Author: Luis Linares
Kuan Studio is a 3 people studio, Agustín, Luis and Rodrigo, located in Uruguay. ‘Kuan’ comes from wisdom book ‘I Ching’ which means contemplation, and that word identifies the studio’s style, the contemplation of the light, details, and materials. Kuan team uses AutoCAD and 3D Studio Max for modeling, VRay for rendering, Photoshop and After Effects for post production.

Visit Kuan Studio’s website at – www.kuanstudio.com

Modeling

All the modeling was done with AutoCAD, except the grass plane because the idea was to create an organic plane to make a realistic image. All the equipment (interior and exterior) and the vegetation were pre-made models for 3ds max.

Why AutoCAD? some of you might ask… the simple truth is we use it a lot in our architecture studies so it was natural to use it for 3d too. these days 3ds max get’s more and more modeling time as we get into more complex and serious modeling up to a point we might use just 3ds max.

The model in viewport

The imported AutoCAD model is missing the grass plane that will be added in 3ds max later as you can see below.

Model in viewport camera

Textures

All the materials in the scene are VRay materials.

Grass

For diffuse we use a RGB Tint map. And VRay Displace modifier is applied to the plane.

Grass material

Back Wall

VRay Material with a MIX map in diffuse slot. The point was to get a dirty white wall.

Wall material

Glass

VRay Material with pure white in refraction and 35 in the reflection slot.

Glass material

Camera

We use a VRay Physical Camera with a neutral white balance, no vignette and vertical correction.

Camera settings

Lighting

The lighting was done with three main lights:

1. VRay Light Dome with a bitmap to get the blue light of a typical afternoon.
2. VRay Light planes with different multipliers to accent the interiors and exterior.
3. Photometric lights for the exterior walls.

Scene lighting settings

Render Settings

For global illumination we used Irradiance Map and Light Cache with a value of 1200, Catmull-Rom and Adaptive DMC for antialiasing.

Render settings

Pure render

Post Production

We use Photoshop, After Effects and Magic Bullet Looks plugin for post-production.

The background image was made of the composition of three different images. A sky and two images of mountains, then color corrected for the right illumination (Hue-saturation, Contrast-Bright, and color balance).

Adding background

Background post settings

Some passes were applied to get better contrast and illumination. Ambient Occlusion was applied to get contrast and highlights borders and planes. VRayReflection to highlight the reflections. VRayLighting to control and get better illuminated areas. VRayMatteShadows to control the shadows area.

Render passes

We put some different vegetation in Photoshop with adjustment layers to get the correct illumination with the ambience.

Adding trees and plants

Vegetation post edit settings

Now we use Magic Bullet Looks for the final retouches of the image.

MBL post edit settings

Image after MBL post edits

And finally we apply vignette effect in After Effects to get the image done.

Final image

Hope you enjoyed this article… Cheers,
Kuan Team.

Luis’s original Uro House render thread

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