Overlays and LSD

ID3 is over and I'm still here. A strange hodgepodge of the study of materials, structure, and process lead me to a strangely conceived building. Most of the assignments pushed me to find some new way of doing things, which I think has really helped my way of thinking about design more than anything else.

This post however, is for process, not thoughts or opinions on design. For my ID3 final project, my instructors suggested that I focus on my digital drawings, as they were my strength. Along the way, I was introduced to many small tips that eventually turned into a couple experimental processes for me to use in my final images.

My process starts with a base render from Blender, with all the materials already separated during the creation of the model. The model has glossy shaders and a couple of concrete textures already applied. The base render could be simpler

For this next part, I switch out each material with a different color and set them all to an emission shader. Emission shaders give off light and reflect none so its perfect for making a color map of my scene.

And now I can bring in the extra materiality I want in my scene. For each material I simply insert the texture I want, select the corresponding color on my color map, and apply a mask to the texture.

Then I lay the base render underneath, and play with the mixing options (overlay is a classic) until I have the desired effect. Now my materials have a lot more character, and some of the weaknesses of my rendering are glossed over.

This was a quick rendering of my building made for my cover sheet. This time I started only with a quick sketchup/Indigo clay render. I switch around the materials and render again. This time, I arrange the texture in the layer mask so that some of my extreme angles of view don't look to off. I stretched and scaled the texture so that the texture on the walls don't look flat when they should be stretched. The rest is standard photoshop work.

I start again with a quick Indigo render.

And quickly add texture overlays, and a little linework from sketchup.

The different mixing settings give you different options for making objects pop other than just adjusting the contrast and brightness settings. They can add, grit, detail, or interest to your images.

So that's neat.