My name is Bobby Parker, and I'm a Professional Minnesota based architectural illustrator who specializes in photo-real architectural renderings.

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Photo-Real Architectural
Renderings
Bob Parker – Nor-Son, Inc.

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No, Bob Parker!

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Nor-Son, Inc.
• Nor-Son is a Integrated Construction
Services Company
• Homes, Hospitality, Healthcare,
Commercial
• Since 1978

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My Work

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My Work

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My Work

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My Work

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• Technical Workflow
• Learn How to See
• Learn to be an Artist
• Become a Photographer
• Post Production
• Tips and Resources

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Technical Workflow
• Optimization: To optimize render speed,
hide anything that is not visible in the
camera view.
• Exporting the camera view will mean only
elements that are turned on in the model
will be exported so you do not need to
worry about hidden elements coming out
in the export.

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Technical Workflow
• Exporting to FBX: FBX is a format used by
Autodesk for better interoperability
between Revit and 3ds Max.
• To export to FBX, make sure the camera or
3D view is active and go to Revit Icon >
Export > FBX.

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Technical Workflow
• Importing files into 3ds Max:
• 3D MAX Icon > Import >Link FBX and click
OK.
• Preset: Autodesk Revit FBX - Change
Combine by Revit materials
• Just know, there are other export/import
options.

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Technical Workflow

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Technical Workflow
• Import
• Link Revit

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Technical Workflow
• Import Using Materials

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Technical Workflow
• Pick Your Revit Camera

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Technical Workflow
• Check to Keep Materials

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Learn How to See
• Learning how to see like an artist is a
crucial step to improving your architectural
renderings.
• So how can we learn to see?
• It is a skill that can be taught, learned, and
developed.
• Our goal is to create renderings that are
representational.

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Learn How to See
• To improve this skill, we must practice
observing objects as they are seen before
they are processed by the brain.
• Our minds are conditioned to “make
sense” of the objects around us.
• If you practice looking, and you’re clear on
what you are looking for ,you will begin to
see like an artist.

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Learn How to See
• And seeing like an artist will lead to better
architectural renderings

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Learn to be an Artist
• If an artist is successfully in welding all
three of these components (subject, form,
and content) in a work, they become
inseparable, mutually interactive, and
interrelated.

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Learn to be an Artist

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Learn to be an Artist
• The subject of visual art can be a person, an
object, a theme, or an idea.
• Subject matter:
Images or topics which comprise the subject
matter of a work of art include but are not
limited to:
• dreams, emotions, fantasies, figures
(allegorical, mythological, nudes, single and
group portraits), historical and/or political
events, landscapes, religious events, still-life
(flowers, interiors, tables of fruit).

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Learn to be an Artist
• As a component of art, the
word form refers to the total overall
arrangement or organization of an artwork
• In a broader sense, form, in art, means the
whole of a piece's visible elements and the
way those elements are united. In this
context, form allows us as viewers to
mentally capture the work and understand
it.

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Learn to be an Artist
• The emotional or intellectual message of art is
its content
• Content is idea-based and means:
• What the artist meant to portray,
• what the artist actually did portray and
• how we react, as individuals, to both the intended and
actual messages.
• Additionally, content includes ways in which a work
was influenced--by religion, or politics, or society in
general, or even the artist's use of hallucinogenic
substances--at the time it was created. All of these
factors, together, make up the content side of art.

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Learn to be an Artist
• One way to add visual interest in your
rendering is to compose the rendering
such that the major elements lead the
viewer through the rendering (fence or
road).

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Learn to be an Artist

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Learn to be an Artist

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Learn to be an Artist
• Using contrast is another way to bring
your viewer to your focal point.
• Your eye is naturally drawn to the highest
contrast point in your rendering.

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Learn to be an Artist

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Learn to be an Artist

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Learn to be an Artist
• The rule of thirds is a "rule of thumb" or
guideline which applies to the process of
composing visual images.
• The guideline proposes that an image
should be divided into 9 parts by 2
equally-spaced horizontal and vertical
• that important compositional elements
should be placed along these lines or their
intersections.

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Learn to be an Artist

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Become a Photographer
• Photorealism is the genre of painting
based on using cameras and photographs
to gather visual information and then from
this creating a painting that appears to be
photographic.
http://en.wikipedia.org

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Become a Photographer
• Most modern day rendering engines use a
physical camera.

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Become a Photographer
• Aperture (f-number)

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Become a Photographer
• Shutter Speed
• Shutter is the effective length of time a
camera's shutter is open

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Become a Photographer
• Film speed (ISO): the measure of a
photographic film's sensitivity to light
• lower speed index requires more exposure
to light to produce the same image
density as a more sensitive film

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Become a Photographer

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Post Production
Post-production might well be the most
underappreciated part of creating 3D
visualizations. It gives you the power to
easily make some changes; put in the sky
you like, add some dirt, make the colors
more vibrant and even correct some little
mistakes in your 3D mesh.

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Post Production
• Film Grain: When using old cameras with
film, there are pictures that often
show grain in the darker areas of the
image because the film won’t pick up the
details in the darker part of the image. This
effect can easily be achieved in our post-
production package.

