Texturefly

The other day I was looking through a local magazine and saw a architectural rendering of a retail scene. It was a pretty decent rendering but one thing stood out. There were people standing… (wait standing isn’t the correct word..) posing in the parking lot.

I looked at this rendering and thought, how many times I have seen unnatural poses in renderings where the 2d people in the scene are looking contrived.  So here are some tips I use when I am adding 2d people to my architectural illustration.

1. I try to think about what the scene would look like if it were real place and I was standing in front of it shooting a photo. What would the people be doing? I can tell you right now they wouldn’t be posing, in a retail parking lot. They would be busy, not looking at the camera, walking or at least doing something that doesn’t involve the onlooker.

2. Use a lot of people. Especially in retail 3d renderings, I try to use a lot of people because, face it, its going to be a busy scene. If you go out out a mall or outdoor shopping, there are swarms of people. Now I’m not saying add a million people images to your rendering, but at least make it busy. Your client is going to want to see it busy because busy is good for business.

3. Add groupings - Just because the people entourage images are in individual tiff files, does not mean you can’t add a bunch of them together in your architecture scene. I like to take 3 or 4 people and group them talking or hanging out together. It gives your scene dynamic movement.

4. Don’t use people that are posing or looking at the camera, this will draw attention to them and not the buildings.. which is the whole reason we are doing architectural illustration in the first place. You want to embellish and enhance not overwhelm.

5. Don’t use people in the foreground - this is also distracting and the viewer will be looking at the person not the rendering.

Hopefully these tips will keep your renderings looking natural and full of dynamic movement.

Texturefly is gearing up next week to put out a group of people suitable for retail. Stay Tuned.

If you are like me and you use 2d entourage for a more realistic 3d rendering, you know that part of the process is adding shadows  to ground your 2d trees, shrubs, people etc. This can get a little tedious when you are using many images in your renderings. Adding pre-made shadows to your entourage files doesn’t work either because every time there is a new 3d rendering, your light source changes and therefore  the shadow moves to a different angle.

The easy way to solve this is by using the photoshop actions panel. Photoshop actions are a set of pre-made commands recorded and placed in the actions panel under the command name you choose. I use this to create a quick set of commands that when saved, will create a shadow for my 2d image.

Under the actions panel Create a new action called ‘people shadow’ or ‘tree shadow’. The action will then start to record.  Drag your 2d image down to copy the image as a new duplicate layer. Then run the Hue/Sat/Brightness adjustment and move the Brightness slider all the way to the left to turn it black.  Then hit CTRL+T or transform and click distort on the right click menu.  Distort the image so that it is angled properly as to cast a shadow from your object image then hit enter. Go to your shadows layers opacity on the layers panel to adjust it to the correct transparency. (I prefer 50-65%). This will give your shadow some transparency.  Finally, go to your actions panel and hit stop to complete your action.

That’s it, A pre-made shadow for your 2D tree or people images.  Now normally you may need to move your shadow to align it in the proper place.  Also your shadow layer will be on top of your image so you will need to go to your layers panel and move your shadow behind your entourage image layer. These 2 commands do not work in the actions panel.

I conveniently have an action for each angle and also for an aerial shadow image if you do a lot of aerial renderings. These little actions will cut down on time when compositing your rendering.

Quick Tip. If you like a little blur in your shadow. Add a gaussian blur of .5 to 1 in the actions panel after your Transform-Distort command. Enjoy!

Get your 2d images at Texturefly.com!

Stone textures…. We all have to use them in our 3d renderings. Since the invention of the revolutionary faux stone, clone stone, cultured stone, every architect  now has it in their budget to add a touch of stone to their buildings.. and they do.. all of their buildings…

So where does that leave us renderers? Usually when we get the material spec’s emailed to us, we find that awful 360×360 image of the stone sample. Well, we all know this little sample image is not going to work when we add it to our 3d max material and tile it.  You will see that pattern over and over and over and your stone will look like - well you know.  So here’s a quick tutorial to help  create a tileable texture such as stone or other natural material.

1. Find a decent sample. Nowadays some of the stone sites will let you download a larger sample or have a larger sample to work with.  Do a Google image search such as ‘Coronado honey ledge’ or Cultured Stone drystack’. See if you can find a decent base image.. There is also the option of shooting actual images on a site where you know you can find a large sample of stone.

