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Most architectural visualisation renders you see online have been heavily post
processed to include people, blurs, and other effects.
This process is also used often in film production to insert green screened actors into
3D rendered environments.
I used all 3 stated post processing uses in this image, and will go through them quickly
to show you the power of post processing in the real world.
The first thing I decided to add to this was a depth of field (DoF) blur.
This is an effect that most render engines can emulate themselves using CPU tracing
algorithms. However once render is finished, if you think the effect is too strong or too
subtle you have no easy way of changing it.
Render engines let you render certain elements as separate layers that you can take
into your post processing software. Using V-ray I made a Z-depth layer.
Z-depth is a black and white image where objects closer to the camera are white and
objects farther away become darker and eventually black.
Adding this to the renders alpha channel in Photoshop, then using the lens blur tool
allows anyone to freely experiment with as much(or as little) DoF as you like, until you
get the result you need.
And you can see the result instantly rather than waiting for a new render(if memory
serves, this scene had a render time of around 25 minutes. But that is very low
compared to some professional scenes).
It was around this point I noticed that I had somehow removed a material before
rendering the image.
The logo badge at the front of the train was completely grey. Luckily this was a very
small section of the overall image so I could easily get away with fixing it outside 3DS
Max.
A simple Google search to get the company logo I needed, then using Photoshop’s
perspective and skew tools, I made it match the image’s lens distortion and then simply
overlaid it over the grey badge and painted in any extra lighting details.
The final step was adding some life into the scene.
People have a habit of being in public places so they are usually the main thing to add
into a scene like this, just to make it appear more realistic.
Recently due to the rise of 3D scanning technology there are archives of 3D people
who look indistinguishable from photographs, and some studios prefer to use these
now.
However they are usually very expensive so it can easily cost you hundreds of dollars
to populate your scenes with these models.
Once you get your images of people you wish to insert, remember to use Photoshop’s
brightness, contrast, and exposure tools to make them fit in with the lighting of your
scene.
If there are particularly bright-colored lights in your scene you may need to paint the
light onto the people and overlay that light to make everything sit in the scene properly.
However this wasn’t required in my example scene.
After this step I duplicated the render to a new layer so that I could revert any mistakes,
and then used the burn tool to draw in some shadows which helps make people look
less “floaty”.
Do note that this wasn’t a professional project by any means; it was just one I did for
fun a few years ago and a good example for this article.
The quality you should aim for should surpass this piece.
Photoshop and After Effects have so many filters and custom effects to apply to your
images, you can have a lot of fun making your renders truly unique with some stylized
choices!
The same train station as before, but as if it was recorded on a 1940’s video camera and left to degrade.
In short, post processing is one of the most important and yet overlooked features in a
3D artist’s workflow.
The work you put in after the render can really bring your image to life and make your
work stand out from the rest.
You should really spend some time learning how to best add these finishing touches
because your 3D work will benefit from it.
If you’re fairly new to Photoshop there are a lot of resources that may help you pick up
the absolute fundamentals like certain tools, custom effects, or anything else that might
apply to 3D work.
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