Product Visualization Specialist Critiques YOUR Renderings

ah the good old critique now who doesn't love being told that the work they slaved over for hours is a total piece of all jokes aside i remember when i went to college for industrial design the critique was the most nerve-wracking part so my goal with this video is to take a look at each image and mention what i think the designer or artist did well and what i think they need to work on to improve the quality of the submitted image now understand a few things here it takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable and to be willing to have your image that you worked hard on critiqued online in a public fashion so first of all any feedback or criticism i have i mean for it to be constructive and to help you move along and develop as an artist so please don't take any of this feedback personal or negatively and second of all if you enjoy this video and you think that it's worth doing some more of these drop some comments down below maybe this will become a regular segment we'll see before we begin i want to plug the keyshot rendering roadmap it's a document that summarizes the steps that i take to push my renderings a little bit further each time download it for free at willgibbins.com roadmap or click the link below i mean it's free so you might as well so i want to mention that i got more than 20 submissions and i realized that even if i spent three or four minutes on each image we'd be here for like hours so this is going to be super hard i had to just pick 10 images and i'm going to try to move through this feedback as quickly as i can while still being useful and offering some input so let's see how it goes also the name of the person who submitted this will be on screen so i don't mispronounce anything so our first submission is a swiss army knife which is cool nice subject now i like the composition overall i like this kind of angle we have going on here i think that overall the lighting on it is is fine they did a good job controlling their highlights it doesn't blow out too much sometimes rendering metals can be tough looks like they used a really soft hdri to get this nice highlight sort of reflection transition it's good overall it's good i think that's the texture i like that they went for a brush texture here but i also think it might be a little uh overly large like it's it's too noticeable so maybe dial that back a little bit and i really love the highlights that are captured on this little corkscrew it's just such a nice piece i almost would like to see more attention on this corkscrew like maybe the camera could be a little lower and closer to it uh one other little weird thing i noticed is this uh logo kind of just disappears the swiss army logo i'm pretty sure that's supposed to be like like polished chrome like they do that in everything that's like their signature so whenever dealing with a recognizable brand or logo don't mistreat the way they treat that logo so i think you you know that's an easy thing to overlook but i think that this thing needs to be popping off the page a little bit otherwise if we zoom out i have no idea what knife this is we need this little like silver you know swiss army iconic logo going on here the the last major thing i want to point out about this image that i could see for improvement is the background so i understand you probably were trying to come up with like a rugged wood background but i don't think it's doing you any favors here so when we zoom out there's so much uh detail and texture going on in this wooden surface that it actually competes with the swiss army knife so i would love to see the same image but on a almost like a a more neutral background maybe just a a surface that's like some cool like rubberized maybe a soft touch sort of a rough surface maybe something with like a very subtle texture on it or like maybe even some like machined lines or something you know i think when i think of um swiss army i think of like precision engineered like clean lines like really nice tooling and everything so maybe you have like just this solid kind of gray dark gray background with some like really thin you know like nice geometric like etched lines or some like little dots or something i don't know but i think that this background just needs to basically fade away from our eye and let your knife really jump off the page i think that would would really do a lot and then the last thing i would do if you do that if you darken up the background go with something a little more simple is maybe hit this knife a little bit highlight on here so this guy doesn't disappear but other than that you know it's a nice image and i think i think that a little tweaking could go a long way and really make this go from being a decent rendering to a good rendering so with that moving on okay rendering number two so this one has um this is nice so it looks like we got a a product here and we can kind of understand how it works it's got this like tape this kind of uh thing that you you peel off this this sticky back stuff and then you you stick it onto something like your stylus and what i like about this is we've got context so you see the product before it's applied you see the product on an object and then you also see what type of environment it would be used in it looks like we've got a little bit of a laptop or tablet with like a cad software obviously this stylus would be used in this context so we have context we understand the product and how it's used this image is telling a story and that's what i like i think it's good for that now how would i improve this image now i think it's a little bit warm and it's a little bit dark and low contrast for my liking so when i zoom out yes the stylus catches my eye but also the the tablet and the apple mouse really carry a lot of visual weight in this image so i think we want to put our focus on your product which is not um currently the focal point in my opinion so maybe we could bring in so you see how we have this nice like warm sunset light splashing on the background could we maybe bring that in either coming this way or could we bring it in going this way to kind of you know again direct