2. When you get your base image, create a larger sample. In photoshop, I usually copy and paste many times to get a larger sample.  You can either do this either horizontally and vertically or randomly place the image throughout.  If you do the later, make sure that your seams don’t cut any large stones where you would notice it,   Make sure that you create a large enough image so that when you map it on your 3d model, you  won’t see the repeats and seams that don’t line up.

3. Identify the artifacts. Either zoom out or squint to find stones or shadows that stand out. Rubber stamp them out to blend the image so your eye won’t catch the artifacts that make your 3d material looked tiled.

4. Color correct your image. Sometimes the stone you use may be a different color than the actual spec because it was the only decent image you could find. Use photoshop Hue/saturation or Color balance adjustments to make it look more like your spec’d stone.

5. Create a displacement or bump map.  Whether you are using V-ray displacement modifier or the standard bump map slot, you will need to create a black and white image. Take your original image and change it to grayscale. They use brightness/contrast adjustment in photoshop to modify the stone image so the only black areas will be in the main cracks and mortar joints that you want recessed.  This map will give you more depth in your stone. Try to create enough contrast so that most of your gray tones are eliminated.

6. Test image on your 3d model. Even though you thought you may have removed all the artifacts and seams in your stone, test it on the model to make sure your stone looks natural.

Hopefully this tutorial will help you create natural looking 3d stone textures.  Texturefly.com will soon be working on a stone library that will help you create natural looking stone for your architectural illustrations. In the time being, check out our cmu and brick seamless textures. Stay tuned and visit http://www.texturefly.com

architectural textures and composition

I always look at my 3d renderings as compositional works of art. It’s like a painting, your media is just a computer instead of a paintbrush. That’s why it’s important to think about composition when creating you 3d scene. I was lucky enough to graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts so I got to use the knowledge in my 3d renderings. But a lot of people come from the technical side of things and therefore this is for all the left brainers out there.

If you are using architectural entourage, 2d trees, cars, plants, shrubs, people etc., its easy to manipulate these individual objects into pleasing compositions, if you haven’t tried it, we have some free texture downloads on our site to get you started. texturefly.com

Its important to follow the rules of composition. My first rule,  frame your rendering. Use trees images and plant textures  to cover you outside corners. Use foreground trees at the top corners and let them branch into the scene. Make sure nothing is covering up important architectural elements of your building.  On the bottom, use colorful ground cover to bring the eye into the center of the rendering.

My second rule, drive your car images  into the center of the composition.  You never want cars facing outward if they are theoretically in motion in your scene. This will draw the eye out off of the page.  I know this isn’t always the case and sometimes, well the 2d car images just fit where they fit, but its a good practice to keep in mind.

The same with 2d people images, have people walking into the page. Don;t do a lot of static people textures, pick 2d people that are in motion or walking, this makes your scene more dynamic. I always see these renderings and people are just standing there, almost posing. It makes the scene contrived. If I ever have people standing, its always in conversation with 2 or more people images.

Third rule, keep cloud composition in mind. If you are using a sky background, keep n mind where the clouds are in relation to you building. Since clouds can draw your eye, make sure that you place them in a spot that will not take away from you looking at the building.

Use these simple tips and your renderings will start to look more like a work of art and they will be set apart from the rest.

For more about 2d masked images and architectural entourage, check out www.texturefly.com.

I am going to go off topic today and talk about identifying tree species. When I started texturefly.com, I wanted to include the tree species with the masked tree image. I have used imagecels in the past and was always grateful that they had given all the info about there trees on the cd.

Everyone who has to read a landscape plan to do there photorealistic entourage in their 3d rendering knows, you better learn some Latin to identify the trees and shrubs. After a while it gets easier and you pretty much know the names of the trees and shrubs by heart, partly because everyone spec’s the same thing anyway. Well when I started shooting my 2d entourage for Texturefly, I didn’t know that trying to figure out the tree species was was harder than using Mask Pro to mask out my image!

I bought some great books that explain how to do it. The favorite book is ‘National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees-Western Region’. I like how it gives you a key to the categories on how to identify, such as, leaf shapes, flowers, and cone & fruit types.  The unfortunate thing about all the books I am using is the fact that not all the trees are in them, in fact, hardly any of the trees are in them!! I think this is because the actual tree doesn’t  originate from the Western region.

