2rsi2021 ‘Some Thoughts on Texture | Visualizing Architecture VISUALIZING 2 Pe SeUEU i by Alex Hogrefe Some Thoughts on Texture by Alex Hogrefe | Nov 26, 2014 | Break Down, Portfolio Vol. 4, Project 02 Cultural Center, Styles / Effects | 27 comments A thought that is often running through my head when working on architectural illustrations is how can I bring more of a human touch to the image. The answer is almost always through texturing in Photoshop. Ihave spent the last week illustrating an aerial perspective for my latest personal project. For this particular work, | wanted to hit almost every surface of the image with a strong texture to see what would happen. There were many areas that I would normally skip over in other illustrations but didn't in this one. The result is an image with imperfections that shows age. Base Rendering hitps:visualizingarchitecture.com/some-thoughts-o- ans2rsi2021 ‘Some Thoughts on Texture | Visualizing Architecture Texturing in the 3D environment is important but it can be difficult to avoid “tiling” of textures. Often, my base renderings come out looking flat and “perfect” meaning the texture has no flaws. This is because there is only so much I can do with bump maps and texture attributes. At a certain point, time spent texturing in the 3D environment could be done much faster in Photoshop. After producing so many illustrations over the years, | am starting to get a sense of what that threshold is and when | need to get out of 3D and into 2D post processing. In many cases, | need both a good texture in the 3D model combined with a good texture in Photoshop to get the right look. Texture Zones hitps:visualizingarchitecture.com/some-thoughts-o- ans2rsi2021 ‘Some Thoughts on Texture | Visualizing Architecture For this illustration, there were four areas that | focused on: the roofs of the surrounding context, the textures of my design, the streets, and the sidewalks/landscape. Alll four of these areas feed off of one another and if one is left untouched, then the computer's plastic feel is revealed and the effect is lost. hitps:visualizingarchitecture.com/some-thoughts-o- ans‘Some Thoughts on Texture | Visualizing Architecture 2rsi2021 used several images of asphalt roads to apply textures to my illustration in Photoshop. These have the right amount of grunge and imperfection and can be used in areas other than the streets. In this case, | used the asphalt textures for the roofs of the buildings and lowered the opacity and applied them to the concrete and brick sidewalks. The Comparison ans hitps:visualizingarchitecture.com/some-thoughts-o-2rsi2021 ‘Some Thoughts on Texture | Visualizing Architecture fre cee Aside by side comparison reveals how powerful a little bit of texturing in Photoshop can be. It's elements like roads and roof tops that | often see people ignoring in their illustrations that I have come to realize make a big difference in giving an image that human touch. Building in these little imperfections start to trick the eye into thinking this is not a computer generated image. hitps:visualizingarchitecture.com/some-thoughls-or-exture! ens‘Some Thoughts on Texture | Visualizing Architecture raze The Final Image In this final image, | moved the colors to the warm side by using orange color overlays. As with a lot of my illustrations, | bumped up the detail and sharpness using plugins like Topaz Labs Adjust. For aerials, | typically turn off the perspective but in this case | left it on and increased the field of view in hitps:visualizingarchitecture.com/some-thoughls-or-exture! ans2rsr2021 Some Thoughts on Texture | Visualizing Architecture Sketchup to make the buildings feel taller. The perspective works here because it draws the eye to the center of the image and puts more focus on the design. 27 Comments Jason on November 26, 2014 at 4:06 am Awesome work as always. A post or posts showing how you use Vray / Textures in Vray | think would be appreciated by everyone that follows your blog. | personally have found your Kerkythea tutorials valuable and would assume Vray tutorials will allow a smoother transition for a lot of us. Alex Hogrefe on November 29, 2014 at 157 pm Hi Jason, | think someone has asked the same question for every post | have made since switching to Vray haha. | will see about compiling my notes and creating a post soon about the topic. Thanks for the comment. Kyra on November 26, 2014 at 447 am Fabulous illustration as usual, great work Alex! Ihave a same request with Jason that whether you can share some thought on vray adjustment, i think it will benefit us more than just the ps post processing. Michael on November 26, 2014 at 6:33 am Hi Alex !! Great post... was wondering...the textures applied within photoshop during post processing..is the layer on overlay, multiplied or (io the blending mode of the texture layer) what in order to achieve a proper and realistic texturing effect ? Thank you in advance ! hitps:visualizingarchitecture.com/some-thoughts-o- ms2rsi2021 ‘Some Thoughts on Texture | Visualizing Architecture Alex Hogrefe on November 29, 2014 at 2:01 pm Its often a mix between Multiply, Overlay, and Screen depending on the situation. | use multiply to only keep the darks, overlay to use both dark