From virtual reality to vehicles that drive themselves, people around the world have higher expectations of technology and software than ever before. If you are in any kind of line of work where you present renders to a client in order to make sales or land contracts, then you need your renders to be as perfect as possible. Match their high expectations by creating perfect renders to share with the world.
Table of Contents
Get Light Right
Even an untrained eye can usually immediately detect errors in rendered daylight. It’s important to render daylight accurately in designs, especially when you consider how many people are looking for energy-efficient homes or spaces that harness natural light even indoors. But almost more so, it is important to get your other light sources right. One thing to try is to follow video lighting guidelines. Light can make the difference between a good render and a bad one. So light your scene carefully and make sure that the light you use looks natural.
Employ High-Caliber Materials
High-quality textures can be just the thing to bring a rendering to life. Many of them are available for free, and they can add serious sophistication to nearly any rendering that you ever do. A good material also comes with normal, displacement, and roughness maps. Without the extra maps, your materials will look unnatural and won’t render right. So when you are looking for a material to use, keep the other maps in mind along with the texture resolution.
Put People in Place
If you are doing renderings for architecture, then remember that all architecture exists to serve people. They need places to live, work, and play. Put people in your renderings to show the actual function of space as it is being used. Not only that but having a person in the scene will help add a sense of scale. Just make sure to use the right level of detail on the people in the render. Too much detail will not only slow you down, but it may approach the uncanny valley.
Use the Right Plugins
An effective SketchUp rendering plugin can help you render a project with ease to completion. It would be especially useful if you are already familiar with SketchUp. Just keep in mind that the more realistic it looks, the longer it generally takes to render. Depending on which plugins you look at, you’ll get access to specific features such as irradiance maps, path tracing, photon mapping, and global illumination algorithms. Your renderings will have amazing levels of realism like never before.
Look Beyond the Horizon
When rendering, there’s possibly nothing worse than just seeing a basic flat horizon line. To say it looks instantly artificial is an understatement. This is a rather common mistake, and it’s also historically a hard one to avoid. Horizon presets let you provide a better impression of external surroundings. So look for skyboxes that fit the mood and location of your scene. A good skybox also helps with reflections, without a skybox, reflections may end up looking empty.
Try Trees and Other Foliage
While trees may be hard to render, keep in mind that a little bit of greenery can go a long way to making a render look good. If you are unsure of the quality of the trees you find, you may want to consider still images. If placed far away from the render, stills of trees can still fit right into the scene. Adding some greenery, even if it is simple, can help make a scene look more natural and clean.
Follow the Rules of Composition
The rules of composition are a set of rules that guide many art forms. Photography, filmmaking, and painting are some examples. Since you are essentially making a photograph it would be wise to follow the rules of composition. One of the most important and simple rules is the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is where you divide the canvas into thirds horizontally and vertically. Where the lines intersect, you should put the focal points of your work. This is just one rule of composition, but it could go a long way to make your render stand out.
Substandard renders don’t just leave clients unimpressed. They might even make them think that you’re not up to date with current technology and techniques. Demonstrating that you are can impress them twofold. Not only will the realism of the renders blow them away but they’ll also be in awe of how you’ve truly become adept in your chosen field of design.