our eye to what we should be focusing on and and away from these supplemental areas here um i think it's good that you show this in an environment there's nice reflections on our mouse and everything it looks good the one thing though that i will also say is really distracting is this leather texture unfortunately it's either too big like you just need to scale that guy down or maybe it's just not a high quality texture maybe you need a higher res texture one with more subtle grain because this just looks too rough it's just a little too distracting you could also try like a felt that could look really nice too something a little like i feel like a felt's a little bit more modern um a little bit more trendy than like leather right now but like you know that's kind of personal preference there overall it's a good image i like the image i think just a couple tweaks i would make and and maybe play with something just a little bit of like a cooler tone too and maybe make it feel a little fresher but that's more of an opinion type thing you know overall i like it hopefully that's useful time to go to the next image so this is a cool image because this person is obviously really comfortable with negative space we have a product that's actually kind of small in the frame and we have a lot a lot of negative space all around it where there's just a wall and light and it works because the the product is black and it contrasts greatly with the pink background and it looks good i really like it i also like how you're using these walls to draw our eyes in toward the product so fantastic composition what would i do to improve this thing it's hard because again this is really just a personal preference item for me one thing that my eye doesn't love is the wall and the floor where they meet this just gets really confusing and it you know again if you like this and that was your intention not a problem but i think i would like a little better distinction between the floor and the wall and the way you've introduced some shadows is great but i think you could push them so the values these shadows are just a little darker and this gradient from the background from there to there is a little bit more high contrast so this either brighter or this darker or both and the last thing i might recommend is you know the lamp you know so our eye comes in toward the lamp and then it points down but i almost want to see the lamp because it is a lamp i almost want to see a beam of light coming from it and if that's the case what you could do instead of having the primary light source be from behind this wall you could have the primary source of light coming behind this wall kind of backlighting our lamp and then have the lamp itself illuminating this side of the frame i think that could be fun and then you could play with a little warm cool tone split but again personal preference item there love this shot really not a lot to nitpick but i think if i was to push this background background a little bit those are areas i would consider moving on to the next shot holy moly this is this is hot um the colors here i mean this kind of here let's let's switch up our color here this milky kind of green oh my gosh um that is a fantastic color and and glass material man um also this is a really sharp image i don't know if you did a little bit of post uh work in photoshop sharpening this up but man it just you know and i'm not sure if there's it looks like there may be some depth of field maybe a bit so to still have such a tack sharp image with a little depth of field is great and and i love how you've got some some wavy so see this little waviness here we got these uh it just really works it just really works and uh all these little glistening little highlights are great so okay enough i love this image obviously what would i do to improve it this is hard this is so hard because i don't want to say it's perfect because i don't know i feel like perfect is a little much is any image perfect i don't know would i change anything about this image no i don't think so i think this is a lovely image the only thing if i have to say something here because this is a critique feedback whatever maybe we could introduce a shadow from something else could we have maybe some shadow coming in here and maybe something in the background to break up this white void i don't know but honestly i love this so much as it is i don't think i have any sort of criticisms as of now let's move on to the next image we have a product that goes on somebody's back so exo back and it looks like this is a kind of almost like a backpack but it's more like a back brace here first impressions to me here are my biggest concern with this as a rendering is a rendering needs to communicate something we should understand what the product is we should be able to see it it should tell some sort of story about function what i think this person's doing well is they are showing their product in context being used this is a person lifting a heavy box and they've got this exo back product on to keep their back either strong or protected maybe even help them lift more i don't know but it's a contextual rendering with a person and that's hard to do in cgi typically like if you model in a cad software adding a human to your renderings is always tough so props to this person for doing that that's what i like about it now what do i think could improve i think that they their lighting is is not doing them any help because it's very hard for me to see the outlines of this product it really i don't even know where this ends here it really blends in with the person and the rendering i guess i i don't know if this ends there or not so it's very confusing and i think that that's an easy fix just change the color of the black on the person or better yet change the product or something or not okay maybe don't change the product maybe the product is fixed change the color on the person or change your light source have a strong light source coming in here on the person this whole side of this box does not need to be as lit as it is this whole side of this box does not need to be lit this side of their arm doesn't need to be lit what we need to do is see