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Post Production
• Vignetting can have different causes in
photography. The main cause is using a
cheap lens / camera. Most of the time this
effect is unwanted, but sometimes it can
create an image that centers your eye, or
guides it to a specific part of the image.

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Post Production
• Chromatic aberrations are caused by a lens
that refracts the light spectrum in different
ways on different places. Like with a prism,
the light will disperse and fall on the sensor
incorrectly. The effect will occur more on
wide-angle lenses rather then tele-lenses.
• It’s is a very subtle effect and will pretty much
only show up in the corners and on the side
of the images (unless your camera equipment
is really bad).

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Post Production
• Color correction: This is where the fun
begins. Color correction. The most
common thing is to look at “lomography”
photographs; they have huge amounts of
saturation, produce those artifacts we
want to see, and still manage to look
stunning.

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Post Production

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Post Production
Make the effects subtle, but visible.
Chromatic Aberration
Noise
Vignette

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Tips and Resources
• DSLR simulator
• Virtual DSLR camera simulator will help
teach you most of the ropes.

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Tips and Resources
• Perspective
– create visual impact by moving the camera
left, right, above, and below
– beneath the subject it often makes them/it
appear more powerful to the viewer
– above the subject it makes them/it appear
more diminutive

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Tips and Resources
• Use Shapes and Lines to Draw the Eye to a
Specific Point
• The viewer's eye doesn't magically end up
looking at one of the intersections in the
rule of thirds grid, it's just more natural.
• When you're composing your rendering,
consider the shapes and lines and where
they draw your eye

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Tips and Resources
• Frame Your Subject with Objects
– If you have a boring subject, like an ordinary
house, a blank background (like a clear sky)
isn't going to be very compelling. Instead, try
framing your subject with surrounding
objects.
– for example, using trees

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Tips and Resources
• Place your main light source over your
shoulder
• Avoid placing your light source behind the
camera
• Placed directly in front of the object will
seem to flatten the object by centering the
highlight, restricting the shadow area, and
limiting the range of value that defines the
object.

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Tips and Resources

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Tips and Resources
• LightTrac is a must have tool for all
outdoor Architectural Illustrators.
Quickly determine at what time and
location the light conditions are perfect to
shoot your subjects outdoors.

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Tips and Resources
• Blur your eyes, squint and try to see things
out of focus; this will help you think of the
objects in terms of spots, like a blurry
photograph, instead of the objects
themselves.

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Tips and Resources
The composition should be simple, and it
should be about one thing, or concept
• When in doubt, keep it simple. Less is more.
• Take time to plan out your composition.
• interesting renderings have a harmonious
balance of opposites, such as cool and warm,
dark and light, thick and thin textures, detail
and ambiguity, and hard and soft edges.

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Tips and Resources
• Have a basic layout in mind, vertical or horizontal.
• Have reference photos (BIG!)
• Removing objects can be as helpful as adding new ones (What
is it?)
• Cast shadows are a wonderful way to explain form. A shadow
gives solidity to the object casting the shadow, and the shape
of the shadow can help explain other forms as well.
• As you refine a composition, pay attention diagonal lines and
angles created by objects; try to make diagonals more
interesting through a slight adjustment. Also avoid creating
tangents (places where objects abut or overlap one another)
that are visually confusing.
• Be open to removing something if it isn't working, even
towards the end of the process. Fine tuning the negative
spacing, as well as the way the various shapes overlap.

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Tips and Resources
• www.extremetextures.com
• www.texturepilot.com
• www.gobotree.com
• www.texturer.com
• www.texturemate.com
• www.arroway-textures.com
• www.marlinstudios.com
• www.3dvalley.com/free-textures
• www.cgtextures.com
• www.textureportal.com
• www.3dtexture.net
• www.mayang.com/textures
• www.turbosquid.com/textures

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Tips and Resources

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Tips and Resources
psd-manager™ 3 is the most advanced PSD
file exporter for 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design
available on the market. Now you can readjust
nearly everything in a rendering with
Adobe® Photoshop® or any another
application that supports PSD files. psd-
manager is the tool to help you save time and
money by integrating the tools you best know
and like.

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Tips and Resources

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Tips and Resources

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Tips and Resources

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Tips and Resources

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Tips and Resources

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Tips and Resources

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Tips and Resources
• Does this tricky “Gotcha” ruin the shading
and colors in your rendering?
This is an optical illusion that you
face in your renderings everyday.
In fact, both squares are the exact
same color.

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The Digital Grunt
• Why is the color different here, than there?
• Can you do this rendering free? It’ll be a
good promotional piece for you.
• Rendering’s easy, because the computer does
all the work.
• You create such great renderings–you must
have a great computer.
• Can’t you just Photoshop that?
• Your renderings are awesome! What software
do you use?

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The Digital Grunt
• Show us how you made it, so we can do it
ourselves in-house, from now on.
• Change this, and change that… “Why
doesn’t my image look as good as your
others?”
• We do our own renderings, but thanks!

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The Digital Grunt
• By far, my favorite is, "I am going home for
the day, here are my sketches; I have a
client meeting tomorrow morning and I
need a rendering."

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Thank You!
• Great renderings don’t just happen by
accident. They take planning, patience, and
a knowledge of all the tools at your
disposal.
If you have a question, or comment, please
email me.
You can Google: exterior renderings