Sometimes when we are designing our projects in our architecture software, we forget that most of the time the ones who will be looking at these images are human beings. And what if we fail in getting our point across? What if we fail in trying to share our feelings through our project?
This is why we tried to do something different this time. We tried to give it this human touch to this render, so you could feel the connection. Look at the video tutorial here.
Final image
Recycling projects
We recycled this old project, we only had this image that we made and we didn’t have a very good 3d model in Sketchup.
In the 3D model, it had like the basic vegetation, and the interiors were not even developed.
So we just started erasing all of the non-useful objects in our 3d model.
Create new image
We created a new terrain with the sand box tool, we created a grid of 1meter by 1meter.
With this new terrain, we wanted it to have this “sand dunes” kind of style.
We also added two extra rooms on the top to make it look more like a house.
Lumion
We proceeded to import our project into Lumion.
We used the image overlay option to add our own frame because Lumion doesn’t have another frame option.
We adjusted our materials, we adjusted the sand materials. We wanted dirtier sand, so Lumion doesn’t have this type of sand. So we went to our texture sites that you can see here, and we found the perfect sand texture.
On this site, we did not only download the dirty sand texture but also the concrete texture for the walls. You can use the default textures in Lumion, but we just wanted something different and also avoid that lumionish look.
We started adding basic effects, We added the 2.0 perspective, making sure the focal was around 35. We started adding some vegetation, we wanted to add some imperfect vegetation, not that Caribbean, also some different strands of grass that just grew out there, we wanted this image to be imperfect.
We wanted to erase the horizon, so we added some trees
When we turn the vegetation on, you can see the different types of small grasses, also the trees in the background and foreground. This was made to lead our eyes into the middle ground, to where the building is at.
After looking at the image again, we still felt that the sand was way too clean, too perfect. So we started adding different elements, weeds, different pebbles, woods from trees, or just debris from the beach.
After adding elements from the Lumion library. We added a background plain png image of a mountain.
We knew that we didn’t want a lot of people in this image. So we used this roof, and we added a person using the default assets from the Lumion library. We wanted to add it from Photoshop but it would’ve taken a lot of time. We added a kid, and we saw the balance, it was very symmetrical.
Of course, when you have different things going on in an image, you ask yourself why? So the question here was how did that kid get up there, so we just added one of those handy stairs, this was to add some story to the image.
We noticed that there were still some elements missing to add a story to the context, so we added some power lines in SketchUp, we downloaded these from the 3d warehouse.
We also wanted this house to have that windy-ish feel, so we added some ropes to hang clothes on, and the most important thing, we downloaded some curtains that were blowing in the same direction with the wind.
We also added a little bit of fog, to have this dense environment feeling, like a desert look, but it was just not convincent.
So this fog wasn’t working out, we wanted something that looked like dust. So we went to the effects library, we added two different types of dust, and we added them to the background. It also gave this yellowish look to the sand.
tab, we wanted to make this image warmer and with a lot of contrast. We added a reflection adjustment to avoid that fake look on the glass of the house.
We started rendering all of the channels in case we were going to do something in Photoshop.
After rendering, we imported the render and all of the channels into photoshop. We set the specular channel to soft light, so the bright parts could stand out a little bit and the concrete could look more influenced by the sun.
We adjusted the green of the grass, we wanted it a more brown-ish color, it was very distracting to the eye.
Finally, we added some 3d Lutz, it gave the colors a little bit of consistency. But the real magic happened in the camera raw filter, we played around with the settings, but we made sure that the dark spots were a little bit darker so our eyes could go directly to the kid on top of the roof, not the background or foreground.
The sky had to be more saturated, the image a little bit warmer. We could have gone with the post-apocalyptic look, but we wanted this image to have hope, to make you feel better, do you know what we mean? haha
Final result
Once you have a sense of colors, sense of composition, no matter the program or render engine you have, your image will be 60% done. What did you think of this image? What title would you give to this image? Watch the video tutorial below!
