Making of "Sanko interior" in 3ds max and Corona. Author: Evgeniy Maly

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who showed interest in my work and allowed me to talk about the creation process, contributing to the ever-growing collection of CG Award UA lessons.

My name is Evgeniy Maly, and I am doing architectural 3d visualization freelance. Initially, I used Vray as render, but then I switched to Corona Renderer. I try to focus on competitive projects because they are more interesting to me. It is about such a project, more precisely about one of its views, that I want to tell you.

Speaking about the specifics of this project, I will clarify that architecture was developed together with 3D visualizations. So you need to be ready for edits even at the final stage. As a result, this project took 1st place thanks to innovative design and architectural solutions, which is a great merit of the architects.

In this article, I will briefly describe the stages of visualization and highlight the fundamental points that led me to this result.

I hope everyone can find something useful!

Idea

The inspiration for the design was a magnificent place - the caves of Cappadocia - one of the most beautiful locations in Turkey. The architecture of the building should resemble a monolith raised above the ground.

The central space extends from the ground to the roof to fill the interior with natural light. On each floor, along with the entire height of the building, greenery acts as one of the main structural elements, improving the quality of the ambient air. While the external greenery contrasts with the solar radiation, making the interior of the building cooler and reducing the need for air conditioning.

It was important to show the appropriate atmosphere on the 3d rendering, and volumetric light helped in this!

Workflow

For me, the main logic of the project is to go from general to specific, so the existing result came out at the final stage.

Optimization - Concept - Detailing - Post-processing

I also want to draw your attention to the fact that the stages of work can be performed in parallel and modified already for the final image. Just for the sake of convenience in presenting information, I divided them into logical groups.

Optimization

The geometry was provided in Rhino. When converting, be sure to export items by material. It makes sense if the naming and structures of objects in the scene you received are respected.

After export, I will definitely optimize the geometry, check the units of measurement, distribute the geometry over layers and place the project in the center of coordinates.

Planting of greenery

For greenery the balconies, I used several Corona Scatter (yes, I even used the Corona Scatter :) on a single spline for all floors, changing only the parameters of the inhomogeneity.

For greenery the entrance group with low plants, I used Corona Scatter on the plane .

Tall trees were manually placed under the camera so that the light from the street would illuminate the interior, in particular the stairs. Since only a couple of trees are visible in the interior, and the entire facade is visible from other angles, I used a lot of geometry samples for variety.

Concept

• The idea for the composition of the frame was the contrast of light and dark.
• I wanted to frame the frame to add contrast between the volumetric light and other elements
• In such a small space, DOF (depth of field effect) was added to add a plan to the composition
• The rest of the elements served as a background when setting the camera
• The arrangement of people at the post-processing stage is also not accidental, I tried to take into account the planning, the direction of movement (gaze), and not overload the interior
• Used the rule of thirds for basic elements

Based on the idea of foreshortening to show the main feature of the interior and taking into account the above considerations, there were no problems with the choice of the camera, because this is the only point from where all the elements fit into the frame with a Focal Lens (focal length) of 20 mm.

First concept where volume light are added in Photoshop:

Estimated map of the viewer's gaze movement during the first 3 seconds and the rule of thirds for basic proportions:

Lighting

The scene uses combined lighting HDRI + Corona Sun + additional directional lights. The lighting construction logic also goes from general to specific: we start with global illumination, end with spot illumination.

1. Global illumination, and an estimate of how much light is still entering the room.

• I chose an HDRI map with a high sun because cloudy skies let in less light. Through numerous lighting tests, there should have been many.

• Added Corona Sun so that there is more light in the inner space. Intensity - 0,3; Size - 50; Temperature - 5200 K

2. Extra light

• I used the first cold directional light “Light_Roof” to accentuate the greenery and enhance the shadow from it on the railing. It is important not to forget to turn off all the checkboxes in the Visibility menu, especially “Occlude other light” Intensity - 170; Temperature - 8000 K; Directionality - 0,4
• The second daylight directional light “Light_Entrance” I set to add visible light from the panoramic windows on the first floor. It is important not to forget to turn off all the checkboxes in the Visibility menu, especially “Occlude other light” Intensity - 100; Temperature - 6200 K; Directionality - 0,35
• The light sources in the restaurant were added only to show that he is there :)

For clarity of the influence of each light pass, I prepared a LightMix, as well as a screen from the viewport of all light sources:

The completed volumetric light was added in post-processing using the Volumetrics pass. Volumetric settings and the pass itself:

Detailing

The most difficult elements of this scene were the ends of the floors (turning into the railing). The longitudinal direction of which runs along a curved line. It was also necessary to give variety in tone to all the tiles. I have implemented it this way:

1. Created planes with the desired height and approximate length

2. Using the Floor Generator, I made tiles of different sizes, added irregularities

3. With the help of PathDeform (WSM), on a pre-prepared spline, I gave the desired shape

4. For subsequent floors, Floor Generator copied from Instance, in order to edit all floors with the same settings, if necessary.

5. Edited the length of the planes for each floor

6. After the approval of the layout in some elements, I made other settings for the Floor Generator layout by pressing Instance.

The rest of the non-curved tile is also done with the Floor Generator.

Other content items:

• Furniture is made by combining different models
• The rest of the elements from the libraries, or bought on 3ddd.ru

Texturing

There are only four global shaders in the scene: sandstone, concrete, polymer concrete, and bronze, not counting greenery.

• All shaders are very simple, without any special techniques, they have Diffuse, Reflection, Refraction, Glossiness, Bump, Displacement maps in their arsenal
• The greenery shaders were left by default from the compilations, if necessary, they were corrected in post-processing.
• The sandstone material on the railing tile is a little more complicated, I would like to dwell on it in more detail.

As already mentioned, it was necessary to give a variety of colors and tones to the tiles. Since I used the Floor Generator for the modeling and copied it through Instance, a lot of material IDs were generated. The “Material by element” modifier with four elements came to the rescue. Since the tile is rough and weakly reflects light, the main elements of the shader are Diffuse and Displacement, where the “Corona Multi TexMap” became the fundamental element, also with four maps that are the same for Diffuse and different for Displacement, randomly in shade and gamut, which is determined experimentally.

Map screen "Composite" in the Diffuse tab:

The screen of shader:

Rendering

Used Virtual Frame Buffer (VFB) settings for the final :

• Exposure 0,5
• Highlight compress 1,5
• Filmic Highlights 0,4
• Bloom intensity 1
• Glare intensity 0,01
• Sharpening On

For me, these settings serve as a great basis for working in Photoshop.

Render elements: RGB main element masks, CTexMap, Volumetrics, ZDepth

Post-processing

As I mentioned in the Lighting chapter, I added volumetric light by rendering the Volumetrics element via the Screen blend mode.

I find it convenient to watch the light spots in the composition using Threshold to highlight the main:

Thank you all for reading, I hope each of you found something interesting for yourself!

If you have any questions, write in the comments or to me in social networks.

Evgeny's portfolio: https://www.behance.net/eugenemal

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eugene.malyi/