So I’ve basically put everything where I want it. I still need to work on the interior of the museum and work a little more on some middle ground elements. I’m getting close but there is much detail to be added.

I want to add a little more color to it. I haven’t worked very much on color so far but I know I want to work with warm highlights and cool shadows. Not going to do anything crazy for the color scheme.

Well, as the project develops there are plenty of test images to show the progress of the scene.
I still try to achieve that hazy look with glowing lights. Due to time issues i decided to shift all environmental effects to post-production.
In general i decided to keep the original surroundings of the building as is, pretty much because of its context.
As a graduated architect i know, that there is a enormous amount of thoughts put into designing a building in regard to its position and surrounding. To take the building completely out of context seems to me like a bad idea.
I just changed the “gardening work” and went for a bit more rough look.
The perspective for me was a no brainer. I love point perspectives and always try to sell it to my clients, with little success though.
Now the finish line is in sights, and there is still lots of photoshop work to do so i wish everybody here a not too work some, but successful week end.

So, I will be following my usual workflow. I do my modelling mostly in Autocad (if it is up to me, sometimes I have to model from scratch on 3dMax if it its a group project). I got an architectural background, and Autocad was my chosen CAD program during my student years and it stuck with me.

I already had an idea of the final composition of the picture so I started modelling only what I was going to see of the building (hence saving time) and then I linked the file to 3d Max.
I prefer to always link instead of merge because of the possibility of going back to the cad model and updating the 3D Max file without losing any of the work previously done. That said, there are times when modelling directly into 3D Max saves a lot of time. It depends on the geometry of the building and he kind of shot you are looking for. For example, when working on interiors I usually start modelling on 3dMax right away.

Anyway, I link the file to 3D Max and load my test Vray preset. Then I start positioning the camera and creating the lighting. I use the texture override, excluding the glass panes, so I can concentrate on creating the light hierarchy. I used an HDRI Light for the main ambient light, then several Vray plane light for the internal lighting and a final Vray plane light as filling external light so the shadows would not be too dark.

After that I applied the materials, and then is was just a matter of changing the settings to final and adding a couple of channels to the render to help me with the Photoshop post-production.