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The Snow Is Not White
We, as architectural illustrators, have to see the world with an artist's eye. Often, I get questions, about how I create such realistic renderings. My reply is simply, use a lot of real world references and try to recreate it virtually. Our brain often plays tricks with our eyes. We tend to see what we want to see and not what reality is. Try this. Grab a photo of a snowy day (just an example) and using an image editor like Photoshop sample the color of the snow. You'll find that the snow isn't actually white at all, but our brian knows snow to be white, so it is overriding what we actually see.
Most of the time, when we look at the world, we aren’t actually looking at all. Instead, we are relying on the knowledge about the world we have stored up over years. We know the table is flat, so we don’t actually bother to observe how that flat rectangle on four sticks looks out there in the world from the particular position in which we are currently standing.
Our brains operate as efficiently as possible to filter the wealth of information coming through our senses. In fact, we don’t truly see with our eyes at all – we see with our brains. Only those things which are unusual, a potential threat, or have changed significantly, cause the brain to react – our attention is caught and for once we are genuinely looking at what is out there.
When we were children we looked at the world like this most of the time – everything was new to us – exciting and waiting for us to discover it. As we got older, less things were new. We’d already seen so many trees we stopped looking at bark patterns, the same happened with the clouds in the sky and on it went – as our body of knowledge grew ever larger we paid less and less attention to those things we had seen before’.
Fortunately it is possible to recapture that the ability to pay attention to the world again – and to look at things directly rather than filtered through a cloud of knowledge. Some knowledge is of course required for rendering, but make sure it’s the right knowledge. The laws of perspective, what something looks like from every angle – this is the kind of knowledge you need and will develop as you learn how to render.
One of the most crucial part of a photo-real architectural rendering is textures. In my snow example If, you make your snow white it will not be natural; it'll look off and your viewer will sense something is wrong. Try adding either a fresnel reflection or tinting your snow material blue, which is actually what is happening in real life.
Window Masking
http://youtu.be/9oVM1PJ20Y8 When it come to architectural renderings, one of the first things to learn is to create good masks to retouch objects in Adobe® Photoshop®. In this video I'm using Autodesk® 3ds Max®, V-Ray for 3ds Max, and Adobe® Photoshop®, to create glass reflections.
The Little Things
Argh. It’s not quite what I was hoping it would be... BUT I JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO!
Sesame Street Primary Colors
I caught my 6 years old daughter, Emma Grace, watching this on Youtube
Abstract Masses
The french poet Paul Valery observed, "To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees." This is a perfect expression of the mind-set for rendering. Something has to shift. Maybe it's a shift from left brain to right brain; but that shift seems absolutely necessary to create a strong composition. Until the shift is made and you start thinking in abstract masses on a rendering scene, you are, in sense, on the outside of the rendering process looking in.
The Cruciform
The cruciform (from the same root as crucifix or cross) is way to use horizontals and verticals. This diagram shows how endlessly flexible and adaptable the cruciform is. The diagram is not to suggest that everything withing the cruciform needs to be dark value. It just shows the cruciform's versatility and helps to get you thinking about how abstract masses can interact with the picture plane.
180 Rule
When animating characters interacting with one another, it's crucial to keep a well-defined visual relationship between the characters on screen. The cameras should remain on one side of the axis of action in order to preserve the scene's spatial continuity and screen direction.
Sometimes breaking the 180 rule can result in a better visual impact and can also enable you to get a great reaction shot that you couldn’t get otherwise.”
Zoom Way Out
If you open your rendering, in your image editor, and reduce it to thumbnail size and it still holds together compositionally, you've got a good piece on your hands.
If your rendering has the ability to catch your eye when it is that small it either has a strong underlying perspective grounding the composition or interesting shapes that lead you through the work.
Walk away!
Looking at your render too long without a break is one of the biggest pitfalls that hinder even the best artist. Sometimes the best solution is to simply walk away from your computer for a few minutes, or just step back from your screen a few feet.
There is probably no better tool to routine out bad renders than looking at your render in reverse. Reversing your render allows you to see your rendering in its proportions with a fresh eye. You can mirror you rendering in Photoshop, or simply print it out and look at it from the back side, through a bright light.
use value - not color or detail - as the framework for your composition
Look for an opportunity to create a white path into the composition and link the whites into a single shape. If you allow the whites to separate each one could fight against the viewer's attention, and the composition could lack unity. I am not necessarily talking about the color white. I am talking about lightning the values you use, to create a viewer's path, to bring the eye to your focal point.
Once you have your white and mid tone paths, you can complete the composition framework by adding darks. The darks do not need to create a single path. The reason is that the eye seems to connect darks even if they are not literally connected.
Get The Light Right
A major consideration is the light source. The old rule of thumb used in architectural perspectivist is that the light source should come from over the left shoulder. This configuration puts one face of the building in bright light and the other in shadow, which makes it easier for the viewer to understand the structure.
Color Meaning, Symbolism and Psychology
What does color mean, and how does it make you feel? I once heard that a color doesn't exist, unless it has a name. A rendering or illustration should tell a story. Do you want to make your viewer feel happy or sad, calm or excited, color can help you accomplish your goal of telling a story.
