Metro Cúbico Digital showcases latest arch-viz work

Andy Price | Uncategorized | 02/02/2011 15:57pm

Arch-viz studio Metro Cúbico Digital presents its latest work – a series of stunning images for a golf and marina resort in Brazil.

Metro Cúbico Digital was responsible for the whole process from modelling to post-production.

The studio also took an active role in the development of the project by making architectural suggestions, using its team’s own experience, as different angles were explored through the development of the images.

The pipeline

3ds Max was used for modelling, texturing and mapping work, V-Ray for rendering, After Effects for colour, exposure and levels.

“Sometimes we used render elements such as Z-depth, reflection, extra tex, lighting, specular passes to engage some things here and there,” says digital artist at Metro, Jacinto Monteiro.

“We also used photoshop to sharpen edges, correct small issues and do all the painting-photomontage that was needed for all the aerial views.”

“Multiscatter and free Advanced Painter script were the most useful plug-ins we used because without them we wouldn’t have been capable of doing such a large scale project.”

The challenges

Metro Cúbico Digital faced two key challenges. The first was rendering such a large scale project, while the second was matching aerial photos with raw renders.

Monteiro explains:

“Inside 3dsmax, we matched the v-ray camera in the viewport with the respective photo. After rendering, the image went through three post-production stages. The first one was in After Effects, then it was comped in Photoshop with the real photo.

“It was pretty tricky because there are always some differences going on and you had to match them without distorting the perspective. Once it was matched with the photo as the base layer and the render on the top we started to delete the hard edges of the render.

“We used a circle brush with 100% opacity first, then the limits between render and photo were deleted softly and carefully using different custom brushes, with 30% and 50% opacity and flow respectively.

“We rotated the brush to match what was needed to delete. We took advantage of edges near water, edges of forest, edges of sea of the real photo to match the render properly in situations where people would not notice so well.

“This last phase was kind of like painting with a pencil, with fast mouse movements. If we had a Wacom Tablet we guess this would be a totally different process. When everything was okay we flattened all the layers and opened the new render image in After Effects again and used Red Giant Magic Bullet Looks to get a more artistic feeling.

“Normally we go for 100% 3D, but in this one, post-production painting had to have a major role due to the extreme time deadline – 4 weeks – for a one person job with lots of architectural form changes during the modelling process.”

See more of Metro Cúbico Digital’s great arch-viz work online.

Posted on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011 at 3:57 pm under Uncategorized. You can subscribe to comments. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.