- So what's the secret to great
photo realistic renderings. in V-Ray? Here's the thing, most of the struggling
people face in V-Ray comes from getting too far
into the rendering process too fast, wasting a ton of
time with render settings and adjusting lights in an
effort to fight earlier mistakes, which could have been avoided altogether by getting a few fundamental
steps right from the start. So how do you do that? We've come up with a simple
three-step approach to rendering that we teach at the
beginning of our popular V-Ray for SketchUp course, which helps students go from
not being sure where to begin to being able to produce
awesome renderings in just a few days. And it can set you up for success on your next rendering project, whether it's your first
attempt at realistic rendering, or you've been at it for a while, but are still looking to improve
your process and results. We call it The Photographer Method and it starts with shifting your mindset. Okay, imagine you're a photographer and you've been hired to
take a beautiful photograph of a room. Now, you'll begin with
the first of three parts to The Photographer Method. Part one, compose your shot. Think of all the gear you need as a professional
photographer in the real world to take a great photograph. Camera, lenses, lighting,
just to name a few. So what does that mean for
you creating your rendering? Well, all the gear you need
comes with V-Ray for SketchUp, so the first thing you need to
do is use the virtual camera in V-Ray to set up your shot. If you have the Auto
Exposure feature turned on, this will work kind of like
a point and shoot camera on your phone, giving
you V-Ray's best guess at balancing your exposure levels. You can also turn Auto Exposure off and find that you have more manual control over all the details such
as Exposure, Depth of Field, ISO, Aperture, even Shutter Speed, just as if you were taking a photo with a professional level DSLR. In the real world, you'd
move around the room with your camera to find the
perfect angle for your photo. (camera clicks) In SketchUp, you'll do the same thing by using the navigation
and position camera tools. Of course, there's no definitive
right or best composition when it comes to setting up your camera, you'll have to play
around to find something that looks good to you. But as a general rule
of thumb, in SketchUp, you can follow the same best practices as you would for photography
in the real world. Here are some pointers that
can help you achieve a balanced and natural-looking composition. First, you'll wanna set an
appropriate focal length for what you're trying to capture. In architectural photography,
photographers tend to use wide angle lenses to
capture more of the room. You can play around with values until you find something you like. But a good starting
point is to try something between 24 and 35 millimeters. On the other hand, if you're doing a detail
or a close-up shot, it's more common in the real world to use a longer focal
length, like 100 millimeters. Once you've set your focal length, you'll also wanna adjust
the height of the camera. Often, I see renderings where
the position of the camera is too high, giving the
composition an unnatural feeling. Using SketchUp's look around tool to set an average human level eye height, say, five foot five can
help make your rendering feel more like a photograph. And lastly, you can use
a photography technique called The Rule of Thirds. To do this, imagine your
image is divided into a grid of thirds vertically and horizontally. Placing key objects at the
intersection of these lines can help give an overall
balance to your compositions. You can even add a grid as
you navigate in SketchUp by using the watermark
feature in the Styles tab by uploading a PNG with
a transparent background. I've put a link to the one
I'm using with instructions on how to use it in the cards. You'll find it as part of the video notes I've put together for you, which you can use to review
everything we're covering today. Okay, once you've set
up your camera angle, don't forget that you can
hide and show tags to finalize exactly what you're showing in your shot, and also to hide elements
that aren't in the shot, but might slow down your
model or your rendering. This is kind of like how you
wouldn't worry about fixing or arranging anything that isn't on camera in your real-world photo setup. And lastly, just like
you'd lock off your tripod when you finish setting
up your real-world shot, always remember to save
your scene in SketchUp to lock everything in. Okay, now you've got your camera set up. You're ready to move on to the next part of The Photographer Method. Part two, light your scene. Back in real-world room, as
a professional photographer, the most common way to create
a balanced, beautiful shot would be to use the two
point lighting technique. While you may not be
familiar with the term two point lighting, you've
no doubt seen it used countless times as a basic
method of lighting photos of every sort. Architectural, portraiture,
still life, you name it. So what is it?
