Barcelona Pavilion

[Jackson]

This started off as as a very simple converted 3ds model from PushPullBar, downloaded years ago. I while back I took a good look at it and realised the dimensions of many parts were way off so started correcting them by eye according to found photos, but ultimately I ended up building it from scratch in SU using the imported 3ds as a base. Got a chance to visit the real thing last year so I took the opportunity to photograph it as much as possible and study the details first hand.

Always thought it was a shame to render it with a random found statue mesh in place so I used MakeHuman to model as close to the Georg Kolbe statue as possible, polycrunched the mesh in Meshlab and then did quite a bit of editing of the mesh in SU to smooth it out and refine some of the details before I was reasonably happy. She's still nowhere near as pretty as the real thing (although the real thing does have oddly large hands for a woman! ).

Everything else is modelled in SU, including the chairs and stools which tested my SU patience (especially as it was prior to Fredo's bend ruby plugin! LOL) as it involved lots of manual vertice editing and follow-me tooling for the piping around and across the cushions.

The images are all rendered as 32 bit .hdr files in VRay for SketchUp then post-processed in Photoshop; mostly gamma and exposure adjustment before converting to 8 bit. The background is a 360° spherical 15000 x 7500 px photograph made from around 60 photographs taken with a tripod in my local park, composited with Autostitch and then Photoshopped (I always paste in Vue rendered skies as Autostitch usually can't detect the overlaps in photographed skies). It's loaded in the VRay background slot so I didn't need the Alpha channel. Post-processing brings the background luminosity up so it looks almost like an HDRI background, but without the massive RAM hit that would entail.

I'll probably potter with it now and again for years to come; I started modelling the site context, but I need to do some dirt maps for the external surfaces and a better collection of 3D trees to do it justice before rendering the exterior.

The first 3 renders took around 3 hours each at 1400 x 800 on my Centrino Duo 1.83GHz laptop, mostly because of 64 subdivs on the stainless steel and leather. The others were much quicker due to less reflective materials in the viewport. The full size images can be viewed at the following links:

http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq21 ... r090-1.jpg
http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq21 ... r090-1.jpg
http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq21 ... r090-1.jpg
http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq21 ... r090-1.jpg
http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq21 ... r090-1.jpg
http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq21 ... r090-1.jpg

[Pilou]

Nice result

[stefanq]

Bravo!!

[TomDC]

These are excellent.

[boofredlay]

Great work Jackson. Well done.

[olishea]

I've seen loads of renders of the Barcelona Pavilion, however, yours are the most convincing i've seen.....not in terms of just pure realism but you have encapsulated the true character of the building. The proportions seem spot on, you can actually buy the plans with the gridiron system illustrated if you want to make it absolutely true.

The textures are fantastic....just like they are in reality. Now all you need to complete the scene are the really obnoxious spanish security guards

Nice work, takes me back to my barcelona trips

[edit] metals in vray look awesome, so life like

[Mr S]

They are superb images,
The metal, glass and stone textures are spot on.
These could easily be entered in to a "is it real or a 3D Render image" type of competition.
I have to congratulate you on you patience as well.
Modeling on almost a vertex by vertex basis takes real dedication.

Regards
Mr S
=======

[remus]

Thats made my day, a great piece of work

[mike d]

great work jackson

[artysmedia]

I - N - C - R - E - D - I - B - L - E

Great marble! Congrats!

[Free Agent]

very fine qualitly renders, i love that first render, very smooth did u use Adaptive DMC in image sampler?

64 subdivs ouch!!... why?

[scottpara]

Great renders. My only comment would be a real barcelona's cushions are at least twice as thick as those.

Scott

[solo]

Fantastic renders, great attention to detail and mapping of textures. Definitely one for the halls of fame.

[massimo]

Great work indeed.
Really a poetic place. These are four photos i did many years ago...

[ely862me]

:wow: u got my attention,very nice..bravoo

[Jackson]

Thanks for all the kind comments!

I left my laptop rendering again last night and the result is another 4 renders, concentrating on details and a view of an internal corner you don't often see in photo sets of the pavilion.
The column foot detail has been pretty heavily photoshopped as the travertine slab diffuse map doesn't really stand up to close inspection, so I PSd a higher resolution example in and mapped it over the rendered one. The others have just been gamma and exposure adjusted from the HDR renders, a little diffuse glow and a little dodging on the stool cushion seams. The last one shows window frames without any filleting, beading or screws- I'll update that part of the model one day, but I thought it might be interesting to post an example of the difference that details like that can make to a render.

Scott, re: the chair and stool cushion thickness, on studying more photos I agree they could be a bit thicker (uuugh, back to the vertice mines LOL ), but it's only on copies that I've seen cushions anywhere near twice as thick as in my model, see the black copies below compared with the real deal. I really had my heart set on modelling the original original barcelona furniture with bolted steel legs rather than Mies' updated cast monolithic ones that we all know and love, but I couldn't find reference photos anywhere. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing them at the Bauhaus museum in Berlin years ago- I'm going back in September so I might have to sneak my camera in. heh heh

Again, the original 1400 x 800 images can be viewed at the following links:

http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq21 ... r090-1.jpg
http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq21 ... r090-1.jpg
http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq21 ... r090-1.jpg
http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq21 ... or09-1.jpg

[kwistenbiebel]

Hi Jackson,
very nice results!
You are using Vray for Max?
I ask that because I see direct sun light and HDR light together in 1 image.
VrayforSU has a problem doing that.......or did you find a solution for that?

[Jackson]

Thanks Kwist!

All done with VRay for SU- I use the same solution we discussed once on the ASGvis forums with the following parameters:

GI map Multiplier 40
Blend Ratio 0.99
Texture A: VRay Sky/Sun with an Intensity Multiplier of 0.4
Texture B: Black ground to White sky gradient spherical map jpg (i.e. LDRI), just 200 x 100 px made in Photoshop with a Multiplier of 1.

I found even such a simple LDR gradient GI map really helps bring out the details in the external areas, especially the statue by providing 360° fill light to counteract VRay's somewhat overly-simple sky and sun GI. The crazy 0.99 blend ratio is required as the VRay sky is so massively powerful compared to LDRI or even HDRI GI maps- I've even had to take to down to 0.999999 for a couple of projects.

[kwistenbiebel]

Thanks for explaining....I will need to convert the multiplier values to V1.0 as I still prefer using that version.

[scottpara]

Jackson,

Here is a picture directly from the Knoll Studio website. This should clear things up.

Maybe not twice as thick but noticeably thicker in the original.

Scott

[Wacov]

This is INCREDIBLE Some of the best renders I've ever seen!

[MrWip]

A really great work Jackson... congratulations ! ...we all have to work harder and harder to keep on being able to show things here without being ashamed !

Just a little remark, the level of detail of the travertine on the ground is maybe a bit weak regarding to the quality of the metal standing next to it... maybe a really soft displacement could bring more realisme to the surface on a close up view.

[David_H]

ludwig_mies_van_der_rohe copy.jpg

[Dylan]

Wow Jackson, I find these renderings amazing!
I didn't realize you was this good

You have certainly got the hang of Vray!

The second and forth images of the first post I love (i love them all, but these are my favourite). The metalwork and glass is exqusite

[Edson]

bravo, jackson. great work indeed. it reveals your already known attention to detail.

[princedragoncok]

Great work, congratulations

[notareal]

Great work!

[olishea]

i cant even tell what's real and what's render anymore!

[holmes1977]

AMAZING

Thanks Jackson for including your settings

Keep them images coming

[CameronVan]

Beautiful work Jackson. Thank you for sharing your images and your settings.