the product first and foremost and right now it unfortunately just disappears as soon as i zoom out i see exo back and it almost looks like a like a little camelback like a water thing but i really am just struggling to see the rest of this okay so that's one big thing the other thing i want to point out is um it looks like some depth of field was attempted in here i don't know if this was added in post or if this was rendered in the shop but to me the product is blurry like this looks blurry down here but this does not i would kill the depth of field or at least dial it way back just so we can see this product it's okay you know that sounds harsh like i said um props to this person for putting it on a human that's hard to do but i think that they're really not um showing off their product the way they should you know if you put the time in to design this we got to see it we got to understand what like what is this material i want to see these this little spine like thing this is cool i want to see a macro shot what are these you know is there some sort of cool neoprene or some sort of like woven texture i don't know show me what's going on in this image i would love to see maybe some close-ups or something so let's take a look at our next image so we have a this looks like a bottle of gin dry gin okay so we've got an alcohol container nasa obviously kind of a play on nasa it's kind of a fictional company type thing we've got this rocket ship like bottle i like i love the lighting they let the rocks go real dark in here we're really seeing all the detail in these rocks here and um yeah our product still has a nice core reflection here so bravo on the lighting well done there lovely shot now what would i improve so this is a little less to do with the rendering but i'm pretty sure the person who made this rendering made this product this bottle and if you look closely it kind of wobbles sorry my hand's not real straight it kind of dips in here and that that weird continuity i don't know it's kind of distracting like i to me if this is like you know manufactured kind of sci-fi or something like this should be a really straight angle or line i feel like now if this is supposed to be a soft plastic something you could like squeeze with your hand then it makes sense that it's a little wobbly here so maybe i'm reading it wrong but to me the surfacing on this it is a little distracting i also think the label is getting stretched it looks like it's kind of getting stretched this direction and i don't know i feel like the placement of these could just be a little bit a little bit better placed and and straightened out a little bit i don't know if they're they're just not wrapping as as well as we would hope um that's super nitpicky what what about the rendering itself though if this is kind of this like mars martian sort of outer space concept this almost looks like a red mars rock so if that's kind of this theme that we've got going on as far as i know mars has a yellowish greenish atmosphere it's very different than earth you could ham it up a little bit and either tint your light that you have coming in here more greenish to kind of get that martian atmosphere or you could even exaggerate it further and instead of having a bluish kind of a backdrop gray blue you could go with the greenish yellowish hue and that really might help just give it this kind of otherworldly eerie feel which i think could be a lot of fun lastly i think your framing is good i think the aspect ratio sorry i think the aspect ratio is good i think the framing is a little wider than you need it to be oopsies so i think i think even something like this like even or if you want it to not be you know center center composition whatever um i feel like you could you could play with the framing just a little bit more bring us closer to the product and just cut back on this negative space it's a little bit much for me because just because i think it it takes away from the presence of your product um otherwise nice image nice tonal range nice contrast nice graphical legibility i really like that all right our next image is an interior with a yellow chair what do we say about this this is a nice image it's really nice you've got these kudos on these like nice straight architectural lines going on you know using your shift lens we've got things really squared off and geometric it feels like a nice architectural interior and then we've got our yellow accent chair and the chair is lovely it's a nice contrast now this is tough i really struggle with interior so i don't know totally what the right answer is to improve this i love this shot i think you've done a great job with it it looks very professional it looks like something i'd see in a cb2 catalog which is great that's a good compliment nice job on the carpet too those those can be tough but the question what could we do to potentially improve this so what about colors i'm a little colorblind so sorry if i'm missing this but you might have some blue in here but with this being yellow could we play with some complementary values could we bring in some more blues here can we tone you know tone map us just a little bit i don't know what about the color of this vase i think that's a missed opportunity we've got the walls which are all the same beige we've got the floors we got the carpet all kind of the same hues could we you know the green's a nice pop but it doesn't distract too much from the chair could we introduce a different color here what about um more of an evening shot where you know what if we introduced some pendant lighting here nice little pennant lighting i don't know could that work maybe could you introduce a piece of you know artwork on the wall that just i think compositionally something's missing here i think i like the artwork idea i think maybe that could that could be really nice and then you could also play with your lighting of course you know could we bring in you know some big harsh shadow what about that what if you like graphically speaking what if you just oh just this beam of light where like this whole area is really dark and this whole area is really dark or vice versa maybe this whole strip down the middle is