The Cliff retreat spreads are underway. With most of the imagery generated, I had enough content to start thinking about how the pages would be laid out and how the story would be told. As with a lot of my layouts, the styles range quite a bit from spread to spread. For example, my sections spread is filled with texture and sketchy overlays whereas the interior vignettes spread is clean and simple. The way that I negotiated these types of transitions was by carrying over some of the tones and textures of the sections spread into the interiors spread. I didn’t let these textures take over but instead diluted them and set them into the background. One other technique that I have been using is to literally let some of the images wrap around onto an adjacent spread. I folded the large aerial image onto the exterior vignettes spread which gave me a container to hold text but also bring in some color on what would have been a totally desaturated page.

Below are the cliff retreat spreads at their current state:

As I finish up this fourth project, I am preparing portfolio Vol. 4 and hope to write several upcoming posts on the progress. I will be using a similar workflow as PORTFOLIO Vol. 3 described in this PORTFOLIO WORKFLOW POST. However a lot has changed in the last several years with the online printers and I plan to test out a much broader range of options this time around. If you missed it, here is the last post I did in 2014 on COMPARING ONLINE PRINTERS.  More on all of this later….

Below is a quick break down of one of the interior images

1. Sketchup Model

Above is a hidden line view of the Sketchup model. The 3d  model remained relatively simple with a Kahn like waffle slab to help break up the large concrete ceiling plane. All furniture was found in Sketchup 3D Warehouse.

Above is the Sketchup model with materials turned on. A lot of my time was spent experimenting with concrete textures and honing in on the right amount of bump and reflection. While I like to photoshop textures on exterior views like these images, it is too difficult to manually texture in interior scenes. Interior views often have too much geometry and detail to mask around and too many reflective surfaces to deal with.

2. V-Ray Base Rendering

Above shows the V-Ray base rendering. Along with the concrete texture, I also setup a gloss white acrylic for the Saarinen Tulip furniture, chrome materials for the Arco floor lamp and Barcelona chairs, and a simple wood material for the millwork on the left.

3. Photoshop

Once in Photoshop, I started setting up masks and desaturated the color taking everything to a simple black and white image.

4. Adjust the Levels

The image is lacking some contrast so I adjusted the levels to deepen the darks and punch up the highlights. I also added some vignetting (shadow around the edges of the image) to help draw the eye to the center of the composition. Finally, I added a slight haze to give some depth as well as lit up the left wall to help articulate the shift in wall plane from the dining room to seating area in the back.

5. Room Accents

Some vegetation was added to the outdoor terrace to better visually separate interior from exterior. Other elements like the dining room pendant light, ceiling spot lights,  and paintings were added in Photoshop instead of modeled in 3d because I find it easier and faster to iterate and test out ideas in this environment rather than waiting for test renderings to kick out. The paintings especially changed quite a bit once desaturated, requiring a lot of experimenting to find the right tones. Finally, some people were placed in the back to avoid drawing too much attention while still adding scale and activity to the space.

Final Images

1. Base Renderings

I started out by cutting sections in my Sketchup model and then rendering in V-Ray. The V-Ray renderings required quite a bit of cleanup in Photoshop to hide mistakes in the model. I also added some concrete textures and colors to designate materiality.

2. Poche and Site Plans

One thing I like to do with my sections is poche the cut with a bold color to help clarify the reading. The red also becomes a graphical move that encourages eye movement around the page and make connections to more information. In this case, I added a site plan of the design to inform where the cuts are taking place. All of this is kept somewhat abstract to help fade into the background and not draw attention away from the main site section.

3. Textures

At a certain point, I quite methodically planning every move, relaxed a little, and let my right brain take over. I started exploring with texture and color to give this image some grit. While the step-by-step breakdown of this image is very linear, in actuality, I iterated and tested out a lot of different layout designs, colors, and textures before arriving to the final image style.

4. Background Color

I added background tones to clarify the hierarchy of the spread and help organize the information. The red on the right was used to better define the sky from the cliff as well as visually separate the building sections from the site section on the left.

5. Annotation

Finally, annotations and scale figures were added. I always try to put just as much time into the design of the text and annotations as with any other graphical information. Often, I see this stuff added at the very end in a way that disrupts the flow of the spread and distracts from the illustrations. However, I typically work this stuff in as I am developing the spread which can add another layer of texture to the composition and be used to strengthen the hierarchy of the spread. With that said, it is a fine balance between maintaining readability and not stealing too much attention.