HOW THE COLOR GREEN AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
- Soothes
- Relaxes mentally, as well as physically Helps alleviate depression, nervousness, and anxiety
- Offers a sense of renewal, self-control, and harmony
HOW THE COLOR BLUE EFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
- Calms and sedates Cools
- Aids intuition
HOW THE COLOR YELLOW AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
- Stimulates mental processes
- Stimulates the nervous system
- Activates memory
- Encourages communication
HOW THE COLOR ORANGE AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
- Stimulates activity
- Stimulates appetite
- Encourages socialization
HOW THE COLOR RED AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
- Increases enthusiasm
- Stimulates energy and can increase the blood pressure, respiration, heartbeat, and pulse rate Encourages action and confidence
- Provides a sense of protection from fears and anxiety
HOW THE COLOR PURPLE AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
- Uplifts
- Calms the mind and nerves
- Offers a sense of spirituality
- Encourages creativity
HOW THE COLOR PINK AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
- Bright pinks, like the color red, stimulate energy and can increase the blood pressure, respiration, heartbeat, and pulse rate.
- They also encourage action and confidence. Pink has been used in prison holding cells to effectively reduce erratic behavior.
HOW THE COLOR BROWN AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
- Supplies a feeling of wholesomeness stabilizes
- Provides a connection with the earth gives a sense orderliness
HOW THE COLOR GRAY AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
- Unsettles
- Creates expectations
HOW THE COLOR BLACK AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
- Makes one feel inconspicuous
- Provides a restful emptiness
- Is mysterious by evoking a sense of potential and possibility
HOW THE COLOR WHITE AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
- Aids mental clarity
- Encourages us to clear clutter or obstacles Evokes purification of thoughts or actions
- Enables fresh beginnings
Squint/Spatial Illusion
To check your rendering for balance, you can squint your eyes, which helps you concentrate on shapes and lines, avoiding all the detail. Your rendering will never look complete, until you achieve balance in your composition. To show you the value of squinting, here is a squint/spatial illusion
On a close-up view, you can see on the left face, an angry man and on the right face, a woman with a neutral facial emotion. But further back, the faces change expression and even genders! if you squint, blink, or defocus, an angry man should substitute for the face of the woman, and the left angry face should not be angry anymore.
This impressive illusion created by Dr. Aude Oliva and Dr. Philippe G. Schyns, illustrates the ability of the visual system to separate information coming from different spatial frequency channels. In the right image, high Spatial Frequencies (HSF) represent a woman with a neutral facial expression, mixed with the low spatial frequency (LSF) information from the face of an angry man. On the left, the face of the angry man is represented in fine details whereas the underlying female face is made of blur only ("blobs")
Capturing a Mood
Many times the most captivating characteristics about a subject is the feeling invoked in the viewer. For example, the energy of a bustling street scene or the serenity of a peaceful meadow can be captivating. So how do you translate the mood of the scene to the screen? In general, warm colors portray a sunny, upbeat mood, whereas cool colors seem more calm or mysterious. For example, a sunlit field of bright yellow flowers seems cheerful and invigorating, where is a quiet harbor blanketed in blue-gray fog appears serene and still.
In this rendering, of an unused roof deck, I wanted to create a mood of a hot summer day. The building owner wanted to convert the roof deck into a patio space. The concept was to convert a cold space into a warm space, which I accomplished by using color.
Here, is the same rendering, only using cool colors, to create a more mysterious mood. I created a night scene, but I changed the ambient light, and kept the warmth contrasts of the artificial lights.
So, as you can see, just by the use of color I can change the mood and invoke a whole different feeling.
Detail
Detail is a imperative to any well-finished rendering. If overdone, however, detail can be a detraction. Too "busy" a rendering is bewildering, and its main purpose is smothered in a welter of minutia.
A talented artist recognizes this fundamental fact: what is left out of a rendering can be as significant as what is put-in.
Study of photography with a wide range of tonal value will help you understand how and where detail should be played down or limited. Notice its tendency to disappear in bright sunlight or dark shadow, how obvious it becomes in middle value areas, how much vegetation is massed together rather than seperation in isolated clumps. You will also learn much by examining the work of other illustrators
Cropping
An illustrator has a natural tendency to include too much in a composition. When this fact is clear, he has an equally natural reluctance to remove portions of a rendering over which has worked so diligently. Renderings are often improved significantly by some judicious "cropping" - removing areas that detract from the center of interest or interferes with the effectiveness of the composition.
None of the rendering actually needs be cut away or destroy. It may be crop differently (non-destructively) for another use, so keep the entire rendering and crop in a non-destructive way.
Whats its color
Whats its color is an image-color processing utility that will evaluate an image and give you the image's primary and complementary dominant colors of an image, how many visually unique colors are in an image, and the top ten visually unique colors in an image. Extremely useful when creating any type of designs around an image. The more colorful the image, the better the results. Results will display your image on the best suited background for that image... http://whatsitscolor.com/
Shadow
To create the most pleasing shade and shadow pattern, light intesity should be greatest on the main facade (or facade at the least angle to the picture plane). Secondary or receding walls receive less intensity and are lightly shaded.
Cast shadows should be deep enough to strengthen and emphasize the eve line, but not so deep as to overpower the architectural design with a too-heavy effect.
How do you know when an artist is telling a story?
To decide whether a painter is visual narrative, you should ask yourself three questions:
- Does the artwork suggest the passage of time (as opposed to being static, like a still life)?
- Does it seem to have a beginning and an end?
- Does it hint at something that happened outside of the picture frame?
If the answer to any of these questions is "yes," then the artist is probably telling a story.
How do you read these stories? To read a narrative painting, you don't necessarily start to the left and move toward the right the way you read a book. Instead you begin at the focal point {the place where the artist leads your eye). The focal point may be the beginning of the story - but it can also be The climax.