Tutorial: Architectural Interior Lighting and Rendering

DESCRIPTION
In this video tutorial from Yazan Malkosh, we explain detailed techniques for creating compelling day and night shots of a contemporary interior living space using modo. The goal is for you to gain enhanced understanding and control over how interior surfaces appear, how to light them effectively, and how to create final high-resolution images suitable for presentation to a client.

The design and diverse furnishings of this model allows us to cover a wide variety of rendering topics relevant to architectural design including water features, plants, draperies, and a variety of other surfaces including concrete, wood and leather (see accompanying images).

The interior is uplit and downlit, and also includes a lighted cabinet and a desklamp. Large windows allow natural light to enter and views to be seen through them. Both natural lighting and photometric lighting are employed along with fill lights that further enhance the mood and clarity of the final rendered images.

Learn Key Rendering Skills: Step-by-Step

Great computer generated images, especially those designed to convey a design in final detail, are the result of hundreds of individual decisions about surface appearance, lighting and render settings.

Careful organization of the scene is also critical so that (for example) lighting setups for both day and night can be systematically maintained and final results tweaked in Photoshop.

In this tutorial, Yazan shows his mastery of these subtle details as he methodically builds day and night images with meticulous quest for quality.

Topics Covered include:

• Photometric lighting
• Physical Sun
• Day and Night lighting approaches
• Efficient Shader tree organization
• Global illumination
• Applying and modifying material Presets
• Optimal use of Preview renderer
• Subsurface scattering and ambient occlusion
• Use of fill lights
• Balancing speed vs. quality in setting up the rendering
• Enhancing separate render outputs in Photoshop

26 individual videos totalling 4 hours and 30 minutes of instruction.

Note: These videos are designed to be viewed sequentially as a complete set and thus individual videos are not separately available.

Video Series 01 – Lighting and Materials
In the first video series, we review the model and adjust modo’s user interface for fast interaction and invoke appropriate viewing options for architectural visualization. Then we proceed to place lights and materials throughout the scene. Careful attention to Shader Tree organization for complex scenes is given. Lighting schemes for both day and night are implemented. We then adjust the surface materials and lighting for a dozen detailed subsets of the scene.

Pre-built modo model files are provided for the tutorials.

Video Series 02 – Render Settings and Outputs
In the second video series, we finish lighting and adjusting the surface properties of some remaining parts of the scene including the drapes, bamboo plants, the water feature, day bed and desk chair. Next, we add photometric (IES) lights to fixtures in the room to provide uplighting and downlighting. Tips are provided for working with IES lights obtained from various lighting manufacturers. Then we go through final daytime and nighttime lighting adjustments. We prepare for the final rendering at HD resolution by adjusting parameters like irradiance cache, adaptive subdivision, anti-aliasing and displacement. We then select which render outputs will be useful to save separately for later adjustment in Photoshop. The scene is rendered to disk.

Pre-built modo model files are provided for the tutorials.

Video Series 03 – Final Presentation
In the third video series we make final adjustments to the scene inside of Photoshop CS3 using the render outputs saved in the previous step. The day and night scenes are each enhanced in terms of reflections, lighting, palette, shadowing and depth of field. A starry background image is added to the night shot and the final images are achieved.

Pre-built modo model files are provided for the tutorials.

Note: In addition to the content provided with the album, modo 302 and Photoshop should be installed and running as you are viewing the tutorials so that you can pause the video and try the techniques presented in the tutorial.

REQUIREMENTS

• Software Required: modo 302+ and Photoshop
• Total Running Time:: 4 hours, 30 minutes
• Experience Level: Intermediate modo and Photoshop user

Notes: These tutorials are delivered online in 1280 x 720 QuickTime (H.264) format and are available for download through your Registered Products page after purchase.