In part one, I discussed some quick study vignettes of the cliff retreat design. For part two, I want to go into more depth about how I used a Material ID render channel to speed up my material selections and generate these illustrations in a relatively short amount of time. This not only streamlines my Photoshop workflow, but also allows me to make quick updates to my Photoshop files later if my design changes. By utilizing Material ID channels and masked groups, I can simply render out a new ID every time I make a change to my design, update the ID layer in my Photoshop file, and then use that new ID to update my masks as needed.  Below is a quick explanation of how I do that.

1. TURN ON MATERIAL ID CHANNEL

In this tutorial, I am using V-Ray for Sketchup which automatically generates colors for each texture used in the model. Above is the what the Material ID channel looked like for my view. Most rendering programs like V-Ray offer the ability to create a Material ID channel.

To turn on the Material ID channel, open the V-Ray Option Editor dialogue box, and go to the “VFB Channels” tab. In that tab, find “Material ID” in the Standard Channels list and select it. Now that it is selected, V-Ray will generate this channel when you render the image.

2. SAVE MATERIAL ID CHANNEL

After rendering the view, you can find the Material ID channel in the upper left side of the frame buffer window in the drop down menu. You can save the image from the frame buffer window but I typically have V-Ray save all of my channels automatically by checking the “Save Output” box in the “Output” tab of the V-Ray Option Editor.

3. BRING IN MATERIAL ID CHANNEL INTO PHOTOSHOP

I like to keep my Material ID layer at the top of the layers palette. This allows me to turn it off and on easily to make selections without any other layers getting in the way.

4. MAKE SELECTION

To make a selection, select and turn on the Material ID Layer.  Then, Choose “Select>Color Range”.

When the Color Range dialogue box appears, set the “Fuzziness” slider to somewhere around 50. This may need to be adjusted depending on the color and amount of detail that is being selected.  Next, pick the color that you want selected  and then choose “OK”.

5. SETUP GROUP AND MASK

I could end this tutorial here since we have completed the task of using the Material ID to make a selection, but I want take it one step further and turn that selection into a mask on a group. This allows me to use one mask for many textures instead of applying the same mask to each individual layer.  First, create a new group by clicking the “Create a New Group” icon at the bottom of the layers palette. With the selection from the material ID still active, select the “Create New Mask” icon at the bottom of the layers palette. This will apply a mask to the group just created. For more info using masks, check out this post: Hatch Patterns

I now can drag my grass textures into that group just created and not have to worry about masking each individual grass texture. This is especially useful if I make changes to the railing or wall, I don’t need to update all of the individual grass texture masks. Instead, I only need to update the group mask and all of my grass textures inside will be updated too.

By rendering out the Material ID with each new rendering, I can make selection fast and accurately. By applying masks to groups instead of each individual layer, I  maintain a clean and organized Photoshop file with minimal masks. This workflow allows me to easily update my Photoshop files as I continue to design and refine my project.

The cliff retreat has been a fun project to design and I find myself constantly jumping back and forth between the macro and micro scales of the design. For the micro scale, the lack of detail in the model can make it difficult to visualize some of the design ideas. Therefore, I looked to Photoshop to quickly add some missing information and to help me study these different moments by exploring  textures, scale and light. Below is a quick break down of one of the images.

View of Sketchup Model

V-Ray Base Rendering

V-Ray Material ID Channel

The 3D model is still lacking materials and detail, so I had to do my due diligence to find good textures to overlay on top of the clay model. The geometry itself is simple in many of the views, so the Photoshop post processing took little time compared to other images. I probably averaged two hours of post processing per image. The secret was having a good Material ID channel to help me make selections. Material ID is something that I haven’t talked about much on this site, but is crucial for fast and clean Photoshop post processing. I will follow up this post with a part 2 tutorial describing how I create and integrate the Material ID channel into my workflow.

I grouped the layers in Photoshop by texture and then masked off the groups instead of each individual texture. This made for clean photoshop files and will allow for simple edits if the design changes later. This concept will also be covered more in depth in part 2 of this post.

For the final image, I converted to black and white to downplay the strong green vegetation and shift focus back to the textures and light. There was a little more to the black and white conversion than just desaturating the image. I increased the contrast by duplicating the image and setting the layer blend mode to “Overlay”. I also ran some Topaz filters to sharpen the image and enhance the details.