do a detail shot of the fence since it have been so expertly modelled.
Ronen Bekerman - http://the-craft.co
A pleasure to work with Ronen as always, and especially to show how I like to approach making a 3d scene, keeping options open for compositions and lighting. A strong concept, great lighting and also a beautiful colour palette.
Rocco Valantines - http://www.mmpaa.eu/
Rocco is an architect and took my invitation to play around with the architecture to make it respond to the environment seriously. I love the landscape he created, and the way the HDR skies chosen seem to fit with it perfectly. A really strong set of images that came from a lot of testing of cameras and different lighting setups.
Sebastian Kraus - https://www.facebook.com/sebastian.kraus.5011
Sebastian managed to hold his enthusiasm for Photoshop in check long enough to make a great wintery alpine landscape as a base for exploring lighting and compositions. The interior shot took on a cool high tech feel and became know as the James Bond shot and I particularly liked that Sebastian took advantage of seeing a potential composition in a Photoshop reflection pass to create the staircase detail shot.
Yaroslav Rojen
Yaroslav went for a wintery scene, initially based on my 'Twins' project, but once we started playing with lighting it took on it's own feel. Great attention to detail, and snowmen!
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Corona Clouds & 1935 Late Sun
After seeing some very cool tests by Santi Sánchez of Tresde ArchViz Studio , we've been playing around with Corona fog applied to a simple plane with 3dsmax displacement and noise modifiers. Very simple but gives some good results. Looking forward to Corona volumetrics supporting 3d noise.
432 Park by Rafael Vinoly seemed to be an obvious choice. Model from turbosquid by Yusuf Joher Taherali.
Take 25% off '1935 Late Sun' for the next 24 hours with the code 1935CLOUDS (apply the code before you pay!)
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1856 Dusk Update
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RONEN BEKERMAN 7 YEARS
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New Skies 1216 and 1324
2 new skies added to www.pg-skies.net today, both going to be very useful in my humble opinion!
above: 1324 Nice Clouds
above: 1216 Sun
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0743 Cloudy Morning Sun Update
I've been doing a bit of PG SKIES maintenance and thought I would update one of my favourites, 0743 Cloudy Morning Sun. In this update there are several versions of the HDR; the original, plus two with a new sun intensity. Try them all and use the one that suits your scene best is the official advice!
Here is a comparison of them, all at gamma 1.0
And also a 360 panorama, as its a great way of seeing the whole sky.
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NEW SKIES 0720, 0926 AND 1444
Introducing 3 new skies, just in time for Black Friday.
I couldn't resist rendering out 360s as well.
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BLACK FRIDAY - CYBER MONDAY
A bit late with the news, but the discount codes are now live on www.pg-skies.net so a good time to pick up some of the new skies published this week.
- BLACK20 for 20% OFF on all orders.
- BLACK30 for 30% OFF on orders over 100 EUR.
- BLACK40 for 40% OFF on orders over 250 EUR.
- BLACK50 for 50% OFF on orders over 500 EUR.
You can use the discounts until the end of day Monday 28th November
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PG SKIES RELAUNCH
PG SKIES is back online after a day or two of maintenance. I hope you like the new look and find the new filters and collections useful. To celebrate you can use the code RELAUNCH to get 20% off any order for today only.
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BLACKHAUS PANAMA HOUSE VR
Some great images brought to my attention recently of Marcio Kogan's Panama House, faithfully recreated by Blackhaus. The dusk shots and the panorama uses the classic dusk PG Skies HDR '2003 Dusk Blue'.
You can download the gearVR images and enjoy the rest of the images on the Blackhaus website.
BUY NOW
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Luca Catino & PG SKIES
I love seeing the different atmosphere created in these renders by Luca Catino using a variety of PG SKIES. Some amazing details too, click on the thumbs to view bigger.
You can see more of Luca's work at www.luca-catino.com
0743 BUY NOW
0902 BUY NOW
0926 BUY NOW
1444 BUY NOW
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TRESDE ARCH VIZ - MEGASCANS & PG SKIES
I'm sure you have all seen Santi Sanchez's brilliant megascans tutorial on Ronen Bekerman's website by now, if not : Making of METEORA
Santi was kind enough to let me re-publish them here, and the details of which sky he used (including camera settings and sky rotation!) are on the making-of.
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GRADUATED FILTER IN 3DSMAX
Hopefully one day Corona will have the option to add linear and radial graduated filters in the frame buffer, in addition to the new and improved vignetting that is on it's way. Until then, I've been experimenting with making a 'real' virtual linear grad that sits in front of your camera lens.
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THE BOUNDARY ARCHITECTURAL VISUALISATION
Since announcing The Boundary in October 2014, we have grown to a team of 12 here in London and are enjoying working with architectural heroes of ours such as Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Peter Zumthor, Tadao Ando.
The team will be expanding again soon, so if the prospect of coming and working alongside us interests you then get in touch now!
jobs@the-boundary.com, or if you prefer, peter@peterguthrie.net
A selection of completed projects, many more to be added soon.