really dark i don't know i know it's maybe not as realistic but i think this is a lovely shot that shows off a product i don't think there's anything wrong with it i think it's a great shot but i think to improve the rendering i would look at areas to introduce drama or maybe just a little bit of shadow play on the wall here something else because i think compositionally it's it's not wrong but i almost want something else to be here on the wall i don't know sorry that that's about the best i got this is a lovely image by the way okay so we have a bottle of cologne for this next one or perfume or something technically speaking this is well done if this person modeled all this we've got we've got some gold we've got this kind of textured i know it's like a leather print but it reads as like a plastic usually you would not it would be like a fake plastic e side type of material here and then this bottle which is fairly complex lots of refractions and stuff going on here very cool i'm almost certain they've got caustics in here almost certain but i don't see the telltale like caustic splotchiness that sometimes happens in keyshot so maybe i'm i'm not entirely sure there if they did not render with caustics an opportunity to spice this up would be to make sure caustics are on and while it takes a long time to render you could get some really lovely interesting shapes from all the facets in this glass i think that could be a cool way to bring some life into this another thing i think this aspect ratio is not doing you any favors i think i would maybe it's a little too close i would crop in a bit more maybe something kind of like this i don't think we need all this stuff out here i also want to see your bottle rotated a little bit i would love to see the label kind of not perfectly facing the camera but you know just a little bit i think right now sorry i'm getting a little messy here i think right now my eye is drawn to this face right here and there's nothing there i would i think that i think your label needs to be kind of right in here so just rotate it maybe just a little bit and then the other thing is we've got lots of warm yellows and golds in here i think outside of it we could do with some stronger blues which you've done you've got blues in here but i think your background is um you could just amp it up i mean this shadow here is cool but like what if it was like um sorry what if it was like you know way darker way darker there and then this was a lot brighter almost pure white what if you just had more contrast in this shot so the background red is like graphic you know dark and white i think that could do a lot for your image and the other thing i want to point out is i think this ground texture is just too low res i don't know if you simply scaled it up too big or if it's a low res texture and if you scale it down it's going to repeat and you don't want that if that's the case sometimes you just got to go buy you know spend the money on a real like high-res texture or go take photos of your own even your phone will probably take high enough resolution photos to turn into texture so i think your texture is just too soft i think this needs you know to be uh higher resolution some crunchier smaller details and i would also like i said boost the contrast i would love to see some like really bright here really really dark here and keep this dark blue so the way you can do that if you lit this with an hdri is make sure that the pin that's creating this light here is nice and bright and then make sure the rest of the hdri that's causing this dark area is almost pure black just like a dark blue and that should help you quite a bit lastly if you want some bright caustics down here set like a use like a um what's it called the the spotlight or something like that to to really blow some light at that i think that would be cool too all right let's hit the next image we're almost done here okay so this is a shot where um this person designed this lamp i i read a little bit about each of these renderings first so um so they've got this glass part they've got a light bulb in here they've got a concrete base now this rendering there's a lot to improve here but i don't mean that in a rude way i like that you know your lamp looks good it looks like your materials are right you got your glass you've got your your your light bulb you've got your concrete base you even modeled the cable the cord i love those details that's awesome now i think the my biggest thing for you here and this is a lesson that applies to everybody what you've done is you so if we zoom out your lamp disappears it's almost like it's the last thing i noticed because when you zoom out i'm going to show you i know this is small this is really hard to see on screen but i'm going to make a point here my eye is first drawn to this part let's switch our colors my eye is first seeing this part because it's so bright then my eye sees this part because it's really dark then my eye sees this because it's just this weird square and then i see this part and the last thing i notice is your lamp right so for me every image has a hierarchy of read and you want your product to be the thing that we see most readily and the way you're gonna do that is by using contrast so this wheel is so bright it's got so much contrast compared to the rest and it's a big geometric form so that it has to go like that's not working this is dark and while the chair is a lovely chair it's the darkest thing on this image against a beige wall of course we're going to see it next so i would go with a chair that almost matches the same color as the wall this couch is just sorry this isn't your fault but this couch is just hideous it's just like this texture is too big that you know it looks like it's not reading properly and it looks kind of like an 80s kind of style couch it's just not i don't know i don't think it's doing any service here and then um this is a lovely prop but again because it's got some you know this this this contrast against this beige wall it's lovely but it's a little distracting from your product here so my suggestion would be start by reframing this what if you cropped in something like this like i don't