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Rhythm in your Rendering
If any interval, or rhythm, in your rendering, becomes too repetitious or systematic, it feels lifeless and unnatural. This remains a typical problem that afflicts beginners, but it happens to me all the time. In art, the principle of line rhythm is essential in creating a hierarchy of information that feels comfortable and natural for your viewer to interpret. Without variety, your rendering can become wallpaper fading into the background of our attention. Like an endless row of fence post, we cease to notice or pay attention.
Too much variation is incredibly disruptive, Each decision you make when putting information into your model has visual implications. Not enough unity and you have confusion. Too much unity and you are bored.
Learning a New Skill
Most learning we do is conceptual learning, which is quite different from developing a skill. Conceptual learning is a process of developing an understanding of a subject and can often be done through listening or reading. This is primarily intellectual. In developing a skill, there is also understanding, but this understanding must be coupled with the practice of what you are learning. Sometimes you must practice without an intellectual understanding because that comes only when you can do it. Learning conceptual subjects can sometimes be done extremely rapidly. But learning a skill, is rarely something that can be acquired immediately. You must master each aspect of the skill before going on to the next. In learning new skills, practice a little bit every day. If you try to learn it all at once, you may wind up understanding how it is done but not be able to do it exceedingly well.
Sunshine Adds Pizzazz
Sunshine adds pizzazz to your rendering and makes life seem more charismatic. The human eye sees in three dimensions and can compensate for poor lighting. A rendering is only two-dimensional; therefore, to make an impression of form, depth, and texture to the subject, you should ideally have the light come from the side or at least at an angle.
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!
REBIRTH of GAEA - Flowing Meditation
A layer-by-layer deconstruction of "Flowing Meditation," part of REBIRTH of GAEA, an epic visual tapestry delicately interweaving reflections on the environment and spirituality through the rich imagery of Greek Mythology.
My daughter Emma has had a deep connection to the environment for as long as I can remember. As she grew older and became enchanted with Greek Mythology, I decided to show my support for her interests by creating REBIRTH of GAEA, depicting her as the Goddess of Earth.
The song is "You're Too Late Satan" by Worm Is Green, an amazing Icelandic group mixing sparse electronic beats and glossy trip-hop threads.
Sesame Street Primary Colors
I caught my 6 years old daughter, Emma Grace, watching this on Youtube
Tradigital Drawing
Here is a short video describing how I accomplished a tradigital watercolor.
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.
Talk to your client
Not every marriage is a success. Sometimes you discover that your're better off going seperate ways. If that happens to you, end the relationship in the same professional way that you began it. Talk to your client. Explain what's going on. Chances are it won't come as a complete surprise.
You may even be able to work things out. But even if you can't, it's better to acknowledge what's happening and bring closure to the relationship than to just walk away and disappear
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.
Learn the Core Fundamentals Concepts
Learn the core fundamental concepts so you can quickly adopt to new ideas, and changes.
Neuroplasticity refers to the physical changes that take place in your brain as you experience and adapt to the world around you.
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.
Do I Slash My Prices?
One must always look critically at the market and be willing to be flexible, especially in light of difficult economic circumstances. As your reputation grows, so will your prices. Price-cutting could prove detrimental to existing relationships with clients who have paid certain amounts in the past.