and lights of the texture, and screen to use the light parts of the texture, Jkhe on November 26, 2014 at 7:04 am wow! 0_0 nts. weather environments. they make renders magical. Beck on November 27, 2014 at 1:47 am Alex, | really appreciate your work and they are such inspiration for me. Would you mind sharing with us where you get the realistic people plan views from? Thanks, Beck on November 27, 2014 at 836 am Plan Views of people and cars, | mean Hike Martirosyan on December 7, 2014 at 4:42 pm There are plenty of free 3-d cars and trees. You can render them in top view with shadows and alpha plane and then use them as cut outs. Alex Hogrefe on November 29, 2014 at 223 pm | just did many Google searches for aerial views of cars and people and cut them out manually. The big thing here is proper shadows. You will notice | only used two different shadows for the people, just copied many times over. Same with the cars. marcosmed on November 27, 2014 at 4'53 pm hitps:visualizingarchitecture.com/some-thoughls-or-exture! ans2rsi2021 ‘Some Thoughts on Texture | Visualizing Architecture great job! (: but where is the garden in front of the building? Tanuna Manopa on November 28, 2014 at 1:50 pm It's there in your blue circle but you don't see it )) Alex Hogrefe on November 29, 2014 at 228 pm I'm under a microscope! The problem with designing projects as | render is that I'm constantly changing the design as | go. | was originally thinking about rerouting the road to make room for the garden, but changed my mind. Nice eye, JohnnySinLey on November 28, 2014 at 4:34 pm Nice job!, | only want to know where do you get the top people or cars? if you use some web side or something. Thanks! Alex Hogrefe on November 25, 2014 at 226 pm Hi Johnny, see my response to Beck Above. Tanuna Manopa on Novernber 28, 2014 at 1:57 prn Inspiring and bright! The illustrations amaze me every time but behind the stunning look | find also very clever design decisions in the architecture itself! Thank you so much for sharing your work! Alex Hogrefe on November 29, 2014 at 228 pm Thank you for the kind words! Niusha on December 2, 2014 at 12:11 am. hitps:visualizingarchitecture.com/some-thoughts-o- ons2rsi2021 hitps:visualizingarchitecture.com/some-thoughts-o- ‘Some Thoughts on Texture | Visualizing Architecture Awesome! Kev on December 12, 2014 at 12:46 am. Love the image! Quick question - where do you get your plan view trees? Always struggle to find good ones and you seem to have an excellent variety there @ La Diva del Chicharron on December 22, 2014 at 1:26 pm Thanks for sharing. I'm a big fan, nicely done! :)) on December 28, 2014 at 11:40. am really awesome Alexand! on January 13, 2015 at 3:30 am Hey Alex, appreciate all the posts and info! | was wondering, some of your modeled scenes look to have quite a bit of detail. Do you run into issues with SketchUp and Vray crashing or just generally acting up! I've had models that literally just would NOT render, or were super laggy, some of which were not all that detailed. This occurs on my MacBook as well as University SOA specific lab computers. Do you have any general tips, from a modeling standpoint? How much of context do you model, how detailed do you make it? Any 3d components (like trees) you like to use or that you stay away from? Etc. Lastly, | feel like you've mentioned at some point before, what operating system(s) you typically use. | just hate to run into these issues, it’s really frustrating especially when you've spent so much time modeling. I don’t know what it is between SketchUp and Vray specifically, but all | know is Vray is was too expensive a plugin to be crashing upon render. Lucas on June 20, 2015 at 10:01 am | found your homepage awesome and it is a great help to me and | want to thank you sharing your work with ust rons2rsi2021 hitps:visualizingarchitecture.com/some-thoughts-o- ‘Some Thoughts on Texture | Visualizing Architecture | am looking for good designed ground floor plans for my presentation boards, so | still didn't find the kind of look in which direction I would like to go. Would you recomand doing a similar editing to ground floor plans as well? Or how are you editing your plans? Or maybe somebody can link me some examples? I can't find anything or am | overlooking something? regards Lucas! Alex Walsh on April13, 2016 at 9.45 am. Can you provide a tutorial on how t similar already exists, reference it? \sert this texture, or if one Aldrin Ramos on May 21, 2016 at 3:16 am You can do it in different ways. Search for lasso tool or selection by pentool in youtube and clipping mask tutorial to make it easier. Hope this helps. Aldrin Ramos on May 21, 2016 at 3:14 am Thank you very much for this wonderful and inspiring tutorials. | started to learn photoshop first long before doing 3d projects. Reading your blog makes it easier for me to improve myself and have something to look up to everyday. Fernanda BLANC on January 15, 2019 at 10:41 am love your blog} It's amazing! Can you give us the kig of orange you use? RGB? I never get a good tone in the final image. Thank you in advance! Trackbacks/Pingbacks 1. Grey Oak » Some Thoughts on Texture - [...] Originally posted here. 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