think we need anything outside of that box i just drew and then i think this cart has to go this is a very stylized cart it's a very polarizing card if you don't like this form you immediately don't like this this image even though this image is all about your lamp which i really like i like your lamp design i do not like what it's sitting on and that's not your fault so i think that when you have a product to put on display you have to consider don't introduce anything that's going to be too distracting from your object or compete for attention and second try to get everything in the background all these props make them almost the same color or a very similar analogous color so they don't compete and then let your product have the highest contrast i think we've got some interesting light on the wall coming in here although it's blowing out it's getting too hot use the um try the photographic image styles in keyshot to help prevent this weird white blown out area and then could we raise our light source so your light is coming across the image in a cool kind of interesting dramatic way on this as well if we did that and if we darken the the room then your lamp has a chance to create a nice soft glow on the back wall and that would create some lovely contrast and let us see your product as it should be so to me don't get discouraged i know i picked this apart but to me there's the there's so much potential to improve this i think you should feel inspired to take a second crack at it and i'd love to see what this looks like after another round so hopefully that that helps out there okay we have one more image to go so we have a light it's a light it's got this big heat sink on the back a bunch of leds and then this fixture that allows you to to rotate this light so this is difficult to do first of all on a pure white background there's no context second of all the product itself is dark it's almost all black and dark gray against white which means it can be really easy to just see a silhouette on this page now thankfully when i zoom out it actually still reads surprisingly well because the this person made sure it didn't get too dark inside here i like this because even though we don't see any context i can see there's these kind of like wire spring-loaded wire clips where like obviously this goes into some sort of like sheet rock or like a ceiling fixture and this thing rotates like because they put this off axis and we see these rings this thing obviously rotates and i'm able to see that so like this pro this this image is still telling me the functionality of this light it's an in-ceiling lighting fixture that can rotate and there's almost no color on it whatsoever and yet it still reads pretty well what can we do to improve it i think the biggest missed opportunity here is that this black surface back here is blending into this one and it's blending into this one which blends into this one now this is hard this is difficult i'm not trying to say just do this and it gets easy what i will say is i would encourage this person to try to use either a physical light or some very small hdri lights to see if they couldn't pop out these surfaces so we could see that that surface and that surface and that surface and that surface and that surface are not all the same i think you know you have to paint with light they've done a very very good job so far but i think this just needs to catch some more highlight i think this needs to catch some more highlight and then in here a little bit too that's very very nitpicky but this is a very challenging subject because it's just a dark you know black painted object with some metal on a white background so also not to mention they did a good job managing these chrome pieces against a white backdrop i think another i think really the opportunity lies in getting these surfaces to read just a little bit better and to tell them apart but also can we get some slight textures maybe some slight brushing on this just a little bit and then could you get some little slight texture going on in these in this metal powder coated finish i think just it needs some grain i know powder coating is pretty smooth generally but this looks plasticky i think you need something to it to to have some tooth some texture and because you're going to see this you know you're going to be zoomed way out of this product in order for the those textures to read and help you know if we look at it this big they're basically going to disappear so what you're looking to do is add just a little bit of bump texture with a pretty significant bump height so that when you shine your light on this product it catches some little highlights little glints of highlight on that bump texture so you can see it's not a perfectly smooth plastic that's going to be my top recommendation for this otherwise this is a deceptively tough image to pull off and you've done a fantastic job so there you guys have it 10 of your renderings critiqued done dusted hopefully you'll learn something from this feedback i enjoyed it but man i gotta say it's tough keeping the feedback down to just a few minutes per image i would love to spend a half hour on each image if i really could because the more time you spend thinking about it the more opportunities you see and that's what i'm hoping to teach you to do is to look at your own images and then push yourself think of ways you could maybe give it a little more love or or experiment a little bit more each time this is how you grow as an artist if your image didn't make the cut this time i'm sorry it's just it's just a time thing i've got another 10 images that were already submitted so if you guys want to see those comment down below maybe i can make this a regular series but uh yeah that's it thank you to those who submitted your images good on you hopefully you learned something and until next time happy rendering

Channel: Will Gibbons

Views: 29,335

Keywords: will gibbons, wil gibbons, will gibbins, will gibons, will gibins, keyshot, rendering, tutorial, animation, studio, freelance, critique, review, render, feedback, reaction

Id: qkRHQeIR1EY

Length: 32min 29sec (1949 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 29 2021