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VRAY, CORONA & TADAO ANDO
We use Corona almost exclusively at The Boundary, but after so many years of using vray I still follow development closely and use it for things that corona cant do. In converting an old project, 152 Elizabeth Street to corona, I thought it would be a good time to write a blog post on the differences between the two rendering engines and also to see how much Vray has improved since I used it to render this project in 2014/15.
Final Original Image rendered at 6k (Including photoshop work) (click for lightbox)
The first thing I did was render in Vray using my original settings but at 2k resolution so we can see what an unprocessed Vray version looks like. This took 1hr 15 minutes at a bucket noise threshold of 0.007. (amazing seeing buckets again!)
Vray render using my old settings - 1hr 15mins
Next I tried Vray 3.5 at default settings, which seems to be what Vlado suggests to most people. I switched to brute force settings in Vray years ago and its great to see that with developments in software and hardware this is now the norm. This time it took 58 minutes.
Vray render using default settings (progressive) - 58mins
Here is a 100% crop between the two versions. My previous settings were 1-100 subdivs and a noise threshold of 0.007, probably had subdivs on materials too (seems so weird to have to think about things like that after using corona for 2 years). I can't see any real difference here so not sure why anyone in arch viz would deviate from the defaults in vray these days.
bucket brute force vs progressive
Converting a Vray scene to Corona is pretty much a one-click process thanks to the amazing conversion script that comes with corona (I should add that the conversion back to Vray using the script that comes with Vray is also very good should you need to go that way.) Some things to remember though:
- Vray cameras work fine in Corona, but you might need a coronacameramod to fine tune DOF
- The vrayhdri map works well in Corona but remember the render multiplier doesn't do anything so adjust your overall multiplier accordingly
- There is no need for a dome light (plug vrayhdri straight into environment) so remember to take into account any multiplier on the domelight
- I use vrayhdri and vraycameras, there still aren't equivalents in Corona
- Corona's displacement is inferior to Vray's. You will need to play with the corona settings to try to match it, especially if you used vray 2d displacement. (Corona 3d displacement has improved a lot but I still miss Vray 2d displacement.)
- In Corona, you just apply coronafogmtl straight to geometry, no need for a gizmo.
- Matching vray2sidedmtl with Corona is always a bit hit and miss, I use interactive and tweak till it looks similar
For a comparison between vray and corona, I wanted to see what a 20 minute render would look like in each. Vray after 20mins:
VRAY - 20 minutes render
On to Corona (Latest 1.6 daily) and after matching the exposure, vignetting, colour balance, curves (there are now curves in Corona!!!) this was what I got. Corona after 20 mins
CORONA - 20 minutes render
After 20 minutes, corona did seem to deal with noise better, especially in the concrete and ceiling areas. The displaced carpet looks way better in vray, despite increasing the quality of displacement in corona from 2px to 1px. Overall I'd say they are pretty similar in terms of quality.
Note the overbright pixels on the vray version
Pushing Corona Further
The joy of working with Corona is in using Interactive rendering to explore new compositions, tweak materials, play with lighting etc. If you haven't tried it you really should. I never got on very well with VrayRT, partly because it required more set-up and because it wasn't the same as a final render. Another thing Corona does very well is lens effects (bloom and glare). For some reason its much easier to get nice results with Corona and you can also tweak them as it is rendering. I'm going to finish with a slightly re-worked version of this scene, made entirely in Corona with no post work at all.
A quick Note on vignetting in Corona: Vignetting in 1.6 finally works as (I believe) it should, in that it doesnt just add what looks like a black overlay, it correctly reduces the exposure at the corners. This now means that really bright areas (sky) will not look artificially dark when you add vignetting. I have never used vignetting in corona for this reason, but now I'll probably use it much more often, as I did with vray.
Final Corona Version
Final Corona Frame Buffer Setting (using Corona 1.6 daily):
Exposure: Highlight Compression: 5 WB: 4600K Contrast: 1.0 Saturation: 0.0 Filmic highlights: 0.0 (my advice would be don't use filmic, it often acts strangely) Filmic shadows: 0.0 Vignette: 1.0 Curves: NO LUT: Kim Amland's Photographic 01 LUT that mimic real dslrs. Bloom and Glare: Bloom intensity: 5.0 Glare Intensity: 1.50 Streak blur: 0.20 Sharpening / Blurring: Sharpen amount: 1.0 Sharpen radius: 0.250 Blur radius: 1.250
Many thanks to Kim for his work in analysing what dSLRs do to the raw data they capture in order to make them look good. It's very interesting that the quick Corona FB tonemapping I did in this last image resulted in something similar to what took a lot longer in photoshop & Adobe Camera RAW.
I love being able to get amazing looking images straight out of 3dsmax with no post work at all. Next on my wishlist would be colour temperature tint (from green to magenta)... please Ondra & Vlado??
You can read more about the LUTs and download them from his thread on the forum
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