Yacht rendering

[jacoolo]

Hello guys
I am new to the forum. I`ve been working with Keyshot from time to time, mainly around product design and ptoduct (hand tools) rendering. Recently I`ve been involved in yacht design, and appropriate rendering stuff.

My general questions are following:

* does any one of you have any suggestions, general tips and tricks how to make yacht renderings?
* what type of environment do you use? Any extra HDRI, or you create water, and lightning by yourself?
* how do you manage reflections from water on the hull?

and extra question regarding shadows:

* keyshot produces weird shadows like on attached piture below? What am I doing wrong?

[Speedster]

Nice yacht!

This may help...

Be sure to use a glossy material on the hull!

On my Medea series I used a massive ground plane, and tweaked with materials.  But mainly I added a wavy bump map.  This will help create reflections on the hull. But the ground plane was HUGE to get out to the horizon.

On another series I used a huge "chunk" or block, to emulate water, with glass or liquid as the material, along with a wavy bump. The advantage here is a bit of the hull below the waterline shows.  I tried to model a gentle wake on the surface, but my skills in Zbrush are minimal!

Lighting is tricky on water.  You can't really use harsh shadows, as the atmospheric reflection softens the light quite a bit.  But you need clean and defined shadow detail to capture the lines and give the image punch.  A good trick is to start with a good HDR (experiment), and then add pins in the Editor.  Also, adding in physical lights can give you a lot of control over shadow angles, which must match the backplate.

Challenging, but well worth it!

Keep us posted...

Bill G

[jacoolo]

Hello Bill

thank you for kind words, but those yachts are not mine. I inserted them as examples. Within few weeks some of my yacht renderings should availalbe on web. If, so I will forward to them to let yu check them out.

in addition thank you for suggestions regarding lightning and "water". In fact, the water issue is the biggest challenge to me. As I understood you right, bump map and "Metal" or Anizotropic is your base material of choice for "ground"?

[designgestalt]

hello Jacoolo,
welcome aboard 

here are a few suggestions from my side (for your next round of renderings!):
- next time, get the water modeled! it should not be too hard to find a tutorial for i.e. Blender (free) to get you the water modeled, even though you are not into modeling. the water currently looks flat and not very real!

- this might also help you to work with caustics. at least, I would give it a try to get some "life" to that front surface of the boat ! if everything fails, put some reflections in in Photoshop ! that surface needs life !!!

- bring in some light from the front !!!
I know your light source comes from behind (which is in this case probably questionable ...) but your objects are very hard to read, as they are too dark and dull from the front. (i.e. the Cruiser model at the right hand side!). I am a product designer and the first ideas are always done as hand renderings and hand sketches. I have a rough light setup in my mind, when I start sketching, but I when I do not get my point across with this setup and the shape can not be understood, I add an additional light source. this is a product rendering and the product is the main player here and as Bob Ross used to say : "This is your own little world, you can do whatever you want ...!" 
Play with the lighting to make the scene look more realistic.

- play with your passes !!
as it looks like at the moment, there is very little post processing done to the images. at least mix the ambient occlusion pass in in Photoshop !!
IMHO the new AO pass of Keyshot (since version 7), does not do a very good job, as it is too "flat". I always create a second scene and add my own AO material, dim the light and let it render out as a seperate rendering and mix it later in PS (Photostudio)
I would highly suggest to go through this course from the godfather himself for the next time!! it costs a dime and a bit for your time and will transport your images to next galaxy
http://esbenoxholm.dk/keyshot-video-course/

- as for your interior shots:
play a bit with field of depth (as in the real photographs like i.e. the bedroom from the 360 model (the pillows i.e. are not in focus...). this will take away from a too clean look !
which brings me to the next point: try to bring a bit of "grunge" to your scenes ! you are doing a very good job already with the velvet seat material (in fact I would even reduce it a tiny bit there ...), but this in comparison to the rest of your scene, makes the rest look too clean, almost steril!

in general though, I would say, the interior scenes a nice, well chosen and would only need a bit of touch up !
the model shots I would re-think a little for the next time in terms of the overall setup !

I hope I do not come across too critical: you have a wonderful subject to render but a very hard one as well !!!
please take my words as suggestions and not as critics!
this is for sure as challenging as a car render and with everthing going on around it (reflections, caustics, spray of water etc.) maybe even harder !
so your playing in the premier league with your renderings, which is a hard start!

I would assume, that you not really familiar with Photoshop, but I can only suggest to dig deeper into it, as for this field, it is crucial!
Again, there are a lot of tutorial videos around, also on the Keyshot page, but the tutorials from Esben Oxholm would be my first choice here!

keep on practising, you will develop an eye for this with time and this is already a very good start !

cheers
designgestalt

[jacoolo]

Designgestalt

Big thanks and credits to your reply. I do really appreciate it very much. No offence to me regarding your critics (contrary, I found them very usefull and motivating). Sorry for delay in replying to your posts.

I hope, every post with some critical issues to me would find same response at the forum in the future:))

1) model the water -I did it, hence I rendered it as separete project, and use output (render scene with blue ocean HDRI and cloudy sky ) as a backplaye in yacht rendering. I did it because ocean HDRi env. made my yacht reders to blue, especially all laminate white parts. I was more than pleased with studion lightning outputs, so I decided to mix it: Env: studio 3 Panels, big flat plane with waves bump map  as backgound to clip underneath (under water parts) plus

complex process, I know, however I tried my best:)))

2) bring the light - ok, I will forward this suggestions and send back some renders to discuss them further

3) play with passes - yet, I havent done much in this subject. I did make some post process in gimp(!), but only with colors by Curve or Contrast tool

ok, this is my first part of REPLY, I will continue )

[jacoolo]

hello all

since I`ve been involved heavily in enginnering and 3D modeling job, there was not that much time to play with Keyshot and proceed all of required back and forth trials. Still I would like to obtain some kind of advice from you, some kind of reverese engineering approach. Ok, below there is a target regarding the results I would like to achieve.

Can you help me to "dissamble" the settings (what kind of environemnt, lightning, how much passes, how this backgroung of water is smoothly changing to the white sky, and so forth), behind rendering conditions in Keyshot ofthe boats rendering below

[RRIS]

That water can be done by setting your environment background color to white. The water plane then has a gradient (type: view direction) for the opacity.

Really quick and dirty:

[RRIS]

Hmm, strange?

What are the settings for your gradient? Same as mine?

Your viewport looks like it's set on performance mode, does it change when you turn that off?