Anyway, the key things to use when identifying the trees are, leaf shape, bark, alternate or opposite leaf pattern, toothed leaves vs untoothed and and fruit or cone type. If you want to learn how to identify trees, I suggest taking a class, I think this would be beneficial.  We will just keep on masking and identifying trees at texturefly.com and hopefully bring you a great variety of trees in the future!

http://www.texturefly.com

I like to create clumps of bushes to add to my 3d rendering. It gives it a nice artistic flair.  To save time, when you create a group of bushes, you can save them on one layer and transfer them over to a blank photoshop document. Keep adding different ‘clumps’ on each layer until you have a group in one photoshop document. Then Save it as 2d entourage or architectural entourage or bush or plant. Then you can re use your clumps of bushes at a later date, thus saving some time in the process.

Tip: Use images like Banana Yucca, Century Plant and Desert Spoon from Texturefly.com to create a nice desert grouping of plants. These succulents usually create a nice composition for your architectural illustrations.

Purple Leaf Plum - a free download from texturefly!

Come check out http://www.texturefly.com to get your masked images for compositing, 2d entourage, clipart,  and stock photos. We have over 50 new images, including tree images, car images, people textures and plant images. We are also adding new stuff everyday so don’t forget to register for an account so that we can update you with out product updates newsletter.

Texturefly has been a dream of mine for a long time. After working in the industry for 12 years, I realized the real shortage of masked images available to architectural illustrators and artists alike. I noticed I was seeing the same textures and images in everyone’s rendering in every state. We all know how long it takes to shoot, airbrush, cut and edit these images, and finding the time to start this endeavor hasn’t been easy. I have been cutting out my own trees, cars, and plants since 2001 and like to think that these images will give you a little more variety so that your 3d renderings or whatever you decide to use them for will be unique and your photo compositing enjoyable. Don’t forget to check back periodically. New items go up everyday! And sign up for our newsletter for email updates.

Happy halloween from Texturefly!

As you know starting up www.texturefly.com in the last few months has been alot of work. We now have over 70 images in our texture store and growing strong.

In my journey to find the best possible methods of creating the highest quality masked images for 3d rendering and architectural illustration, I tried out 3 different masking programs. Fluid Mask3 by Veritus, EZmask v1.5 and  MaskPro by OnOne.  My goal was to cut out a tree with each program, since trees would be the most difficult .

Fluid Mask 3- Initially I started out with the trial of Fluid Mask 3. A nice program but seemed a little overkill for me.  My favorite feature was the histogram where you could select colors by selecting an area on the histogram. I liked this for isolating sky. This program works on the principal of keeping colors and deleting colors then using the blend between both areas. My tree edges weren’t looking as crisp as I’d like and I did have some computer bog down. It was a little bit more difficult to master as well.

EZMask 1.5 - Because this trial would not let you save back into photoshop,  It was hard to see the result with this software. Boasting to be very low on user input, you can basically paint the border of the foreground or image to keep and a border the background. It somehow analyzes pixels and determine the border. I found the boarder rough and I could not even get close to getting a decent tree image cut out. I didn’t  spend a lot  of time on this because the trial was limiting but the time I did spend, I wasn’t impressed.

MaskPro 4.1 by OnOne - What can I say about this masking program except… love it! This program is everything I needed, with the built in link for tutorials it took me maybe 20 minutes to learn it enough where I can use it to cut out a tree proficiently. Using the same keep/delete palette idea, this one lets you airbrush as you go so that you can select certain colors in areas and then go to another area and isolate those colors, you can also select the whole image which takes time to calculate and sometimes bogs down the computer. This program is easy to use yet detailed enough be able to manipulate controls to get the result you want.

I guess you can guess what the winner was… Mask Pro 4.1 A great masking program for creating all my Texturefly images.

using 2d entourage in 3d rendering

I wanted to talk today about photo-realistic entourage. For those of you not familiar with this term, masked images, or textures or 3d compositing. Basically, It is using photorealistic images composited over a 3d rendering or 3d view in Photoshop.

One word. IMAGECELS. I mean seriously, talk about cornering the market. For years I have been using imagecels or realworld Imagery for my compositions. I have to say, no offense to them but its time for some new blood. Ive sat here many times thinking, I could put something like this together. I even bought the URL, texturefly.com. I know cutting out these images is a lot of work but I think its time to get some new images out so that we don’t have to keep using the same tree, or the yellow mini, or the guy in the tie that looks like a car salesman.

I guess I want some feedback on what you would think about a new site taking over the ungrowing market of Photorealistic entourage in the architectural illustration realm. Please post comments on this topic. I would like to know if other people feel the way I feel about our options.