(people sighing sentimentally) Two point lighting is essentially
just what it sounds like, you're using two lights to light the focal point of your image. In most common scenarios, after you've determined
your camera placement, the first light is set up
as the primary light source for the scene called the key light on one side of your camera, then you add a second light
or what's called a fill light on the opposite side of your camera, and then balance the
intensity of the lights to get your desired look. Note that the key and fill lights don't have to be real lights such as the ones coming
from light fixtures or other light sources that
might be in your scene. But rather they're set up
to enhance the lighting of the overall space. In V-Ray for SketchUp, you
can use the same technique. To make it easier, I've broken that down
into five easy steps. First, set up your key light. The key light should
provide the primary lighting and shadows you wanna see. You can use the sun or a V-Ray dome light if you want sunshine to be
the primary source of light in your rendering, or you can use an artificial
light as your key light. If you wanna go that route, usually a directional
light like a spotlight or a rectangle light is the best choice. As a general rule of thumb, it's best to position your key
light higher than the camera than angled away from the camera and pointing towards your focal point to achieve more natural looking results. Second, balance your camera
exposure to the key light. Now, remember if you are a photographer taking this photo in the real
world, you'd need to check and adjust your camera's exposure settings to make sure they're dialed
in correctly for your scene. It's no different when you're
rendering your SketchUp model. So at this point in the process, you're ready to adjust
your camera's exposure relative to the key
light you've just set up to get a properly lit shot. Just remember that you need to
have Auto Exposure turned off and then to increase the Exposure or make the image brighter, move the slider to the right
or to make the image darker, slide it to the left. Hold on, before we go on, I wanna reiterate the step
because it is so crucial. Make sure to adjust your camera's exposure relative to your key light now, and not later after you've
added any more lights. One of the most common
mistakes I see students make is skipping setting their
exposure at this point in the rendering process, which inevitably leads them
down a much more difficult road, wasting a ton of time
adding unnecessary lights and trying to force things to work. So set your exposure
now and your future self will definitely thank you. - Thanks for the tip. - Okay, the next step. Number three, add your fill light. This secondary or fill
light should be used to help fill in anything that's
too dark or false in shadow, helping you bring out important details. As a good starting point,
try placing your fill light at roughly 90 degrees
relative to the key light with your camera being in
between the two lights. Again, directional lights like spotlights and rectangle lights work well here. Now, just like a professional photographer lighting a room in the real world, you've got your basic
lighting setup in place and ready for your shot. But wait, you're not quite done yet. Next, number four,
balance the key and fill. Once you've added the fill light, you'll often find you need
to adjust either the color or brightness of one of your lights to balance it relative to the other. Since you've exposed your
camera to the key light back in step two, you should
start by making adjustments to the fill light first. Because the fill light is being used to bring up the darker
areas that fall into shadow from the key light, in general, you'll want it to be set
dimmer relative to the key. It's also usually best to use
a softer light for the fill. Of course, there are scenarios where this might not be the
case for your desired lighting. You'll just want to experiment
with the various settings to find the right balance
for what you're after. Now, a quick side note,
if you're using V-Ray 5, you should know about
an exciting new feature called Light Mix that
can be a great fallback if you don't dial in everything perfectly with your lighting right now. That's because using this feature, you can actually adjust
the balance of your lights after you render your image. Even with Light Mix, I still recommend getting
a good balance now, not only to help you
visualize your final rendering as you work through
the rest of your setup, but also to make things easier when you go to work in Light Mix later. Just like a photographer
in the real world, the more you can get right
in the camera, the less work and easier it will be to deal
with finalizing your image in post or after the fact
during post post-production. I'll show you a bit more
about how Light Mix works later in this video. But first there's one final
step you'll need to do to complete your lighting setup. Number five, set up your light fixtures. After you've set up the
key and fill lights, it's time to work on any additional lights that are visible in your rendering, like any light fixtures or bulbs, and just like a photographer
