“Chrome Kitchen” Making Of By BlackHaus

Once again we receive another great Making Of on Arch-Factory, this time created by Fernando Gasperin, CEO of blackhaus studio specialized in high end images, to architectural, furniture companies, publicity and animation. One of the most famous scenes created by him was this “Chrome Kitchen”, which has a great attention to the details, from the modelling to the materials, finishing in the post production.

The main idea when doing the chrome project, was to get my renderings into another level of detail i was used to do. Then i looked for some kind of interior design that could suit into my needs. Then i’ve found at Poliform site an image that has expressed everything i would like to study and create, so this is the way it come from.

The modelling process of this scene does not have so many to talk about, the whole scene was modelled using simple editable poly techniques like Extrude’s, Chamfer’s, Connect’s, Etc.. I will show you some objects wire of the scene in the images above.

The challenge hee in this scene was to get the same realism i was seeing at my reference picture. The wood should have the right gloss, the chrome material after a long time i got the desired result such as the concrete floor, but below you can see better my materials.

Wood Material :

The wood material was created by using a Falloff Map with Fresnel into the Reflect Slot/Channel with the Bitmap below. With this i could have control under the material reflectance between 0 and 90º. You can see the parameters in the following image.

Concrete Floor Material :

This one was more hardworking than the previous one. To obtain a randomize concrete floor i’ve modelled all the concrete pieces and i’ve used 4 textures to create a random pattern into the whole floor. I’ve just changed the bitmaps for this kind of randomize look but the settings had stayed the same for which one. Below you can see the Concrete Shader.

The Concrete Floor Model and Textures from the Base Materials :

Chrome Material :

The other one i would like to show is the chrome material. Actually there’s anything special at this one, but you can see that has the look i have on the image. I’ve put a noise map into the bump channel with a lowe value like 0,25. This way, the deformation with noise at the reflective materials, these you will have all the control over them in your hands.

I would like to reproduce a soft light coming from the window like the photos we see in the furniture catalogues such as Poliform has. After some changes and tests, i’ve found what i was looking for. The main light was the light coming from the window, so it will define shape, form and a direction to all the scene. I’ve put a V-Ray Sky in the environment to simulate the light coming from the window, below you can see the main light affecting all the area in the scene. (Just the environment light).

I’ve liked the way the light was getting in the scene, with my foreground a little darker and the main light more visible at the windows surroundings but to me the scene was not fitting so well as i tough. So i decided to put some more lights into the scene, but i took care to not appear that the main light were in the ceillings.

My Lighting Scheme :

Scene Settings :

Instead of using V-Ray environment i just put on 3Ds Max environment one V-Ray Sky, below i leave you the settings for it.

My RAW render came out from 3Ds Max this way, below you can see the result without any post production.

At this moment i had my scene without any post production, but my shaders were working, i like the way that the wood was reflecting and far behind the chrome material was in a good form, then i moved on to photoshop to make some corrections, below some steps to make the image better.

Step 1 :

I’ve made some corrections at this stage. I’ve put more lighting into the scene, i’ve corrected the specular of the metals, the concrete and the wood too. At the wood part i’ve put the reflection more blueish because my exterior lighting was producing a blueish look too.

Step 2 :

At this stage i’ve corrected the lighting intensity, i’ve made some color corrections to bring the tone of the image. I used to work with several color modes, like the color balance, photo filter (In a very low opacity) just to correct some wrong colors. At this point, i had an image in a good way, but too saturated to the look i would like to reproduce, my last step was to correct this to a better look, which i was looking for.

Now i had the look i was looking for, after finishing the main post production, i’ve add the DOF at my Final RAW file. I’ve used to work with DOFpro, a great plugin for photoshop, which i just make the DOF pass and put it in the DOFpro Plugin, and basically i had played a bit with the settings to simulate the depth of field i wanted since the beggining.

TrickTip :

A good way to simulate with accurately your DOF, is in your test renders checking the DOF of your V-Ray Physical Camera, at this way you can leave an idea of how much of DOF you could put in the Post Production.

I like to simulate the DOF in Post Production because i have more control in my hands without render again the file, and i have better rendering times too without have to render the DOF that consumes so much time of our renderings.

That’s all folks.

I would like to thank Tiago Alexandrino from Arch-Factory for the opportunity of making me share my knowledge with you guys, feel free to contact me if you have any doubt, I know there is several ways to do the same things i made at this scene, but at the moment appears to me that this is the best choice to achieve such result, thank you guys.

Website :

www.black-haus.com

Blog :

www.blackhaus.blog.br

E-mail :

fernando.gasperin@black-haus.com

Making Of Content (Text) – BlackHaus, Fernando Gasperin
Still Images – BlackHaus, Fernando Gasperin
Making Of Final Composition – Tiago Alexandrino