in the real world, you'll often want those
fixtures to be visible in your final photograph for rendering. Now, if you followed the previous steps, then you should have your
main two point lighting setup already complete when
you get to this step. But if you skipped ahead and started putting in
these lights already, stop, turn off these lights, rewind,
and make sure you complete the main two point lighting setup first. I've seen way too many
students make the mistake of jumping right in to
adding all their bulbs and fixtures first only
to waste a ton of time fighting to get the overall
lighting of the scene to look right afterwards. So, make sure to get your two
point lighting setup complete before adding these fixtures. Your future self will
definitely thank you, again. (dramatic violin music) Now, which lights you do turn
on or off for your rendering will be a judgment call
you'll have to make based on the look you're going for. As a general rule of thumb, it looks nice to have fixtures
on in daytime interior shots, but outdoor lights don't need to be on for daytime exteriors. And you'll usually want all
your fixtures on for dusk or night shots. And again, if you're using V-Ray 5 the visibility of these lights is another thing you'll be able to control after the fact with Light Mix. I'll cover more on that in a minute. One important thing to keep in mind as you do add more lights to
the fixtures in your scene is that the more lights you add, the more it will slow
down your render times. And you'll also need to
remember to balance each light against your main two
point lighting setup. Okay, so you've set up your key light, set your exposure to your key
light, set up your fill light, balanced your key and fill,
and set up your light fixtures. Your camera and lighting
setup is complete. And as a photographer, you're ready to snap the final photo. (camera clicks) In V-Ray, that would mean
hitting the Render button. (people cheering) But one quick thing to note, if you're in V-Ray 5 and
you wanna use Light Mix, you'll need to enable
it as a render element before hitting Render. Okay, here we go. Time to render. Depending on how fast your computer is, now might be a good time to
make yourself a cup of coffee while you wait. You deserve it.
(bell dings) All right, you've got your final rendering and it's looking pretty great. But wait, there's still
one more important part of The Photographer Method
you won't want to skip. Number three, enhance your final image. In the real world, a
photographer doesn't expect perfect photos to come
straight out of the camera. To make a great image, they'll
make final enhancements to it in a program like Lightroom or Photoshop. And it's no different for the renderings you get out of V-Ray. The best ones have almost
all had finishing touches and adjustments made to them. Now, with V-Ray 5, we actually
have two powerful ways we can adjust the image
after rendering it. The first is the Light Mix feature that I've been talking about, and it goes beyond the kinds
of adjustments a photographer can make after the fact. It's kind of magical. Here's how it works. In the V-Ray frame
buffer in the Layers tab, click on Light Mix. Under Properties, you'll
see a list of the lights in your scene, along with the
ability to change their power, color and visibility. Not only can you use this tool to balance your lights after the fact, you can also create
entirely different lighting, even going from something that looks more like a daytime rendering to a nighttime version, all
without having to re-render. The second way to make adjustments is using the powerful new
frame buffer in V-Ray 5, including color corrections,
combining render elements, and even using blend modes, all without needing to
use another application like Photoshop. (Alex crying) I'll miss you, Photoshop. Okay, V-Ray's new features
are really powerful, and for some there'll
be all that's needed. But they still fall short
of some of the things you can do with Photoshop
to enhance your final image. We don't have time in this video to cover all of those things, but you can use Photoshop
to add additional imagery or cutouts to your scene, paint lighting, materials or effects, filter, crop, or make adjustments to the entire image. Honestly, you could
create an entire course just to cover all the magic you can work on your
renderings in Photoshop. (phone ringing) Go for Alex. Oh, right, right, right. I'm being reminded, we
already have that course. No, no, no, no, I told them. All right, okay. All right, all right, bye. And that's it. Now you know the keys to
The Photographer Method. Next, be sure to check
out the other videos in this playlist. From here, it's definitely possible to learn everything on your own. But if you can't afford to waste any time or pick up bad habits, I recommend checking out
our video course library. It's filled with $8,700
worth of SketchUp courses exclusively for professionals, including our comprehensive V-Ray course. Head over to our website
and try it for free. Until next time, happy sketching. (playful music)
